Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials

by Erich von Däniken, Giorgio Tsoukalos (Foreword by), Nicholas Quaintmere (Translator)

Overview

Bestselling author Erich von Däniken delves into the mysteries of the Mayan civilization and when the extraterrestrial will return. Includes a Foreword by Giorgio Tsoukalos.

High up in the Bolivian Andes-4,000 meters above sea level-lies Puma punku, an ancient ruined city that simply could never have been constructed by its Stone Age inhabitants. "Something here really stinks to high heaven," writes Erich von Daniken.

"In Twilight of the Gods," says von Daniken, "I document precisely what it was that left the first visitors breathless as they stood before the mighty stone blocks some 400 years ago. I will show you what archeologists discovered hundreds of years ago and demonstrate how much has been destroyed over the centuries. Intentionally.

"I will also prove that Puma punku was not built by any Stone Age people.

"And in December 2012, the gods will return from their long journey and appear again here on Earth. At least that is what the Mayan calendar would have us believe.

"The so-called gods—the extraterrestrials—will come again. We're headed for a 'god shock' of major proportions.

"But doesn't anyone with half a brain know that interstellar travel is simply impossible because of the sheer distances involved? And that extraterrestrials would never look like us?

"Well, dear readers, I destroy these preconceptions. Systematically. One bit at a time."

In his own inimitable way, Erich von Daniken picks these preconceptions and prejudices apart with a clarity no other author could manage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781601631411
Publisher:	Red Wheel/Weiser
Publication date:	07/29/2010
Series:	Erich von Daniken Library
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	409,222
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Erich von Däniken is arguably the most widely read and most-copied nonfiction author in the world. He published his first (and best-known) book, Chariots of the Gods, in 1968. The worldwide best seller was followed by 40 more books, including the recent best sellers Twilight of the Gods, History Is Wrong, Evidence of the Gods, Remnants of the Gods, and Odyssey of the Gods (all published by New Page Books). His works have been translated into 28 languages and have sold more than 65 million copies. Several have also been made into films. Von Däniken's ideas have been the inspiration for a wide range of television series, including the History Channel's hit Ancient Aliens. His research organization, the A.A.S.R.A./legendarytimes.com (Archaeology, Astronautics, SETI Research Association), comprises laymen and academics from all walks of life. Internationally, there are about 10,000 members. He lives in Switzerland but is an ever-present figure on the international lecture circuit, traveling more than 100,000 miles a year.

Read an Excerpt

Twilight of The Gods

The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials

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By Erich von Däniken, Jodi Brandon, Nicholas Quaintmere

Career Press

Copyright © 2010 Erich von Däniken
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-5425-7

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CHAPTER 1

A Base Camp for the Gods

What would you say if I told you there is a place 13,000 feet high up in the Andes that, according to ancient Inca traditions, was built in a single night by the gods? A place where huge stone slabs lie strewn around like discarded playing cards on the floor? Stone slabs that have been carefully cut and transported and yet about which the Spanish chroniclers—writing 400 years ago—said that no man could have moved? A place where gigantic blocks of andesite were cut and worked with incredible precision and archeologists expect us to believe that it was Stone Age men that did it? A place in which a calendar was discovered that reaches back 15,000 years into the past? A calendar that even shows the phases of the moon for every day and every hour!

Let me tell you: This place really exists. It's called Tiwanaku, and it lies high in the Bolivian Andes. So why have we never heard of this place? Why hasn't National Geographic or the Discovery Channel produced groundbreaking documentaries about it? Is there some sort of conspiracy going on? Or has this sensational discovery simply gone up in a puff of smoke?

One of the reasons for this deafening silence is a friend of Adolf Hitler and well-known antisemite named Hans Hörbiger, an eccentric of the kind that only recognizes one truth—his own. People like this are never written about—even when they occasionally come up with extremely valid points. So just who was this guy?

Hans Hörbiger was born in 1860 to a well-to-do family in the Tyrol region. He studied engineering at the Technical University in Vienna and after graduating worked initially as a technical draftsman at a factory building steam engines. Eventually he transferred to the Land Company, where he worked as a compressor specialist. In 1894, he devised a new valve system for pumps and compressors. He patented his new invention and licensed it to a number of German and foreign firms. For a while it made him quite a rich man, but much of his fortune was wiped out—first by the hyperinflation of the Twenties and subsequently the Second World War.

