Tiahuanaco

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Tiahuanaco

• Early Civilization in the Andes

M. Anderson, 2006
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Contents

• Introduction Bolivian Andes
• And the Altiplano
• Background The People
• Lake Titicacca
• And the Tiahuanaco Civilizations

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Introduction
Bolivia Andes to Amazon

• Bolivia is slightly smaller than Alaska and
  has awesome and diverse geography.
• From the Andes in the West to the Amazon in
  the East.

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Andes

• The Andes are actually a series of parallel
  ropes, or tall mountain chains, with high
  plateaus in between.
• More than 40 Andean mountains are higher than Mt.
  McKinley, the highest peak in North America.

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Bolivia Altiplano

• The Altiplano, high in the Andes, is the most
  densely populated region of the country, but is
  by no means, crowded.
• Altiplano means high plain.

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Altiplano

• This great plateau of high open grasslands is
  where the great lakes are located and where
  alpaca and llamas have been domesticated for
  centuries.

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Altiplano

• The great Altiplano is the largest expanse of
  arable land in the Andes.
• It is enclosed by the Central and Oriental ranges
  and has an elevation of 12,000 to 14,000.
• It extends from southern Bolivia into southern
  Peru, northwestern Argentina and N. Chile.
• It has been inhabited for thousands of years,
  its culture was shaped by two main groups of
  people the Tiahunanaco of Bolivia and the Inca
  of Peru.

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Aymara on the Altiplano

• Cultural interchanges between early Andean people
  occurred mainly through peaceful trade and
  exchange.
• The Altiplano is inhabited by the native Aymara
  Indians who grow mainly potatoes, grains and
  fodder for their livestock.

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Indians

• Most Aymara Indians do not speak Spanish, even
  after over 400 years of Spanish occupation.
• They learn only what they have to learn to get
  buy.

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Religion

• A fundamental belief among the Aymara are the
  Mountain Gods, the Apus and the Achachilas.
• The Apus mountain spirits provide protection for
  travelers and are associated with the
  snow-covered peaks.
• The Achachilas are the spirits in the high
  mountains who are the ancestors of the people and
  look after their native group (tribe) and provide
  bounty from the earth.

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Culture

• In La Paz, they are thought to be reincarnated in
  the dogs that await handouts along the Yungas
  Road.
• It is these spirits that ensure sufficient water
  for a bountiful harvest, or to permit a safe
  journey through their ranks.
• When we went to journey on this road, the locals
  whom we stayed with, packed food for the dogs in
  with our lunch.

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Altiplano

• On the Altiplano above La Paz, the lakes swell
  with the summer rainy period to deluge the
  landscape and livestock often stand knee-deep in
  puddles.
• During the winter the climate is drier and more
  pleasant.

• The high altitude makes the sunshine on the
  Altiplano brilliant, but once the sun dips behind
  the western mountains, the temperature drops
  sharply, and cold winds blow across the plain.

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Lake Titicacca

• Lake Titicacca, the highest navigable lake in the
  world, is a cupped depression in the northern
  part of the Altiplano.
• The Altiplano has a cold, semi-arid climate,
  keeping Lake Titicacca a chilly 52o to 56o F year
  round (brrrrrrr).
• Off to the east of Lake Titicacca is Illampu, a
  massive, steep-sided twin peaked mountain that
  rises to 21,489.

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Lake Titicacca

• The jewel of the Altiplano is the 3,300
  square-mile Lake Titicacca.
• It is a little less than half the size of Lake
  Ontario. 
• It is divided into three distinct basins and
  depths range from 26 feet to more than 900 feet.
  At an elevation of 12,500 feet, it spans the
  border of Bolivia and Peru and is patrolled by
  the Bolivian Navy.

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Lake Titicacca

• According to core samples taken along the lake,
  the climate of this region has varied
  considerably over the past few thousand years.
• Traces of former shoreline reveal that at one
  time, the shores of Lake Titicacca once lapped
  the walls of Tiahunanaco, which is now about 25
  miles away.
• The lake level varies as much as 16 with the
  change of seasons.

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Tiahunanaco

• Located high on the Altiplano (13,000), near the
  Bolivian shore of Lake Titicacca, sits
  Tiahunanaco.
• Tiahunanaco is the remains of a brilliant,
  long-forgotten series of civilizations.
• It was discovered that five cities flourished
  and died at Tiahunanaco, each rising on the site
  of the one that came before.

