before that event, and that the Urus had been there also for a

  long time before.

  To this very day, the lake's Aymara tribesmen sail upon it in

  reed boats that, they say, they had learned to make from the

  Urus. The remarkable similarity of these boats to the reed boats

  of the Sumerians prompted Thor Heyerdahl to replicate the

  boat and embark on the Kon-Tiki (an epithet of Viracocha)

  voyages, to prove that the ancient Sumerians could have crossed

  the oceans.

  The extent of Sumerian/Uru-rian presence in the Andes can

  be gleaned by such other imprints as the fact that uru means

  "day" in all the Andean languages, both in Aymara and Que-

  chua, the same meaning ("daylight") that it had in Mesopota-

  mia. Such other Andean terms as uma/mayu for water, khun

  for red, kap for hand, enulienu for eye, makai for blow are so

  clearly of Mesopotamian origin that Pablo Patron (Nouvelles

  etudes sur les langues americaines) concluded that "it is clearly

  demonstrated that the Quechua and Aymara languages of indig-

  enous Peru had a Sumerian-Assyrian origin."

  The term uru appears as a component of many geographical

  names in Bolivia and Peru, such as the important mining center

  Oruru, the Sacred Valley of the Incas Urubamba ("Plain/valley

  of the Uru") and its famed river, and many many more. Indeed,

  in the center of the Sacred Valley there still live in caves the

  remnants of a tribe that consider themselves descendants of the

  Urus of Lake Titicaca; they refuse to move from the caves to

  Gods of the Golden Tears 267

  houses because, they claim, the mountains would collapse if

  they leave their insides, causing the world's end.

  There are other apparent links between the civilization of

  Mesopotamia and that of the Andes. How explain, for example,

  the fact that, as in the case of Tiahuanacu, the Sumerian capital

  Ur was surrounded by a canal with a northern harbor and a

  southwestern one (leading to the Euphrates river and beyond)?

  And how explain the Golden Enclosure of the main temple of

  Cuzco. where the walls were covered with gold plates—just as

  the ones at Puma-Punku and Uruk? And the "Bible in Pictures"

  in the Coricancha, depicting Nibiru and its orbit?

  There were the many customs that led the arriving Spaniards

  to see in the Indians descendants of the Ten Tribes of Israel.

  There were the coastal cities and their temples that brought to

  explorers' minds the sacred precincts and ziggurats of Sumer.

  And how account for the incredibly ornate textiles of the coastal

  people near Tiahuanacu, unique in the Americas, except by

  comparison with the Sumerian textiles, especially those of Ur,

  that were renowned in antiquity for their exquisite designs and

  colors? Why the portrayal of gods with conical headdresses, and

  a goddess with the Umbilical Cutter of Ninti? Why a calendar as

  in Mesopotamia, and a zodiac as in Sumer, with Precession and

  twelve houses?

  Without rehashing all the evidence that has filled the pre-

  vious chapters, it seems to us that all the pieces of the puzzle of

  Andean beginnings fall into place if we acknowledge the hand

  of the Anunnaki and the presence of Sumerians (alone or with

  their neighbors) in this region circa 4000 B.C. The legends of the

  ascent heavenward of the Creator and his two sons, the Moon

  and the Sun, from the sacred rock on the Island of the Sun

  (Titicaca Island) may well be recollections of the departure of

  Anu. his son Sin and his grandson Shamash: having made a

  short trip by boat from Puma-Punku to a waiting airborne-craft

  of the Anunnaki.

  On that memorable night at Uruk, as soon as Nibiru had

  been sighted, the priests lit torches that were a signal to nearby

  villages. There bonfires were lit, as signals to the neighboring

  settlements; and soon the whole land of Sumer was aglow, cele-

  brating the presence of Anu and Antu and the sighting of the

  Planet of the Gods.

  Whether or not people then realized that they were viewing a

  celestial sight that occurs once in 3,600 Earth-years, they cer-

  tainly knew it was a phenomenon once in their lifetimes. Man-

  268

  THE LOST REALMS

  kind has not ceased to yearn for the return of that planet, and it

  justly recalls that era as a Golden Age: not only because it was

  physically so, but also because it culminated a period of peace

  and unparalleled progress for Mankind.

  But no sooner (in Anunnaki terms) had Anu and Antu re-

  turned to Nibiru than the peaceful division of Earth among the

  Anunnaki clans was disturbed. It was circa 3450 B.C., according

  to our calculations, when the incident of the Tower of Babel

  took place: an attempt by Marduk/Ra to obtain primacy for his

  city Babylon in Mesopotamia. Though frustrated by Enlil and

  Ninurta, the attempt to involve Mankind in building a launch

  tower brought about the decision of the gods to disperse Man-

  kind and confuse its languages. The sole civilization and its lan-

  guage were now to be split up; and after a chaotic period that

  lasted some 350 years, the civilization of the Nile, with its own

  language and rudimentary writing, was formed. It happened,

  Egyptologists tell us, circa 3100 B.C.

