Rodadero: The Roman Aqueduct in Peru that Wasn't

Lost Worlds of Ancient America is making me angry, and I suppose it’s all to the good. I didn’t want to review it chapter by chapter, but it seems that somebody has to do the research to show why convicted sexual predator and neo-Nazi Frank Joseph and his Mormon hyper-diffusionist publisher at Ancient American are corrupting history with their demonstrably untrue claims. So, on to chapter 4.

Chapter 4, by Joseph himself, claims to find Roman influence in Peru, and the chapter is just a flat-out lie. It begins with discussion of Roman coins that I have already gone over and don’t need to review again. Then Joseph drops this whopper:

An Incan aqueduct at Rodadero, Peru does employ “two tiers of rounded, stone arches often referred to as ‘true arches’,” according to Dr. [Gunnar] Thompson. “This style of architecture was a characteristic of the ancient Mediterranean. Consequently, the Rodadero aqueduct makes a strong argument for Greco-Roman cultural diffusion.”

Thompson is a “time detective” and extreme diffusionist with highly dubious ideas based on the principle that if two things look alike they must be related.

The Inca, of course, lived a thousand years after the fall of Rome. But even that isn’t the problem here.

THE AQUEDUCT WAS BUILT IN MODERN TIMES. E. G. Squier--himself a believer in a lost race in the Americas--wrote in Harper’s Magazine in 1868 (repeated in his 1877 book Peru) of his expedition crossing the “modern aqueduct built on arches” that the Peruvian government had built to abut “ancient Inca work” on the side of the hill. The genuine nearby Inca acequias (i.e. canals) are not built on arches and do not look Spanish or Greco-Roman. Joseph appears to have confused an acequia for an aqueduct because the words look similar.

The Tullamayo Aqueduct as it appeared in Harper's in 1868. Note genuine Inca wall to the left and much different modern arches added later at right.

We’re talking quality research here, folks.

The rest of Joseph’s “evidence” for Romans in Peru amounts to art that he thinks looks like Mediterranean art. A Moche fox figurine holding a shield with a design reminiscent of a swastika (neo-Nazi Joseph’s favored symbol) is said to be Greco-Roman simply because the art vaguely resembles Greek black-figure pottery of 700 years earlier. The figurine dates to the Early Intermediate Period (200-600 CE), which Joseph does not dispute, making it all the weirder that he then claims it as proof of Roman voyages to the New World. He argues that the fox was the symbol of Diana, the Roman moon goddess, whose brother Apollo’s symbol was the swastika. Therefore, the fox figurine shows a Roman cult influence. The Romans were Christians for three-fourths of the Early Intermediate Period.

Joseph is also making up his information about the Roman gods and their symbols. The fox is not an especially sacred animal to Diana. The animal is only mentioned once in passing in From Artemis to Diana: The Goddess of Man and Beast, a major work on the goddess. Her sacred animals were deer, bears, and boars—not foxes.

Apollo is not especially associated with the swastika either. A few nineteenth century works made this connection, and Apollo is in rare instances depicted with a swastika in Greek art, but it was neither widespread nor part of his sacred mythology. Swastikas were used in Greek and Roman designs, but while the Greeks sometimes placed it on Apollo, the Romans the used it mostly as a decorative motif in mosaics and occasionally on serving platters. By the late Imperial period, it had been adopted by the Christians.

In no way were the two gods “typically adorned with the” swastika in “Classical era vase painting and statues,” as Joseph claims.

Every part of this article is a fabrication and a lie.