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Tiahunanaco

• The Spanish believed the city was more the work
  of demons than of men.
• For years, the fishermen of Lake Titicacca told
  of sunken palaces whose roofs they could touch
  when the lake waters were low during occasional
  long dry spells on the Altiplano.

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Lake Titicacca

• In 1967 divers claimed to have seen the ruins,
  but diving at such altitudes was difficult.
• More recently, with the advent of better diving
  and research technology, divers have continued in
  the exploration of Lake Titicacca, and in the
  summer of 2000 announced the discovery of a city
  below the water, complete with roads and ramps.

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Lake Titicacca

• The existence of pre-Columbian constructions
  under the waters of Lake Titicacca is no longer a
  mere supposition, but a real fact. The remnants
  found show the existence of old civilizations
  that greatly precede the Spanish colonization.
• Temples built of huge blocks of stone, with stone
  roads leading to unknown places and flights of
  steps whose bases were lost in the depths of the
  lake amid a thick vegetation of algae were found.
  
• These monumental ruins are probably of Tiahuanaco
  origin.

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Civil Engineering

• These first societies to emerge in the Western
  Hemisphere were not as advanced as contemporary
  Old World societies such as those in Mesopotamia
  and Egypt they lacked pottery, weaving and
  large-scale agriculture, but the structures they
  built nevertheless reveal sophisticated labor
  organization and engineering skills.
• The irrigation technology practiced 2,500 years
  ago by the Tiahuanaco people in test plots near
  modern-day Bolivia's Lake Titicaca, resulted in
  bumper crops--in some cases seven times the
  average yield of land farmed using modern
  techniques--suggest that to this long-lost method
  of constructing raised fields among irrigation
  channels could have allowed more than 100,000
  people to thrive more than a millennium ago in a
  region that now supports approximately 7,000.
  

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Tiahuanaco

• Tiahuanaco was the center of a powerful,
  self-sustaining empire.
• Traditionally it is thought to have been built by
  the predecessors of the Inca over 2,500 years
  ago.
• The roots of the Tiahuanaco capital can be found
  in the early village that was found underlying
  the 1.5-square-mile civic-ceremonial core.
• Excavation is still going on.

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Tiahuanaco

• The small farming village evolved into a regal
  city of multi-terraced platform pyramids, courts
  and urban areas, covering a total 2.31 square
  miles.

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Tiahuanaco

• It is a mysterious ruined city of extremely
  ancient origins.
• Some of the massive structures at this site, like
  the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx in Egypt and
  Baalbek in Lebanon, date from pre-flood times, as
  long ago as 10,500 BC.

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Tiahuanaco

• The actual city was settled by 400 B. C. on the
  Tiahuanaco River, which empties into Lake
  Titicacca 9.3 miles to the north.

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Tiahuanaco

• Tiahuanaco society was self-sustaining, for its
  agricultural, herding, and fishing resource base
  was more than sufficient to support the
  population under its control.
• The Tiahuanaco Empire collapsed between 1000 and
  1100 A. D.

• The walls of the temples and the stone
  monolithic statues and gateways are now void of
  their gold, textiles, and painted surfaces, which
  for centuries had shimmered from afar in the
  bright sunlight.

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Tiahunanaco

• The ruins cover more than 50 acres and suburbs
  surrounding the area have recently been
  discovered.
• Tiahunanaco was built with colossal square stones
  that created forbidding walls, stone steps,
  monumental gateways and terraces.
• Huge statues stare out from crumbled terraces.

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Great Stones

• As there are no rock quarries nearby, scientists
  have matched stones to quarries 60 and 200 miles
  away.
• Blocks of over 100 tons were transported these
  long distances by rafts on water and then dragged
  the rest of the way to the city.

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Great Stones

• While restoring the city, huge staples were found
  between the stones.
• A groove was carve in the edge and molten liquids
  were poured within, which hardened, forming this
  staple.

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Gateway of the Sun

• Whoever built the cities were architects of great
  genus.
• Huge monolithic gateways were erected, carved
  from a single block of volcanic andesite, such as
  the Gateway of the Sun.

