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p A search for traces of primitive Columbuses on the floor of the Pacific Ocean is certainly a worthwhile and interesting occupation. Still, scuha divers seem more drawn to the idea of looking for the remains of sunken cities, with their temples, palaces, works of art and nndociphered writings. It may be that the key to the secrets of the origin of the South American civilisations lies at the bottom of the Pacific.

p In Central America scholars have established the sequence of cultures and the general features of their development from primitive hunters and gatherers through agriculturists to the creators of great civilisations. There is a relatively precise chronology for Central America since many Central American monuments have hieroglyphic calendar dates.

p In South America, however, the investigator encounters a large number of cultures whose age he does not know either absolutely or relatively, that is, he does not know which culture preceded which. Excavations in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile have revealed hundreds of archeological cultures. Archeology has worked up the chronological framework of these South American cultures, their dispersal, interconnections and in some cases their sequence, to a far less degree than it has for the peoples of Central America. A single new discovery often upsets the existing pattern and makes it necessary to construct a new one. To this day many points are still 65

This fantastic lizard-like man, called the Tangata-Moko, is found on Easter Island rock carvings, among the characters of the Itohau rcm? ormgo script and is represented in figurines

BRAZIL—COLOMBIA BORDER COLOMBIA POLYNESIA EASTKHN ASIA ANCIKNT AMKHICA TI IV debatable and South America’s ancient history remains vague.

p The best known and yet most enigmatic site in South America is called Tiahuanaco. It is located in Bolivia, near Lake Titicaca, the highest of all inland basins. The site consists of the ruins of a series of monumental stone buildings. The chief structure, called the Sun Gate, is a portal built of enormous stone slabs decorated with bas-reliefs depicting imaginary or highly stylised creatures.

p In the 1930s two scholars, Arthur Posnansky and Edmund Kiss, attempted to decipher the bas-reliefs on the Sun Gate by treating them as signs of a calendar. Before they had been proven right or wrong, the enthusiasts discovered an amazing resemblance between the "Tiahuanaco calendar" and the calculations made by Hanns Horbiger, author of an original cosmogonic hypothesis to the effect that the moon is not an "eternal satellite" but a fairly late acquisition, dating back only a few tens of thousands of years.

p A science-fiction writer, Hans Schindler, who used the pen-name Bellamy, hastened to combine the doubtful Posnansky-Kiss translation of the characters on the bas-reliefs with the still more doubtful theory of Horbiger and created a neat, elegant hypothesis that took care of all the unsolved problems in oceanography, archeology, geology, ethnography, folklore and so on, at one stroke.

p According to Bellamy, the Moon’s original orbit passed between Mars and the Earth. But one fine day the moon was drawn into the earth’s field of gravitation and became a satellite of our planet. The new satellite proved to be a 66 dangerous acquisition. It immediately had a disastrous effect on the earth’s atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. Hurricanes of unprecedented force swept across the globe, floods wreaked havoc in many low-lying places, intensive volcanic activity set in, and mountain ridges lifted up out of the bowels of the earth. The catastrophes destroyed the prehistoric civilisation, of which the Tiahuanaco monument, the calendar on the Sun Gate, is one of the relics. It was an island culture, not a continental culture, says Bellamy, because the Andes in the region of Tiahuanaco was once a vast island in the Pacific, Andes Land.

p Bellamy’s hypothesis is farfetched, to put it mildly. Although actually based only on a calendar that has not been authentically deciphered, it runs counter to fundamental findings of oceanography, geology, astronomy, archeology and many other sciences. The reason why we have mentioned it here is to show that even the most fantastic assumption sometimes contains a grain of truth. For in recent years two discoveries have been made in the Andes area that will undoubtedly open up a new chapter in the history of underwater research.

p First, investigations at the bottom of Lake Titicaca by archeologists, with the collaboration of the Argentinian Diving Federation, revealed, a couple of hundred metres from the shore, a group of structures more than one kilometre long. The structures include a paved area of several hundred square metres and about 30 walls placed geometrically, in parallel rows.

p Is this a drowned city? Or the remains of a temple that stood on the shore of the lake? Or is it the necropolis of Tiahnanaco, for not 67 a single burial site has been Found in that vast complex? We do not know as yet.

p Nor do we know why the structures are now below the surface. (Lake Titicaca lies at a higher elevation than Mt Fuji and only 1,000 metres below Mont Blanc.) Despite their height and grandeur, the Andes are young mountains. They developed towards the end of the Tertiary period. Before that Lake Titicaca was not the highest lake in the world but an ordinary sea gulf, as evidenced by the skeletons of marine animals found there. In the Tertiary period the Andes began to rise, and the lake was cut off from the ocean.

p The water level of the lake alternately rose and fell, which is perhaps why the builders of the Sun Gate and the other vast structures abandoned Tiahuanaco. By the time the first Europeans reached the site, the local inhabitants could tell them only legends about the people who had erected those structures. One of the occasions when the level of the lake rose (perhaps, owing to a heavy snowmelt in the mountains) might have caused a “flood” at an elevation of four kilometres.

p The discovery of ancient ruins at the bottom of a lake is extremely interesting but not particularly sensational. The discovery of a sunken city in the ocean, at a depth of almost two kilometres, is truly an extraordinary happening. If this discovery is shown to be authentic it will open up immeasurably broader vistas before underwater archeology, which may possibly begin to investigate the abyssal depths as well as the continental shelf. Archeologists will, of course, require more sophisticated equipment; scuba divers could not cope with the job.

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p The purpose of the oceanograpliic expedition under Robert Menzis that was sent to the coast of Peru in the mid-sixties by the marine laboratory of Duke University, in the United States, was to study the fauna in Peruvian waters, which are rightly called the "richest waters in the world”. For six weeks the expedition investigated the Milne-Edwards Basin not far from the port of Callao. Here, for a good 1,000 kilometres, the ocean floor lies at a depth of almost six kilometres. But suddenly the oceanographers found, to their amazement, that the underwater cameras they raised from a depth of about two kilometres (6,000 feet, to be exact), had recorded the ruins of an ancient city! Stone columns, many of them covered with carvings that were either ornamentation or hieroglyphic inscriptions, were clearly visible in the photographs.

p Shaken by the discovery, Robert Menzis and his companions started a search closer to Callao, which is a very old port. Using a depth recorder, they found stone columns on the sea floor. Does not this indicate that a continuation of Callao should be sought out in the Pacific?

p The Andes area is one of the most unstable regions of the globe. Earthquakes are frequent there for the Andes are still continuing to rise. The biggest and strongest disturbance of the earth’s crust ever recorded by modern instruments occurred in that region on May 22, 1960. Starting in the ocean, not far from Valdivia, Chile, the earthquake reduced a large number of towns and cities along the Pacific coast of South America to ruins. Enormous tidal waves crossed the entire Pacific. Subterranean shocks, landslides and volcanic eruptions devastated a territory larger than Great Britain. In such a seismic 69 zone it is quite possible for entire cities to sink to the bottom of the ocean.

p Oceanographers and geologists say that part of the coast in the region of Callao sank beneath the waves comparatively recently, deepening the Milne-Edwards Basin by 200 metres. When did this take place? Archeologists, rather than geologists, may be able to answer this question after they investigate the underwater ruins near Callao.

As to the mysterious city spotted at a depth of 6,000 feet, Robert Menzis dreams of studying it with the help of a small submarine, since it cannot be reached by divers. If there really is a city there and not just a chance accumulation of rocks and stones this will be, says Menzis, one of the most thrilling discoveries of the 20th century.