Tiwanaku is important not
just because it became the center of a large populous state in the
Alto Plano that built with cut stone over an apparent two thousand
year history, but it is also the location of extraordinary cut
monolithic fitted stones made from andesite hardness 8 and the use of
concrete as well.
The only civilization
able to do this in human prehistory as we understand it was the
Egyptians when they built the Great Pyramid in 2400 BC. Even then
the quality of work shown was over the top. We could accomplish the
same today, but with huge steel handling beds and perhaps jet cutting
tools. Bronze saws with an Emory sand abrasive would find it
challenging.
Measurement appears to
conform to Egyptian standards though so a high standard could well
have been available.
Besides, the Alto Plano
was one region particularly important to the Atlantean Bronze Age
global trading enterprises because it had both tin and copper. Thus
encouraging a large local settlement was sensible.
I would like to see
someone get in there able to address the machining issue. I see a
world of straight edges and no curves at all. This works for
monuments and fitted structure. Yet drilling must be in evidence.
It is also here that we
have evidence that the Alto Plano was originally at sea level. This
certainly would allow the effective transport of the andesite from
forty miles away. Of course all specialists have rejected that
proposition by mostly ignoring it.
However, a natural
corollary of the Pleistocene nonconformity in which the crust shifted
southward thirty degrees initiated with a comet impact on the North
Pole some 12900 years ago is that compression and subsidence occurred
along the movement arc were it crossed the equator. In the Western
Hemisphere this means that the Andes were thrust up an additional
five miles and that the Gulf of Mexico also subsided mostly
submerging the mountain range of Cuba.
For that reason, the one
place on Earth that it may be possible to locate advanced technology
of any kind from before the crustal shift is just where it credibly
has been found. Thus the Alto Plano calls for a full press
archeological investigation with plenty of fresh eyes. Those
incredible shaped monster leggo blocks are not the only out of place
artifacts.
Tiwanaku,
(Spanish: Tiahuanaco and Tiahuanacu)
is an important Pre-Columbian archaeological
site in western Bolivia,
South America. Tiwanaku is recognized by Andean scholars as one of
the most important precursors to the Inca
Empire,
flourishing as the ritual and administrative capital of a major state
power for approximately five hundred years. The ruins of the ancient
city state are near the south-eastern shore of Lake
Titicaca in
the La
Paz Department, Ingavi
Province, Tiwanaku
Municipality,
about 72 km (45 mi) west of La
Paz.
The site was first recorded in written history by Spanish
conquistador and self-acclaimed "first chronicler of the
Indies" Pedro
Cieza de León.
Leon stumbled upon the remains of Tiwanaku in 1549 while searching
for the Inca capital Qullasuyu.[1] Some
have hypothesized that Tiwanaku's modern name is related to
the Aymara term taypiqala,
meaning "stone in the center", alluding to the belief that
it lay at the center of the world.[2] However,
the name by which Tiwanaku was known to its inhabitants may have been
lost, as the people of Tiwanaku had no written language.[3][4]
The
area around Tiwanaku may have been inhabited as early as 1500 BC as a
small agriculturally based village.[5] Most
research, though, is based around the Tiwanaku IV and V periods
between AD 300 and AD 1000, during which Tiwanaku grew significantly
in power. During the time period between 300 BC and AD 300 Tiwanaku
is thought to have been a moral and cosmological center to which many
people made pilgrimages. The ideas of cosmological prestige are the
precursors to Tiwanaku's powerful empire.[1] In
1945, Arthur
Posnansky[6] estimated
that Tiwanaku dated to 15,000 BC using archaeoastronomical
techniques. Later, as a result of the reevaluation of the techniques
that Posnansky used to estimate the age of Tiwanaku, expert
archaeoastronomical archaeologists concluded that they were invalid
as they were a "sorry example of misused archaeoastronomical
evidence."[7]
Tiwanaku's
location between the lake and dry highlands provided key resources of
fish, wild birds, plants, and herding grounds for camelidae,
particularlyllamas.[8] The
Titicaca Basin is the most productive environment in the area with
predictable and abundant rainfall, which the Tiwanaku culture learned
to harness and use in their farming. As one goes further east,
the Altiplano is
an area of very dry arid land.[1] The
high altitude Titicaca
Basin required
the development of a distinctive farming technique known as
"flooded-raised
field"
agriculture (suka kollus). They comprised a significant percentage of
the agriculture in the region, along with irrigated fields, pasture,
terraced fields and qochas (artificial ponds)[1] farming.
Artificially raised planting mounds are separated by shallow canals
filled with water. The canals supply moisture for growing crops, but
they also absorb heat from solar radiation during the day. This heat
is gradually emitted during the bitterly cold nights that often
produce frost, endemic to the region, providing thermal insulation.