As a young engineer, Hörbiger one day observed molten steel flowing over a blanket of snow. It struck him how the snow and earth veritably exploded due to the heat of the steel. It gave him a quite interesting idea: What if the same process were taking place in a kind of eternal struggle throughout the entire universe? Ice and fire—life and death. Hörbiger postulated that throughout the cosmos, huge heavenly bodies would be constantly colliding with mighty chunks of ice and consequently exploding. The resulting debris would form planets and moons. This was the basis of the "World Ice Theory" that Hans Hörbiger published in 1913.

According to this World Ice Theory, our Earth has harbored numerous highly developed cultures that existed in various geological ages—before today's moon even came into existence. These cultures were always destroyed when mighty boulders approached from space and exploded in our atmosphere. The debris that thundered down onto the Earth has caused such catastrophes as the Flood and the downfall of Atlantis. In Hörbiger's opinion, mankind was already highly civilized in the tertiary era. The moon that arose during the tertiary crashed down to Earth, according to Hörbiger, 25,000 years ago, causing all of the lands in the tropics to flood—with the exception of a few high peaks in the Andes and Ethiopia.

Hans Hörbiger was a wrathful prophet indeed! And he certainly had the look for it: He wore his white beard long, and had a permanently fierce expression. On top of that, he had handwriting that was virtually unreadable. Rather egocentrically, he viewed himself as one of the world's great scholars and the only one who proclaimed the truth. Accordingly, he demanded radical recognition from the scientific community of the mid-1920s. His way of thinking was much like Hitler's—and vice versa. In his unholy zeal, Hörbiger tolerated no opposition, damning the mathematical and astrophysical knowledge of the times as worthless lies.

Hitler and Hörbiger

In the scientific and technology-fixated world of pre-war Germany, Hans Hörbiger blazed his trail with a mixture of dogmatism, brute force, and alleged enlightenment. Together with his students, he began agitating among the circles of the intelligentsia. Lacking any sort of scruples and utterly immune to criticism, he invested some of his not-insubstantial wealth to set up a movement that was made up of paying members and also had its own small elite troop unit. Adherents plastered the walls of universities and sports stadiums with posters, and handbills were distributed by the thousand. Lectures held by astronomers who disagreed with Hörbiger's opinions were disrupted with boos and ironic laughter, and professors were badgered on the streets. Hörbiger wrote to well-known engineers and astronomers: "Either you must learn to believe in me, or I must treat you as my enemy."

The Hörbiger movement published a total of three extensive reference works and 40 further books aimed at a wider audience. Not only that, there were countless pamphlets and brochures. Their monthly magazine, Der Schlüssel zum Weltgeschehen (The Key to World Events), achieved a circulation of 100,000 copies.

Hitler believed in Hörbiger and supported him publicly. They also met many times. Hitler listened avidly to Hörbiger's lectures, even though the irascible Hörbiger wouldn't allow even the Führer to interrupt. In one of the pamphlets the group published at the time, one can read: "One Austrian, Hitler, banished the Jewish politicians. A second Austrian, Hörbiger, will banish the Jewish scientists too!"

Luis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, two great French thinkers and journalists, wrote about Hörbiger's teachings:

Hörbiger claims that he can reveal the truths about our planet's earliest history as well as its distant future. He throws all current theories on the history of cultures, the appearance and development of mankind and his societies simply out of the window. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago, he maintains, there already existed god-like peoples, giants and highly developed cultures ... the entire universe is undergoing a kind of uniform phase of development; it is a living organism in which every part exerts an influence on every other part. The quest of mankind is linked to the quest of the stars; everything that happens in the cosmos is reflected in events on the Earth, and vice versa.

But what has all this got to do with the highlands of Bolivia and mysterious ruined city of Tiwanaku?

The answer is that one of Hörbiger's followers was an archaeologist, a certain Dr. Edmund Kiss, who spent nine years carrying out research in the highlands of the Andes. There, in Tiwanaku, a monolithic gateway had been discovered—what is today known as the "Gateway of the Sun." For Edmund Kiss, the engravings on this sun gate represented some kind of calendar. It was possible, he claimed, to read the solstices, the equinoxes, every day of the year, the position of the moon for every hour—and all of this data even took into account the rotation of the Earth! "The people that invented this calendar belonged to a higher civilization than ours," insisted Kiss. According to his calculations, Tiwanaku was erected around 27,000 years before Christ's birth. This calendar, he maintained, was engraved in the stone by astronomers from the tertiary period and provides us with "incontrovertible, scientific evidence."