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Gateway of the Sun

• The 10 ton Gateway of the Sun is a monolith,
  carved from a single block of Andesite granite.
  It is cracked to the right of center.
• Its upper portion is deeply carved with beautiful
  and intricate designs, including a human figure,
  condors, toxodons, elephants and some symbols.
• Directly in the center of the gate is the
  so-called "Sun-god," Viracocha, with rays
  shooting out from his face in all directions.

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Gateway of the Sun

• Each day of the year the sun rises in a different
  spot along the horizon.
• To measure this movement, the temple was built as
  a giant clock to monitor the progression of the
  sun.
• As the tilt of the Earths axis was different
  thousands of years ago, we can use those same
  astronomical alignments to date the site.

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Gateway of the Sun - Astronomical Links

• Around the turn of the 20th century, Bolivian
  scholar Arthur Broznansky began a fifty year
  study of the ruins of Tiahuanaco.
• Using astronomical information, he concluded that
  the city was constructed more than 17,000 years
  ago, long before any civilization was supposed to
  have existed.
• He considered Tiahuanaco to be the 'Cradle of
  Civilization'.

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Gateway of the Sun

• On the first day of spring the sun rose exactly
  through the center of the archway of the temple.
• Based on the layout of the temple he deduced that
  on the first day of winter and the first day of
  summer the sun should rise over each of the huge
  cornerstones.
• But this is not the case. The position of the sun
  is, for some reason slightly outside the corner
  markers.
• Alignments with the sun was slightly "out of
  true," but lined up perfectly once the skycharts
  were moved back in time.
• The solstice markers are not misaligned. The tilt
  of the Earth has changed over time.

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Just how old is Tiahuanaco?

• Polish-born Bolivian archaeologist Arturo
  Posnansky has concluded that the Tiahuanaco
  culture began in the region at about 1600 B.C.
• He studying the thin layer of lime deposits in
  the stone indicating that they had been
  underwater for a considerable period of time.
• Also, certain parts of the ruins were deeply
  buried in sediments, which indicated that a
  stupendous wave of water had washed over the
  entire area.
• Posnansky suggested the Biblical Flood may have
  been the reason for these deposits.

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Just how old is Tiahuanaco?

• Peruvian legends clearly relate a story of
  world-wide flood in the distant past.
• There is ample physical evidence of a universal
  inundation, with the world-wide deluge described
  in more than a hundred flood-myths.
• Along with Noah's flood were the Babylonian
  Utnapischtim of the Gilgamesh epic, the Sumerian
  Ziusudra, the Persian Jima, the Indian Manu, the
  Maya Coxcox, the Colombian Bochica, the
  Algonkin's Nanabozu, the Crows' Coyote, the Greek
  Deukalion and Pyrrha, the Chinese Noah Kuen, and
  the Polynesian Tangaloa.
• It is evident there was a world-wide deluge
  19,000 years ago.

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Just how old is Tiahuanaco?

• If a flourishing advanced civilization existed on
  the Peruvian Altiplano many thousands of years
  ago and was reached by the flood waters, many
  problems would be solved, such as
• The existence of Tiahuanaco's ruins under 6 feet
  of earth at an elevation of 13,300 feet.
• The presence of stone structures still under the
  lake's waters
• The existence of marine life at an impossible
  altitude would also make sense.
• The depiction of extinct Pleistocene animals,
• The traces of an ancient shoreline
• The paradox of a seaport existing at an altitude
  of 12,500 feet above sea level.

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Just how old is Tiahuanaco?

• There is one solution that can satisfy all of the
  above mysteries regarding the ruins of
  Tiahuanaco.
• There was a geological cataclysm that inaugurated
  the Pleistocene Extinction, which effected the
  entire globe geologically and climatically.
• Thus, if Tiahuanaco was built before the
  Pleistocene Extinction, which occurred at the end
  of the last ice age around 12,000 years ago, then
  the astronomical alignments built into the
  Kalasasaya harmonize with the apparent age of the
  city, and Prof. Posnansky's conclusions seem to
  be correct. Then Tiahuanaco was most likely built
  close to the date of 15,000 BP. ?

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Tiahunanaco

• Many of the treasures of Tiahunanaco were
  pillaged along with stones being removed for use
  in buildings elsewhere (including La Paz).
• The ancient city is a collection of gigantic
  ruins of layer upon layer of previous
  civilizations, which scholars, students and the
  Bolivian people are trying to carefully excavate.

