| We first went to visit the Qenko monument in the pale moonlight. Qenko looked
like someone took a 600 ton rock, plopped it in the middle of plateau, and carved a
tunnel straight through the solid rock. On top, numerous altars and channels were
carved into it. Upon exploring the cave, my mind began its first series of stomach
twisting, mind bending, mentally headache causing thought processes. How this
was done without even basic modern technology, let alone steel tools was mind
boggling. Inside of the rock were smooth bore walls and altars, as well as an area
that looked like a kitchen and a bathroom. Right angles from windows and cubby
holes were carved out of the dense rock.
The rock itself is Andesite, which is a type of dense, hard, volcanic stone. The
Andes are full of Andesite, considering that the Ring of Fire runs alongside the vast
mountain range. The Incans had no iron tools, just copper alloy, or bronze tools.
Strong, carbonized steel is necessary to do some basic stone work. If it was done
with rocks, which was the prevalent theory on much of the older constructions, then
how did they manage to cut straight angles into the stone? Cutting and forming
sharp angles outside the stone is one thing, but cutting into it? On the outside
was a ridiculously huge 200 ton pointed stone, also planted with an Incan wall
surrounding it. Ernesto told me that Qenko wasn’t well known to most tourists,
because no one ever figured out how the thing was built, or what it really was for.
What he did notice was that on the solstices of the year, there was a slit through the
rock that was precisely 30 degrees off the moon, which would be compensated if
the earth was rotated 30 degrees to put the rock in its place to match the solstices.
It was a real mystery.
Ernesto then asked me, the present scientist and engineer, how it was possible.
I simply said, “I don’t know.” Funny those three words, “I don’t know.” It wasn’t
until I uttered those three humbling words, “I don’t know,” that I really understood
what it was that irked Ernesto and Michelle about science, and for that matter, the
western approach to science.
The problem is humility. To be humble is to be able to suck it up, and say,
“You know, I haven’t a single clue.” For me personally, I don’t like being lied to.
Science won’t lie to you, because that is just the quest for truth in nature. The
problem is the human aspect of science. When you ask a scientist something, you
expect an answer. The problem is that option D, “I don’t know,” is missing from
the vocabulary. We had this option as children, when we were all natural born
scientists.
Kids are great. They’re totally open minded, unbiased, honest, they ask tons of
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