Fifteen years ago, or so, I visited Mesa Verde with my then boyfriend. We had a wonderful time exploring the Anasazi-type dwellings built into the dramatic sandstone cliffsides.

Looking at the keyhole-shaped windows, I came up with the theory that the indigenous people had learned how to build folding gliders from yucca fiber, and had launched themselves from those windows into the thermals, travelling from site to site that way. I was skeptical that their complex social infrastructure could have been sustained by the tiny handgrips and footholds that are the only remaining indication of how they might have gotten from the mesa above to their dwelings.

Now there's a guy who wrote a book to pursue the myth of the Birdmen in Peru.

Machu Picchu, the ancient Peruvian fortress city unknown to the modern world before 1911, is just chock-full of mysterious strangers. But enlightenment approaches. Anyone can plainly see that the city's Temple of the Condor is ''a shrine dedicated to flight.'' What's more, the whole city is laid out in the shape of a condor: '' 'It's a condor!' I shouted. 'Machu Picchu's a gigantic condor!' '' Fortunately, a levelheaded Peruvian stranger is present with counsel. ''The condor links us to heaven. . . . We all have wings,'' he says, ''but we have forgotten how to use them.''

Apparently the upshot is that it's all hallucigen-induced sensation and imagery.

I like my version better.

5:04:47 PM    please comment []