Free Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials by Erich Von Daniken

consists of a number of different calenders that mesh like cogwheels. Thus the "God Calendar"-also known as the "Tzolk'in"- consisted of 260 days. The 260-day calendar is, however, utterly useless for the seasons of the Earth. It's no good for sowing or harvesting, winter or spring. And yet it existed. So which planet was it good for?) As far as the Tiwanaku calendar is concerned, there remains one key question: Why is it, then, that despite this every single one of the more than one thousand tiny details on the statue the Great Idol corresponds with one another? As far as Edmund Kiss's year is concerned, we're talking about a year of 12 months at 24 days-except February and March with 25-and days with 30 hours of 22 minutes each. Well, the question can't be answered by looking at our calendar! Kiss's calculations don't fit to our calendar-but they certainly do fit to the other one. Who knows then with any certainty which calendar would have been valid before the last ice age? We deny the existence of any civilization before the last ice age-ergo the Tiwanaku calendar is wrong. And in the process, we blindly sweep the geological facts under the carpet. Are we not just making it too easy for ourselves?

    The latest variation on the Tiwanaku calendar comes from Jorge Miranda-Luizaga, who at least is a Bolivian and knows both the culture and the language of his countrymen. He approaches the Tiwanaku calendar from the perspective of the Aymara, whose language he speaks fluently. The result is a practical calendar that repeats itself year for year and has its roots in the religious cultures of the Aymara.64 Maybe Luizaga's solution is the only correct one; I can't say with any certainty. I can judge the technology, the planning, the transport, and the architectural draftsmanship that have been used to create the blocks in Puma Punku. And that certainly doesn't fit in with the former Aymara tribe. And this brings up another question that has been completely ignored in all of the literature on Tiwanaku: Why on earth did a Stone Age culture actually need such precisely calculated and perfectly smoothed blocks like those that can still be seen in Puma Punku?

    For us, the term StoneAge refers generally to a people without metal tools. Stone Age is clearly a highly flexible concept, because the Stone Age is not an age in the sense that it fits in with any global calendar. Depending on geographical location, the Stone Age was 4000 BC oramong the South Sea folk-500 AD. In Brazil's Upper Amazon region there are still Stone Age tribes living today.
    When a Stone Age people decide to erect a large building they somehow manage to drag, jockey, or tow the blocks to their chosen location and pile them up on top of each other using whatever methods are on hand. To make sure the walls don't collapse, they use pins and mortises-a kind of key and lock-that need to be chiseled or hollowed out. They never use the kind of engineering arts witnessed in Puma Punku. Are you getting the picture yet?
    Even the carbon-14 datings of bones and wood fragments found in and around Tiwanaku are not exactly convincing. (C-14 is a method of dating that is based on measurements of the levels of radioactive carbon isotope C-14). The ruins and platforms could have been lying around for a very long time before later visitors used them to camp in or just came and pottered around. Today, it is their organic remains that are being dated. What good is that? (I know plenty more examples of this kind of thing.)
    In our times, the established wisdom is that the Tiwanaku culture existed from around 300 BC until 1100 AD. You can forget Posnansky's 15,000 years. As you can also forget all the calendar variations, the silt layers, the bone sediment, or coastal markings. There have been a number of attempts at reconstruction.65 But you can't really blame the archaeologist or architects if any attempt at reconstruction must remain little more than a patchwork. Too much material has