page_title: Fingerprints of the Gods
section_title: Thesis
hierarchical_section_title: Fingerprints of the Gods / Thesis
caption_attribution_description: Quetzalcoatl, as depicted in the Codex Magliabechiano (16th century).
context_page_description: Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization is a 1995 pseudoarcheology book by Graham Hancock, in which the author echoes 19th-century writer Ignatius Donnelly, author of Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, in contending that an enigmatic, ancient, advanced civilization existed in prehistory, one which served as the common progenitor civilisation to all subsequent known ancient historical ones. The author proposes that sometime around the end of the last Ice Age this civilisation ended in cataclysm, but passed on to its inheritors profound knowledge of such things as astronomy, architecture, and mathematics.
  Hancock's views are based on the idea that mainstream interpretations of archaeological evidence are flawed or incomplete.
  The book was followed by Magicians of the Gods.
context_section_description: Hancock argues for a civilisation centred on Antarctica (which lay farther from the South Pole than today) that supposedly left evidence (the "fingerprints" of the title) in Ancient Egypt and American civilisations such as the Olmec, Aztec and Maya. 
  Hancock discusses:
  creation myths describing deities like:
  Osiris, Thoth (Egypt)
  Quetzalcoatl (Mesoamerica)
  Viracocha (Andes)
  a range of archaeological sites such as Tiwanaku in Bolivia. Tiwanaku was a planned city which, according to UNESCO, reached its peak between 400 AD. and 900 AD, but is assigned an earlier date by Hancock.  Tiwanaku is also featured in other works of "alternative archaeology", including Von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? Von Däniken suggested that it provides evidence of an extraterrestrial civilisation, whereas Hancock does not argue for "ancient astronauts"; he proposes Atlantis as the origin of a lost civilisation.
  Hancock suggests that in 10,450 BC, a major pole shift took place. Before then, Antarctica lay farther from the South Pole than today, and after then, it shifted to its present location. The pole-shift hypothesis hinges on Charles Hapgood's theory of Earth Crustal Displacement. Hapgood had a fascination with the story of Atlantis and suggested that crustal displacement may have caused its destruction.  His theories have few supporters in the geological community compared to the more widely accepted model of plate tectonics, but they were adopted by Rose and Rand Flem-Ath's When the Sky Fell: in Search of Atlantis (1995/2009) in which they expand the evidence for Charles Hapgood's theory of earth-crust displacement and propose Antarctica as the site of Atlantis.
caption: The Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl as depicted in the Codex Magliabechiano.
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