Indeed, Hörbiger's followers actually did find evidence—in and around Tiwanaku—of some kind of global disaster. For instance, the remains of a large harbor, sea sediments at an altitude of 2.5 miles, volcanic ash mixed in with the mud from a flood of biblical proportions, and even fragments of bones from alleged giants. Not only that, all of these things originated from the time when our previous moon allegedly exploded, initially causing a ring of debris to form around the Earth that subsequently rained down catastrophically upon our planet. And let us not forget that—at least according to Hörbiger—this was not the first time. There had been many previous moons and many catastrophes. Hörbiger worked out that the amount of time that had elapsed during which the Earth was not orbited by any moon at all was 138,000 years. During that time, giant kings apparently reigned over the Earth. Then, around 14,000 years ago, the Earth captured our present moon and yet another catastrophe rolled over our mistreated globe: "From the north and the south, the seas flooded into the middle regions of the Earth; and in the north, on the plateaus that the newly captured moon had laid bare, the ice ages began."

But has Hörbiger's World Ice Theory been completely refuted? Not quite, because giants did live on the Earth in days gone by—at least according to ancient records. But for now, let me tell you what I actually know on the subject.

Giants Roam the Earth

In Christianity's most holy book, the Bible, giants are mentioned as early as the Book of Genesis (Genesis 6:4): "There were giants on the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them: the same became mighty men, who were of old, men of renown."

In the fifth book of the Pentateuch there is even mention of a mighty sarcophagus: "For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath ofthe children of Ammon? Nine cubits was the length of it, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man" (Deuteronomy 3:11). (The Hebrew cubit was equivalent to 19 inches.) The same book mentions "a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim" who God plans to destroy with a "consuming fire" (Deuteronomy, Chapters 2 & 3).

And we've all heard of the famous struggle between David and Goliath. In the Bible, it is described by the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel, Chapters 4–7):

And there went out a champion from the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span ... and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass ... and the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron...."

All but a very few of the gigantic "Anakites" were driven out by Joshua: "No Anakites were left in the land of the Israelites; only in Gaza, in Gath and Ashdod did any remain" (Joshua 11:22) and "In earlier times the name of Hebron had been Kiriath-arba, named after Arba, the greatest of the Anakim" (Joshua 15).

In the first Book of Chronicles, the reader can marvel at the story of how the last giant was finally killed:

... at which time Sibbechai the Hushathite slew Sippai, that was of the children of the giant ... a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six on each hand, and six on each foot: and he also was the son of the giant. (Chapter 8) ... these were born to the giant in Gath; and they fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants. (1 Chronocles 4 ff.)

Of course, the Bible is not the only source that confirms the existence of giants in previous ages. In the ancient texts on the legends of the Jews you can read: "There were the 'Emim' or the terrible ones, then the 'Rephaim' or giants, and also the 'Giborim' or the violent ones ..."

And giants are also mentioned in the 14th chapter of the book of the antediluvian prophet Enoch, one of the apocrypha. Here, the "Most High" reproaches his "fallen guardians of heaven": "Wherefore have ye left the high, holy, and eternal heaven, and lain with women, and defiled yourselves with the daughters of men and taken to yourselves wives, and done like the children of earth, and begotten giants (as your) sons?"

In the Greek saga "The Argonautica," giants are mentioned frequently. Here's an example: On the Kapidag Peninsular, the Argonauts unwittingly climb a mountain to get a better view of their position. Heracles and a few men remain on board to guard the Argo. Suddenly, they are attacked by giants. But the monsters are unaware of Heracles who shoots and kills several of them from a distance with his arrows. "Their bodies have three pairs of nerved hands, like paws. The first pair hangs from their gnarled shoulders, the second and third pairs nestle up against their misbegotten hips...."

These monsters crop up in many of the classic Greek sagas and legends. For instance, in Homer's Odyssey, when the hero battles against a giant on the Island of the Cyclops and burns out his only eye. Nowadays, walls made of gigantic stone blocks are known as cyclops walls.