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Steppe Pyramids

• The largest terraced step pyramid of the city,
  the Akapana, was once believed to be a modified
  hill, and has proven to be a massive human
  construction with a base 656 feet square and a
  height of 55.8 feet.
• It is aligned perfectly with the cardinal
  directions.
• Its base is formed of beautifully cut and joined
  facing stone blocks.
• Within the cut- stone retaining walls are six T-
  shaped terraces with vertical stone pillars.

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Step Pyramid
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Steppe Pyramids

• The ruinous state of the pyramid is due to its
  being used as a stone quarry for later buildings
  at La Paz.
• Its interior is honeycombed with shafts in a
  complicated grid pattern, which incorporates a
  system of weirs used to direct water from a tank
  on top, going through a series of levels,and
  finally ending up in a stone canal surrounding
  the pyramid.

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Tiahunanaco - Idol

• In 1932, an archeological team found a giant 24
  high idol that was buried 10 beneath the surface
  of the ground.
• The great stone, known as the Friar, is carved
  with indecipherable symbols and is thought to
  represent a god or high priest from a
  civilization that was established some 2,200
  years ago.

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The Idol

• In the northwest corner stands the Gateway of the
  Sun, and in the southwest corner is "the idol".
• It looks much like the figures on Easter Island.

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Tiahunanaco

• The people of Tiahunanaco have left no written
  records except for grooves on the statues, which
  could be some form of picture writing, but as
  yet, no one knows how to decipher them.

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Residences

• Adjacent to the sunken court, residences of the
  elite were revealed, while under the patio the
  remains of a number of seated individuals,
  believed to have been priests, faced a man with a
  ceramic vessel that displayed a puma-like animal
  sacred to the Tiahuanaco.
• Ritual offerings of llamas and ceramics, as well
  as high-status goods made of copper, silver and
  obsidian were also encountered in this elite
  residential area.
• The cut-stone building foundations supported
  walls of adobe brick, which have been eroded away
  by the yearly torrential rains over the centuries.

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Kalasasaya

• The most important edifice for dating purposes is
  the Kalasasaya ("Place of the Vertical Stones").
• It is built like a stockade with 12 foot high
  columns jutting upward at intervals, each of
  these being carved into human figures.

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Subterranean Temple

• In 1903, a small temple was uncovered, built
  half underground, with walls covered with
  protruding heads carved in blood-red sandstone.
• These stone heads remind us of the bloody cult of
  headhunting.
• Head-shaped ritual vases were also excavated in
  Tiahunanaco.

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Subterranean Temple

• Human skulls polished like ivory were also found
  in the temple and appear to have been used as
  cups for a fermented corn brew (beer).
• Actual shrunken human heads ware found attached
  by a clump of human hair to the belts of mummies
  in ancient Peruvian tombs.

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Subterranean Temple
50
Residences

• Residences of the elite were discovered adjacent
  to the sunken court.
• Under the patio the remains of a number of seated
  individuals, believed to have been priests, faced
  a man with a ceramic vessel that displayed a
  puma-an animal sacred to the Tiahuanaco.
• The cut-stone building foundations supported
  walls of adobe brick, which have been eroded away
  by annual torrential rains over the centuries.

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Tiahunanaco
Obelisks unearthed in the main pyramid.

• Another idol, only 8 tall was found lying beside
  it, however it was carved in a completely
  different style and appears to have a beard.
• This is quite unusual as the original native
  American Indians were almost beardless.

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Incas in Tiahunanaco ?

• From the Indians who lived in the area, the
  Spanish learned that the Incas had been there 100
  or more years before them.
• The Incas had found the city which had apparently
  been destroyed and deserted a long time before
  them.
• The Indians retell the legend that Tiahunanaco
  was build by Giants overnight after a flood, but
  the rays of the sun destroyed them and their
  palaces were reduced to ashes.

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More Mysteries

• It is interesting to observe the archaeological
  excavation work, which is under way at the site.
  At this altitude of 13,300 feet some of the
  remains are found at a level 6 feet below the
  earth's surface.
• The mountain ranges which surround the area are
  not high enough to permit sufficient runoff of
  water or wind erosion to have covered the ruins
  to such a depth.

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The End