25 The ‘Candelabra of the Andes’
The ‘Candelabra of the Andes’
A geoglyph (an enormous image drawn on the ground surface) at Pisco Bay, Perú, is often regarded as one of the more mysterious archaeological sites of South America. Often called the Candlestick of the Andes because of its resemblance to a three-branched candlestick, it is incised onto a hillside, enabling it to be seen from as far out to sea as 19 km (12 miles). There are conflicting estimates of its size, ranging from 181 m to 244 m (595 feet to 800 feet), although the smaller is the most popular quoted length, and it is often attributed to the Paracas Culture of the first millennium BCE. The image was built by digging trenches up to a metre deep through the hardened sand surface of the hillside. As well as the principal ‘Candelabra’ image, there are other lines etched into the hill.
Some writers repeat a statement that Conquistadors believed the Candelabra to represent the Holy Trinity, interpreting it as a good omen, although they do not (as usual) give an authority for these comments. The Conquistadors are said to have discovered a huge rope inside the central branch and indications that other cords and ropes had been connected to the other outer two arms; he speculates that they were part of a system of pulleys. The writer Beltrán García is quoted by Robert Charroux (although, typically, without reference) as suggesting that it may have been “a gigantic and precise seismograph, able to register telluric waves and seismic shocks coming not only from Peru, but from all over the planet…” It has also been suggested by Frank Joseph that it resembles jimson (Datura stramomium), a member of the belladonna family sometimes used as an hallucinogenic drug, when smoked or infused in hot water. He suggested that prehistoric inhabitants of the Paracas region travelled north to California to collect the plant (this is the closes area where it grows) and used the geoglyph to help navigate home. This is somewhat far-fetched (compare the image of the ‘Candelabra’ with the image of jimson). Local folklore describes it as a landmark made by early sailors, representing the lightning rod of the god Viracocha; other suggestions about its symbolism include a cactus or the constellation of the Southern Cross. It is still used as a landmark for ships cruising off the peninsula.
The ‘Candelabra’ is certainly enigmatic. This is not evidence that it was produced by a technologically accomplished unknown civilisation, though. Instead, it shows how little we currently understand about both the site and about the context of the pre-Colombian cultures that may were responsible for its construction.
26 The Antelope Springs ‘footprint’
The so-called ‘Meister footprint&rsquo
On 1 June 1968, William J Meister Sr, an amateur fossil hunter from Kearns (Utah, USA) arrived for a holiday in Antelope Springs, about 69 km (43 miles) northwest of Delta (Utah, USA). On their third day there, Meister and his family went out searching for trilobite fossils. One fossil stood out as it was not simply a trilobite. It was formed in Middle Cambrian Wheeler Shale, dated to 505 to 590 million years ago. It contained the impression of what resembled the sole of a shoe, about 260 mm (10¼ inches) long, 89 mm (3½ inches) wide at its widest point and 76 mm (3 inches) wide at the ‘heel’, which was depressed 3 mm (1/8 inch) further than the rest of the imprint. Beneath the print were the fossils of two trilobites and Meister thought that this showed that the wearer of the ‘sandals’ had trodden on them, squashing them into the mud on which he (or she) had been walking.
On returning home, he showed the fossil to Melvin A Cook (1911-1989), president of a chemical company in West Jordan (Utah, USA), who urged him to go back to the site to search for more evidence, so in July, he returned with two geologists, Clarence Coombs (c 1910-2004) of Columbia Union College, Tacoma (Maryland, USA), and Maurice Carlisle, who had qualified at the University of Colorado, Boulder (Colorado, USA). They found slabs of mudstone that they concluded had once formed a land surface on which creatures could have walked.
A few weeks later, Clifford Burdick (1894-1992), a geologist and creationist from Tucson (Arizona, USA), discovered what appeared to be footprints of a human child nearby, when he accompanied Maurice Carlisle to the site around 20 July. This time the foot seemed naked. Although an (unnamed) palaeontologist dismissed the find as not of animal origin – meaning that it was not a print of any creature, human or otherwise – Burdick continued to believe in its human origin. In August, Dean Bitter, a teacher from Salt Lake City (Utah, USA), discovered two more sandal prints.
The trilobite fossil
There are the usual problems: whilst there are undoubted resemblances between the shape of the print and that of a shoe sole, part of the imprint is missing. Furthermore, if the imprint really is of a shoe worn by a (presumably air-breathing) human, we have to explain the presence of trilobites, a marine creature. This would have to be not the footprint of a shoe-wearing being walking along a shallow stream, but of one walking on the sea bed. Worse, there is no trace of pressure exerted by the supposed wearer of the shoe upon the trilobite (despite the alleged compaction of the sand grains) and the supposed heel is formed by a crack that runs across the whole slab, continuing beyond the ‘footprint’. Similar patterns have been found throughout the Wheeler formation, while concentric oval shapes of varying colour, sometimes with a stepped profile, are what were interpreted by Burdick and Bitter as in situ footprints or sandal prints. Moreover, it is telling that Meister and Bitter’s discoveries were announced in The Creation Research Society Quarterly by Melvin A Cook, while Burdick’s appeared in The Bible-Science Newsletter of August/September 1969: Clifford Burdick was not simply a geologist, but a well known creationist whose work aimed at demonstrating a young earth. A detailed examination of the find can be found on the TalkOrigins website.