Monsters of varying kinds turn up in the Gilgamesh epic that was unearthed in Nineveh (in modern-day Iraq). The ancient clay tablets were part of the library of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal. The story tells how Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu climb the mountain of the gods together. Shortly before they reach their goal, they are confronted by a terrifying being called Humbaba. Humbaba has paws like a lion, his body is covered with iron scales, and his feet are armed with claws. The two brothers in arms shoot arrows at the monster and fling their throw-sticks, but everything simply bounces off. The "Park of the Gods" too is guarded by dreadful creatures. Namely, gigantic "scorpion-beings ... Trembling terror they inspire, the sight of them is death, their frightening aura sweeps over the mountains." These monsters cannot be any ordinary creatures: They can talk and even give the two friends a stern warning.

The Sumerologist Professor Samuel Kramer even translated a passage from one of the cuneiform tablets in which a rape leads to the birth of a giant. Enlil impregnates Ninlil. She rejects his advances, but that doesn't stop Enlil from forcing her to his will: "... my vagina is too small. She does not understand coitus. My lips are too small...."

You can also read about primitive giants in the Popol Vuh of the K'iche' Maya. They raged among mankind until the god Ah Mucenab unleashed a devastating inferno to wipe them out. Some survived and "wandered around lost in the dingy twilight. When they came across men there were desperate skirmishes."

The Book of the Eskimos puts it succinctly: "In the old days there were giants on the Earth."

To be honest, I could go on all day this way. There are quotes about giants in practically all of the ancient texts—regardless of which peoples compiled them. But humor me, and let me give you two more examples, as they are more precise than most of the popular legends. In the venerable book of the Ethiopian kings, the Kebra Negast, chapter 100 tells the following:

And the daughters of Cain with whom the angels had coupled became with child, but were unable to bring forth their children, and they died. And some of the children who were in their wombs died, and some came forth; having split open the bellies of their mothers ...and when they grew up and into manhood they became giants....

The most unfathomable statement, however, can be found in the apocryphal Book of Baruch. Baruch actually states the number of giants who are said to have lived before the Flood: "God caused the deluge upon earth, and destroyed all flesh, and four hundred and nine thousand giants." It remains a mystery as to where the venerable author got his figures from.

The allusions to giants in the ancient traditions are many and easy to find—for those who take the trouble to look. The difficulty is finding actual proof in terms of hard facts. Admittedly, many scientists have claimed to have made finds of giant bones or tools that could only have been made and used by giants, but they all remain controversial. For instance, German paleontologists Gustav von Koenigswald (1902–1982) and Franz Weidenreich (1873–1948) discovered several giant bones in apothecary shops in Hong Kong and China. Weidenreich even lectured on the subject to the American Ethnological Society in 1944.

Hard Facts

Professor Denis Saurat, the renowned director of the Centre International d'Etudes Françaises in Nice, found hand axes weighing 8.4 pounds a little less than 4 miles south of Safita in Syria. And in Ain Fritissa in Eastern Morocco, he discovered some weighing 9.3 pounds (12.6 inches long and 8.7 inches wide)! In his expert opinion, axes of this size would only be suitable for use by giants. Saurat supports the former existence of giants and even claimed that they could be responsible for the unexplained dolmens and huge menhirs that can be found throughout Europe. He also thought that it would account for the superhuman power required to build the cyclops walls that are dotted around the Mediterranean area. Bones from oversized early men were discovered as early as 1936 by German anthropologist L. Kohn-Larsen by Lake Eyasi in Tanzania. He even gave them a scientific name: Meganthropus africanus. Similar finds were made in Java (Meganthropus palaeojavanicus). The former delegate of the French Prehistoric Society, Dr. Louis Burkhalter, speaking in an article that appeared in the 1950 Revue du Musée de Beyrouth in Beirut, fully supported these bone findings: "I would like to make clear that the existence of giant humanoids in the Acheulean Epoch must be considered to be a scientifically proven fact."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Twilight of The Gods by Erich von Däniken, Jodi Brandon, Nicholas Quaintmere. Copyright © 2010 Erich von Däniken. Excerpted by permission of Career Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword by Giorgio A. Tsoukalos,
Preface,
Chapter 1: A Base Camp for the Gods,
Chapter 2: Nothing New Under the Sun,
Chapter 3: Scientific? Scientific!,
Chapter 4: The Return of the Gods,
Chapter 5: The Eternal Intelligence,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,
About the Author,

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