  Frustrated in his effort to assume supremacy in civilized

  Sumer, Marduk/Ra seized upon the granting of civilization to

  the Egyptians to return to that land and reclaim its lordship

  from his brother Thoth. Now Thoth found himself a god with-

  out a people; and it is our suggestion that accompanied by some

  of his faithful followers he chose an abode in the New Realms

  —in Mesoamerica.

  And we further suggest that it happened not just "circa 3100

  B.C." but exactly in 3113 B.C.—the time, the year, and even the

  day from which the Mesoamericans began their Long Count.

  Counting the passage of time by anchoring the calendar to a

  major event is not unusual at all. The Western Christian calen-

  dar counts the years from the birth of Christ. The Moslem cal-

  endar begins with the Hegira, the migration of Mohammed

  from Mecca to Medina. Skipping over the many examples from

  various preceding lands and monarchies, we shall mention the

  Jewish Calendar, which is in effect the ancient (and first-ever)

  Calendar of Nippur, the Sumerian city dedicated to Enlil. Con-

  trary to the common assumption that the Jewish count of years

  (5,748 in 1988) is from the "beginning of the world," it is actu-

  ally from the beginning of the Nippurian calendar in 3760 B.C.—

  the time, we assume, of Anu's state visit to Earth.

  Why not then accept our suggestion that the arrival of Quet-

  zalcoatl, i.e., the Winged Serpent, in his new realm was the

  occasion for starting the Long Count of the Mesoamerican cal-

  endar—especially since it was this very god who had introduced

  the calendar to these lands?

  Gods of the Golden Tears

  269

  Figure 135

  Having been overthrown by his own brother, Thoth (known

  in Sumerian texts as Ningishzidda—Lord of the Tree of Life)

  was a natural ally of his brother's adversaries, the Enlilite gods

  and their Chief Warrior, Ninurta. It is recorded that when Nin-

  urta desired that a ziggurat-temple be built for him by Gudea, it

  was Ningishzidda/Thoth who had drawn the building plans; he

  may have also specified the rare materials for it, and had a hand

  in assuring the supplies. As a friend of the Enlilites. he had to

  be friendly with Ishkur/Adad and the Andean realm that was

  put under his control in the Titicaca region; he was probably

  even a welcome guest there.

  Indeed, we can discern evidence that a Serpent God and his

  African followers probably lent a hand in developing some of

  the satellite metal-processing sites around Tiahuanacu. Some

  stone stelae and sculptures from a time in between Periods I and

  II of Tiahuanacu are decorated with serpent symbols—a symbol

  otherwise rare and unknown in Tiahuanacu; and some of the

  sculptures of people found at nearby sites (Fig. 135) as well as

  two colossal busts that have been moved and put up by the

  natives as a decoration at the entrance to the Tiahuanacu village

  church (Fig. 136) reveal, even in their eroded state, negroid

  features.

  Posnansky, stung by criticism of his "fantastic" antiquity, did

  not attempt to date the transition from Period I, when sand-

  stone was used for construction and statuary, to the more so-

  phisticated Period II when hard andesite stone began to be

  used. But the fact that the changeover also marked the shifting

  270

  THE LOST REALMS

  Figure 136

  of Tiahuanacu's focus from gold to tin suggests to us the 2500

  B.C. period. If, as we surmise, the Enlilite gods in charge of

  Near Eastern highland domains (Adad, Ninurta) were away in

  the New Realm, busy establishing the Cassite colony, it explains

  why, at about that time, Inanna/Ishtar usurped the power in the

  Near East and launched a bloody offensive against Marduk/Ra

  to avenge the death of her beloved spouse Dumuzi (caused, she

  claimed, by Marduk).

  It was at that time, and probably as a consequence of the

  instability in the Old Realms, that the concerned gods decided

  to create a new civilization away from it all—in the Andes.

  While Tiahuanacu was to focus on supplying tin, there were

  almost inexhaustible sources of gold all along the Andean

  slopes. All that was needed was to give Andean Man the neces-

  sary know-how and tools to go after the gold.

  Gods of the Golden Tears

  271

  Figure 137

  And so it was, circa 2400 B.C.—just as Montesinos had con-

  cluded—that Manco Capac was given the golden wand at Titi-

  caca and sent to the gold region of Cuzco.

  What was the shape and purpose of this magical wand? One

  of the most thorough studies on the subject is Corona Incaica by

  Juan Larrea. Analyzing artifacts, legends, and pictorial depic-

  tions of Inca rulers, he concluded that it was an axe, an object

  called Yuari that when first given to Manco Capac was named

  Tupa-Yuari, Royal Axe (Fig. 137a). But was it a weapon or a

  tool?

  To find an answer, we go to ancient Egypt. The Egyptian

  term for "gods, divine" was Neteru, "Guardians." That however

  was exactly the term by which Sumer (actually, Shumer) was

  called—"Land of the Guardians"; and in early translations of

  biblical and pseudo-biblical texts into Greek, the term Nefilim

  (alias Anunnaki) was rendered "Guardians." The hieroglyph

  for this term was an axe (Fig. 137b); E. A. Wallis Budge (The

  Gods of the Egyptians) in a special chapter titled "The Axe As a

  Symbol of God" concluded that it was made of metal. He men-

  tioned that the symbol (as the term Neter) was probably bor-

  rowed from the Sumerians. That it was indeed so can be

  gleaned from Fig. 133.

