Located near the southern shores of Lake Titicaca at an altitude of 12,630 feet on the high plateau of the Altiplano in southwestern Bolivia, the pre-Columbian archaeological site called Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) is one of the largest and oldest sites in South America. Situated about fifteen miles south of Lake Titicaca lie the remains of Tiwanaku and Puma Punco (“Door of the Puma”), the site of a technologically advanced culture considered by some archaeologists to be the oldest and most important ruins in the
Americas, if not the world. Although some uninformed scholars have attributed the buildings of Tiwanaku to the Incas, it has now been established that the city was already in ruins when the first Incas came upon the scene.
One of the most significant Andean civilizations, Tiwanaku influence extended into present-day Peru and Chile. Dominating the ruins are the Akapana pyramid and a semi-subterranean temple with carved images of human heads. Nearby Kalasasaya is an open temple with stone monoliths and the huge Gate of the Sun arch. The Museo del Sitio de Tiwanaku displays artifacts excavated from the site.
In 1540 the Spanish conquistador and chronicler of Peru, Pedro Cieza de León, author of the four-volume Crónicas del Perú, visited the area and his description of the statues and monoliths compares very closely to what we see today. The site is 800 feet above the present level of Lake Titicaca, and most archaeologists agree that in the distant past Tiahuanaco was a flourishing port at the edge of the sea or lake, which means that the water has receded almost 12 miles and has dropped about 800 feet since then.
The lake has been shrinking over the years, mainly due to evaporation, since no rivers flow from it. Its present fauna (including a species of sea horse), a nearby salt-water lake, and the angle of an ancient shore-line have led scientists to consider that the lake may have once been attached to the sea, following which it was raised to its present elevation.
The Lake today has as salinity level of 5.5 parts per 1,000 compared to other lakes that have a zero to 0.5 parts per thousand. As an example, each of the Great Lakes is between 0.05 to 0.063, and Earth’s ocean has an average of 3.5 parts per thousand.
The Tiwanaku were unique in its sculpture style of stone construction, with mostly square heads for its statuary, and with a helmet-style covering, including square eyes and a rectangular mouth.
The stone works at the ruins consist of such structures as the Gate of the Sun, a 15-ton monolithic portal carved from a single block of Andesite granite weighing 15 tons, now broken right down the center. It now stands in the northwest corner of the Kalasasaya, although it was found fallen and completely covered in mud elsewhere on the site.
There are also the stone steps of the Kalasasaya, each of which is a rectangular block of stone about 30 feet wide, with the so-called giant idols about 23 feet tall, and are representatives of unusual looking beings with typical Tiwanaku head and trace. There are also enormous monolithic stone blocks, many of which appear to have been cast rather than carved.
Puma Puncu, which is about one mile distant from the principal part of the Tiwanaku ruins, has gigantic stones that are bluish-gray in color and appear to have been somehow machined, with a metallic ring when tapped by a rock. A reddish rust or oxidation covers many of the enormous stones, which probably have not been moved since they fell thousands of years ago.
On the other hand, Archaeologists speculate that the stones were dressed, but never erected, in some way the final construction for which they were intended was interrupted. However, it is just as reasonable to think that the work was completed and then knocked down by some catastrophe, such as the volcanic eruption of the Andes mountain chain.
It is interesting to observe the archaeological excavation work, which is under way at the site. Some remains are found six feet below the surface, yet 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 that depth.
At the same time, legends have persisted over the centuries that stone structures lie beneath the surface of Lake Titicaca, much the same as can be found on the lake's shore. In fact, the Indians of that region have recounted this tradition for years, but there has never been confirmation of such until recently. The French underwater explorer, Jacques Cousteau and his crew and equipment there to explore the lake and search for evidence of the claimed underwater construction.
Although severely hampered in their activities by the extreme altitude, the divers spent many days searching the lake bottom, in the vicinity of the islands of the Sun and Moon, but found nothing man-made. Cousteau concluded the legends were a myth.
However, in November 1980, the well-known Bolivian author and scholar of pre-Columbian cultures, Hugo Boero Rojo, announced the finding of archaeological ruins beneath Lake Titicaca about 15 to 20 meters below the surface off the coast of Puerto Acosta, a Bolivian port village near the Peruvian frontier on the northeast edge of the lake (Hugo Boero Rojo, Discovering Tiwanaku, Los Amigos del Libro Publishers, University of Virginia, May 22, 2008).
Rojo and two Puerto Rican cinematographers, Ivan and Alex Irrizarry, were able to locate the ruins after extensive exploration of the lake bottom in the area, as they were involved in filming a documentary on the nearby Indians. Their spectacular discovery of the ruins of a mysterious underwater temple, thought to be at least 1500 years old, is believed to have been built by the Tiwanaku culture. The underwater structure is about 656 feet by 164 feet, more than twice the size of a football field. More than 200 dives were made in order to record the ruins on film, that also uncovered a terrace for crops, a long road, and a 2625-foot-long wall under the surface. 10,000 priceless artifacts were also discovered at the bottom of the abyss, including a variety of ceramics, metal objects, cooking utensils, and human and animal remains, much of it dated to earlier than 300 AD (Hugo Boero rojo, Boliiva Magica, Editorial Vertiente Publishers, La Paz, 1993).
Regarding the discovery, Rojo stated, "We can now say that the existence of pre-Columbian constructions under the waters of Lake Titicaca is no longer a mere supposition or science-fiction, but a real fact. The remnants found show the existence of old civilizations that greatly antecede the Spanish colonization. We have found 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."
Polish-born Bolivian archaeologist Arturo Posnansky has concluded that the Tiwanku culture began in the region at about 1600 BC and flourished until at least 1200 AD. His disciple, Professor Hans Schindler-Bellamy, of Vienna believed Tiahuanaco to have reached back 12,000 years before the present era, although a more conservative Peruvian archaeologist (Hans Schindler Bellamy, The Calendar of Tiahuanaco, Faber and Faber Publishers, London UK, 1956).
What happened to the advanced ancient culture, however, has not yet been determined.
(See the next post, “The Enigmatic Tiahuanaco - Part II,” for answers to this question and many others about Tiwanaku)
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