Erich Von Daniken - The Gold Of The Gods

1 - The Gold Of The Gods
its end to 1544, the year when the last sun king died, then this mighty
empire that stretched from Chile to Ecuador, from the Andes north of
Quito to Valparaiso in the south, must have been built up in barely 350
years. During this period, the first pre-Columbian empire in South
America must have been welded together. For the conquered territories
and peoples were not considered as occupation zones, but were
integrated into the prevailing constitution. Progressive achievements in
agriculture were passed on by trained officials, as were the smoothly
functioning rules of a communal economic order.
Did the Incas equip a network of 2,500 miles of well-built roads with
rest-houses during the same span of time? Did they simultaneously
build cities such as Cuzco, Tiahuanaco, Macchu Picchu, and the
cyclopean fortresses of Oliantaytambo and Sacsahuaman? Did they
also lay down water mains and work silver, tin and copper mines,
whose products they alloyed to make bronze? And did they develop
the goldsmith's art, weave the finest cloth and make pottery with noble
shapes "on the side," as it were? I hardly dare speak of the high culture
which they nurtured in addition during this limited 350 year period.
But if it was not the Incas but their ancestors who should be credited
with these wonderful achievements, surely the culture and tool
technology of the pre-Inca peoples must have been higher than the
Incas who came after them.
No, the chronology cannot be blindly pasted together like that, because
there are so many indications to turn the arbitrary (re-)construction
upside down.
I assert that the tunnel system existed thousands of years before the
Inca kingdom came into being. (How and with what tools are the Incas
supposed to have built hundreds of miles of passages deep under the
earth? The Channel tunnel has been planned by the engineers of our
highly technological century for fifty years and they still have not
decided which method should be used to build this comparatively