  Thus was Andean civilization launched: by giving Andean

  Man an axe with which to mine the gods' gold.

  The tales of Manco Capac and the Ayar brothers in all prob-

  ability also mark the end of the Mesopotamian and gold phases

  of Tiahuanacu. A hiatus followed; it lasted until the place came

  back to life as the world's tin capital. The Cassites arrived and

  moved the tin or ready bronze via the transpacific route. In time

  other routes developed. The existence of settlements with an

  272

  THE LOST REALMS

  astonishing abundance of bronzes points to a route along the

  Beni River eastward to Brazil's Atlantic coast, thence with the

  help of ocean currents all the way to the Arabian Sea, the Red

  Sea to Egypt, or the Persian Gulf to Mesopotamia. There could

  be and probably was a route via the Ancient Empire and the

  Urubamba river, as suggested by the megalithic sites and the

  discovery of a lump of pure tin at Machu Picchu. This route led

  to the Amazon and the northeastern tip of South America,

  thence across the Atlantic to West Africa and the Mediterra-

  nean.

  And then, once Mesoamerica attained a modicum of civi-

  lized settlements, a third and quicker alternative was offered by

  its narrow neck that provided a virtual land-bridge between the

  Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic via the Caribbean Sea—a route

  essentially followed, in reverse, by the conquistadores.

  This third route, that of the Olmec civilization, must have

  become the preferred route after 2000 B.C., as evidenced by the

  presence of Mediterraneans; for, in 2024 B.C. the Anunnaki led

  by Ninurta, fearing that the spaceport in the Sinai would be

  overrun by followers of Marduk, destroyed it with nuclear

  weapons.

  Unstoppable, the deadly nuclear cloud drifted eastward to-

  ward southern Mesopotamia, devastating Sumer and its last

  capital. Ur. As though fate had decreed it, the cloud drifted

  southward, sparing Babylon; and losing no time, Marduk

  marched in with an army of Canaanite and Amorite followers,

  declaring kingship in Babylon.

  It was then, we believe, that the decision was made to grant

  the African followers of Thoth/Quetzalcoatl civilization in his

  Mesoamerican realm.

  One of the rare academic studies admitting that the Olmecs

  were negroid Africans was Africa and the Discovery of America

  by Leo Wiener, professor of Slavic and other languages at Har-

  vard University. Based on racial features and other considera-

  tions but mostly on linguistic analysis, he concluded that the

  Olmec tongue belonged to the Mande group of languages that

  originated in West Africa, between the Niger and Congo river.

  But writing in 1920, before the true age of Olmec remains be-

  came known, he attributed their presence in Mesoamerica to

  Arab seafarers and slave traders in the Middle Ages.

  More than half a century had to pass before another major

  academic study, Unexpected Faces in Ancient America by Alex-

  ander von Wuthenau, tackled the problem head on. Enriched

  with a profusion of photographs of Semitic and Negroid por-

  traits from Mesoamerica's art heritage, he surmised that the first

  Gods of the Golden Tears 273

  links between the Old and New World developed during the

  reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses III (twelfth century B.C.)

  and that the Olmecs were Kushites from Nubia (Egypt's princi-

  pal source of gold). Some other black Africans, he felt, could

  have come over on "Phoenician and Jewish ships" between 500

  B.C. and A.D. 200. Ivan van Sertima, whose study They Came

  Before Columbus set out to bridge the half-century gap between

  the two previous academic works, tended toward the Kushite

  solution: it was when the black kings of Kush ascended the

  throne of Egypt as its twenty-fifth dynasty in the eighth century

  B.C., trading in silver and bronze, that they—probably as a re-

  sult of shipwrecks—also held sway in Mesoamerica.

  This conclusion was prompted by the notion that the giant

  Olmec heads were from about that time; but now we know that

  Olmec beginnings go back to circa 2000 B.C. Who, then, were

  these Africans?

  We hold that Leo Wiener's linguistic studies have been cor-

  rect, but not so his time frame. When one compares the faces on

  the colossal Olmec heads (Fig. 138a) with those of West Afri-

  cans (as this one of Nigeria's leader. General I. B. Banagida—

  Fig. 138b), the gap of thousands of years is bridged by the

  obvious similarity. It is from that part of Africa that Thoth could

  have brought over his followers expert in mining, for it is there

  that gold and tin, and copper to alloy bronze with, have been

  abundant. Nigeria has been renowned for its bronze figurines—

  cast in the telltale Lost Wax process—for millennia; recent re-

  search has carbon-dated some of the sites, in which the most

  ancient ones have been found to date to about 2100 B.C.

  It is there, in West Africa, that the country now called Ghana

  bore for centuries the name Gold Coast, for that is what it

  Figure 138

  274

  THE LOST REALMS

  Figure 139

  was—a source of gold known even to the Phoenicians. And

  then we have the area's Ashanti people, renowned throughout

  the continent for their goldsmithing skills; among their handi-

  work are weights made of gold whose shape is frequently that of

 

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