Evidence of the Gods (17 page)

The next symbol which has not been understood lies in the Bay of Pisco, Peru, directly on the Pacific coast. The shape is reminiscent of a huge trident or a gigantic three-armed candelabra. (
Image 149
) The structure as a whole measures a full 250 meters in height, and the individual pillars of the trident are up to 3.8 meters wide. (
Image 150
) The substrate consists of a white, salt-like, and crystalline substance. (
Image 151
) In earlier years, I scrambled up the sandy slope with small groups of people to take close-up photos and make measurements. In doing so, we left masses of footprints. Yet the next day, our footprints were literally gone with the wind. Nothing—nothing at all—indicated that we had ever been there. Today, entering the Candelabro—as the figure is known locally—is prohibited. No one knows what the structure means, who created it, and when it was done. The logical explanation would actually be that the mark is a sign for shipping. But even that is controversial, because there is a small island off the coast, which is only inhabited by roaring and smelly sea lions. This island blocks the view from the sea, and also from the north and the south, one can only look into the Bay of Pisco from a few kilometers away. Furthermore, the island itself would be the best mark for shipping. It can be seen from a long distance away, while the Candelabro only appears once the island has been passed. I have read somewhere that the Candelabro points to the lines on the plain of Nazca about 100 kilometers away. Wrong. The central arm does not point to Nazca. In any event, the shape fits into the picture of symbols pointing heavenward on the Pacific coast.

What starts as an asphalt road runs from the Bay of Pisco into the Pisco Valley to Humay. The road turns into a dusty gravel track up into the Andes to Castrovirreyna and Huancavelica. Fruit and vegetables grow where fields can be irrigated with water piped to sprinklers. The sudden transition from desert to cultivated landscape is jolting. The Hacienda Montesierpe lays to the right of the track, and next to it is a small chapel. Behind the hacienda, there is an approximately 300-meter-wide strip of cultivated land on the hillside which is artificially irrigated. Another 200 meters farther on, there is one hole after another in the dry soil of the slope. Widthwise, there are always eight holes next to one another. Each hole is about one meter deep and of the same width. (
Image 152
) And each hole has remnants of a wall. No matter whether you look up or down the mountain, the “ticker tape” is always visible. It is like a tapeworm or as if a scarifier precisely eight spikes wide
had been rolled up and down the hill. (
Image 153
) The width of the band is about 24 meters, the length could not be determined.

I crawled up the slope as far as possible—often on all fours. Sometimes the holes were porous, the stone crumbling, but the higher I climbed the more small walls surrounded the holes. (
Images 154
and
155
) What could that be? A former tree nursery? A kind of cemetery? A defensive position? The border of sovereign territory?

The cemetery variant did not make any sense. Bones, ceramics, or textiles have never been found here. A tree nursery or plantation of some other kind was also out of the question. The ticker tape ran up and down the mountain often at a sloping angle and there was no water in any case. So a defensive system? Useless. Any attacker could have come from both sides; the defenders would have been shooting at one another. Furthermore, the ticker tape ran across a slope which dropped off steeply to the right and left. The defenders could neither have escaped nor been given reinforcement. The strip often nestles in the slope, gently winding its way downward and across the valley. If the holes were something like one-man bunkers, the defenders would often have been positioned lower than the advancing attackers. There was no logic to it, no simple solution made any sense. The native inhabitants have for centuries called the strip “la avenida misteriosa de las picaduras de viruelas”—the mysterious avenue of pockmarks.

From the air, the “ticker tape” looks like the track of a tracked vehicle which scrambled up and down the mountain here. But no such tracked vehicle exists anywhere. Then take the idea of a snake. Who was going to engrave a snake on to the slopes? A snake which slithers down the mountain, across the valley, and then up again?

I do not want to exclude anything, because the Native Americans of North America, at least, have placed depictions of animals of all kinds on their hills. There are artificially created mounds showing birds, bison, bears, lizards, and snakes. The pictures are only recognizable as complete works of art from the air. In the state of Ohio in the United States, between the capital city, Columbus, and Newark, there is a gigantic rectangle. Nearby, in Adams County west of the town of Portsmouth, there is the Great Serpent Mound. The geoglyph is a good 400 meters long, and for its whole length, nuzzles the bends of Bush Creek—albeit a good 40 meters above the water. (
Image 156
) The head of the snake rests on the highest point of the hilly terrain, the body winds its way for the whole 400 meters like an endless serpent, finally terminating in a spiral. Local legend has it that Great Serpent Mound is a depiction of the constellation Ursa Minor, the Small Bear. (
Image 157
)