Traces of landscape management were also found in the Llanos
de Moxos region
(Amazonian food plains of the Moxos).[9] Over
time, the canals also were used to farm edible fish, and the
resulting canal sludge was dredged for fertilizer. The fields grew to
cover nearly the entire surface of the lake[citation
needed]and
although they were not uniform in size or shape, all had the same
primary function.[9]
Though
labor-intensive, suka kollus produce impressive yields. While
traditional agriculture in the region typically yields 2.4 metric
tons of potatoes per hectare, and modern agriculture (with artificial
fertilizers and pesticides) yields about 14.5 metric tons per
hectare, suka kollu agriculture yields an average of 21 tons per
hectare.[1]
Significantly,
the experimental fields recreated in the 1980s by University
of Chicago´s
Alan Kolata and Oswaldo Rivera[10] suffered
only a 10% decrease in production following a 1988 freeze that killed
70-90% of the rest of the region's production. This kind of
protection against killing frosts in an agrarian civilization is an
invaluable asset. For these reasons, the importance of suka kollus
cannot be overstated.
As
the population grew, occupational niches were created where each
member of the society knew how to do their job and relied on the
elites of the empire to provide all of the commoners with all the
resources that would fulfill their needs. Some occupations include
agriculturists, herders, pastoralists, etc. Along with this
separation of occupations, there was also a hierarchal stratification
within the empire.[11] The
elites of Tiwanaku lived inside four walls that were surrounded by a
moat. This moat, some believe, was to create the image of a sacred
island. Inside the walls there were many images of human origin that
only the elites were privileged to, despite the fact that images
represent the beginning of all humans not only the elite. Commoners
may have only ever entered this structure for ceremonial purposes
since it was home to the holiest of shrines.[1]
Rise and fall of Tiwanaku
The
city and its inhabitants left no written history, and modern local
people know little about the city and its activities. An
archaeologically based theory asserts that around AD 400, Tiwanaku
went from being a locally dominant force to a predatory state.
Tiwanaku expanded its reaches into the Yungas and
brought its culture and way of life to many other cultures
in Peru, Bolivia,
andChile.
However, Tiwanaku was not exclusively a violent culture. In order to
expand its reach, Tiwanaku used politics to create colonies,
negotiate trade agreements (which made the other cultures rather
dependent), and establish state cults.[12] Many
others were drawn into the Tiwanaku empire due to religious beliefs
as Tiwanaku never ceased being a religious center. Force was rarely
necessary for the empire to expand, but on the northern end of the
Basin resistance was present. There is evidence that bases of some
statues were taken from other cultures and carried all the way back
to the capital city of Tiwanaku where the stones were placed in a
subordinate position to the Gods of the Tiwanaku in order to display
the power Tiwanaku held over many.[13]
Among
the times that Tiwanaku expressed violence were dedications made on
top of a building known as the Akipana. Here people were disemboweled
and torn apart shortly after death and laid out for all to see. It is
speculated that this ritual was a form of dedication to the gods.
Research showed that one man who was dedicated was not a native to
the Titicaca
Basin,
leaving room to think that dedications were most likely not of people
originally within the society.[1]
The
community grew to urban proportions between AD 600 and AD 800,
becoming an important regional power in the southern Andes.
According to early estimates, at its maximum extent, the city covered
approximately 6.5 square kilometers, and had between 15,000–30,000
inhabitants.[1] However,
satellite imaging was used recently to map the extent of fossilized
suka kollus across the three primary valleys of Tiwanaku, arriving at
population-carrying capacity estimates of anywhere between 285,000
and 1,482,000 people.[10]
The
empire continued to grow, absorbing cultures rather than eradicating
them. William
H. Isbell states
that "Tiahuanaco underwent a dramatic transformation between AD
600 and AD 700 that established new monumental standards for civic
architecture and greatly increased the resident
population." [14] Archaeologists
note a dramatic adoption of Tiwanaku ceramics in the cultures who
became part of the Tiwanaku empire. Tiwanaku gained its power through
the trade it implemented between all of the cities within its
empire.[12] The
elites gained their status by control of the surplus of food obtained
from all regions and redistributed among all the people. Control
of llama herds
became very significant to Tiwanaku, as they were essential for
carrying goods back and forth between the center and the periphery.
The animals may also have symbolized the distance between the
commoners and the elites.
The
elites' power continued to grow along with the surplus of resources
until about AD 950. At this time a dramatic shift in climate
occurred,[1] as
is typical for the region.[15][16] A
significant drop in precipitation occurred in the Titicaca Basin,
with some archaeologists venturing to suggest a great drought. As the
rain became less and less many of the cities furthest away from Lake
Titicaca began
to produce fewer crops to give to the elites. As the surplus of food
dropped, the elites' power began to fall. Due to the resiliency of
the raised
fields,
the capital city became the last place of production, but in the end
even the intelligent design of the fields was no match for the
weather. Tiwanaku disappeared around AD 1000 because food production,
the empire's source of power and authority, dried up. The land was
not inhabited again for many years.[1] In
isolated places, some remnants of the Tiwanaku people, like the Uros,
may have survived until today.
Beyond
the northern frontier of the Tiwanaku state a new power started to
emerge in the beginning of the 13th century, the Inca Empire.
In
AD 1445 Pachacuti
Inca Yupanqui (the
ninth Inca) began conquest of the Titicaca regions. He incorporated
and developed what was left from the Tiwanaku patterns of culture,
and the Inca officials were superimposed upon the existing local
officials. Quechua was
made the official language and sun worship the official religion. So,
the last traces of the Tiwanaku civilization were
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