Fair Gods and Stone Faces

Fülszöveg

When Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico City in
1519 he was royally welcomed by Montezuma.
The Indians believed Cortés was Quetzalcoatl,
their fair, bearded god who, years before, had
disappeared, promising to return. It has since
been a mystery how a dark-skinned, beardless
people, supposedly isolated from the ancient
world since the dawn of time, should worship
a fair-skinned, bearded deity.
This fascinating piece of archaeological de-
tective work sets forth a new and provocative
theory on the origin of Mexican and Central
and South American civilizations: These Indian
cultures, the author suggests, did not spring up
independently but as a result of pre-Columbian
transatlantic contact between the Old World
and the New. The legend of Quetzalcoatl was
cherished by the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas,
and, more importantly, by earlier peoples from
whom these more publicized latecomers drew
much of their culture. Where the legend once
flourished, archaeologists have... Tovább

Fülszöveg

When Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico City in
1519 he was royally welcomed by Montezuma.
The Indians believed Cortés was Quetzalcoatl,
their fair, bearded god who, years before, had
disappeared, promising to return. It has since
been a mystery how a dark-skinned, beardless
people, supposedly isolated from the ancient
world since the dawn of time, should worship
a fair-skinned, bearded deity.
This fascinating piece of archaeological de-
tective work sets forth a new and provocative
theory on the origin of Mexican and Central
and South American civilizations: These Indian
cultures, the author suggests, did not spring up
independently but as a result of pre-Columbian
transatlantic contact between the Old World
and the New. The legend of Quetzalcoatl was
cherished by the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas,
and, more importantly, by earlier peoples from
whom these more publicized latecomers drew
much of their culture. Where the legend once
flourished, archaeologists have unearthed colos-
sal stone negroid heads; reliefs depicting priests
with Semitic features; indications of snake, sun,
and cat cults; and objects inscribed in a man-
ner supposed to have been devised by the
Mayas, but found by Carbon-14 tests to ante-
date the Maya epoch.
All these disparate elements were combined
in one ancient civilization—the Phoenician.
Did some of these seafaring people cross the
Atlantic a millenium or two before Columbus,
bringing with them a culture whose manifesta-
tions have baffled generations of scholars? Im-
peccably researched, written with verve and
objectivity, illustrated with over 100 photo-
graphs, drawings, and maps, Fair Gods and
Stone Faces is an exciting key to this intriguing
riddle of the New World. Vissza