Tiwanaku: Ruins of a Lost Civilization
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Tiwanaku is a megalithic stone site in Bolivia that mainstream archeologists believe was erected around the sixth century CE. However, some compelling evidence suggests that the once-bustling city may have been founded around the end of the last ice age: a cataclysmic period in Earth history. The advanced quality of the stonework, as well as a few clues in the remaining carvings, suggest that Tiwanaku may, in part, be a monument to a doomed civilization, whose survivors tried to share their knowledge with the world.
Discovery & Documentation
Tiwanaku (also spelled Tiahuanaco or Tiahuanacu) is located on the south-eastern shore of Lake Titicaca in modern-day Bolivia, near the Peruvian border. The site is over 3800 metres above sea level, significantly higher than most of the world’s ancient ruins. The site is believed to have once been home to a thriving civilization, but there are no contemporary sources describing the city, so we know very little about it. Mainstream historians and archeologists generally agree that the collapse of the Tiwanaku civilization occurred around 1100 CE.(1) A century later, the Inca empire began to emerge along South America’s western coast, and it is widely believed that Tiwanaku’s buildings served as the primary template for Inca architecture.
The first written records of the ruins appear after the Spanish conquest of the Incas. One of the first and most thorough descriptions was written by a Spanish soldier named Pedro Cieza de León in 1549. León was surprised when natives told him that the monuments predated the Incas(2) and that their ancestors claim that the city “appeared suddenly in the course of a single night.”(3)
In 1799, the Czech naturalist, Thaddeus Haenke, produced an illustrated account of the sites around Lake Titicaca. Haenke’s sketches include one of the earliest depictions of Tiwanaku’s now-famous Gateway of the Sun. The French naturalist, Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny, was one of many foreign scholars to arrive after Bolivia gained its independence from Spain in 1825. In June 1833, d’Orbigny defined the three temple complexes with the names still used today: the Kalasasaya, Akapana, and Puma Punku. D’Orbigny’s work helped inspire the Bolivian president, José Ballivián Segurola, to establish the first national museum devoted to Tiwanaku in 1846, and to begin collecting relics from the site.
The first photos of Tiwanaku were captured by the U.S. government’s Commissioner to Peru, Ephraim George Squier, who also mapped and sketched many of the structures for a book in 1877.(4) More rigorous excavations began at the end of the nineteenth century, leading Swiss-American archeologist, Adolph Bandelier, to argue the now widely-accepted belief that the site was not only a ceremonial centre, but a city that once supported several thousand people.(5)
By 1900, the Andes region had become a popular tourist destination, and many artifacts in Tiwanaku were looted as a result. Hundreds of monuments were also damaged when the stone was repurposed for modern construction, and as a result of poor archaeological work.(6) Political changes in Bolivia after 1958 spurred the government to put all excavations under the leadership of Bolivian archeologist Carlos Ponce Sanginés, though collaboration with international researchers resumed in the early 1980s.(7)
Recent discoveries continue to uncover valuable finds. In March 2015, Bolivia’s Tiahuanaco Archeological Research Center announced that a ground-penetrating radar survey revealed several “underground anomalies” that are likely monoliths, as well as a buried pyramid.(8) Exploration in Lake Titicaca has been particularly fruitful because the lakebed was inaccessible to 20th-century looters. For example, in 2019, marine archaeologists recovered ritual artifacts alongside animal remains dated from 700 to 1000 CE.(9) The vast majority of Tiwanaku remains unexplored: by 2015, under two percent of the site had been excavated.(10) There’s no doubt that much more remains to be found.
The Site
The site of Tiwakanu can be divided into two sections: the first is a cluster of structures around the Akapana Pyramid one kilometre east of the modern town of Tiwanaku. The second is the Puma Punku temple a kilometre to the southwest of that.
The artificial hill known as the Akapana Pyramid is 50 feet, or 15 m high, and roughly 690 feet, or 210 m, on each side. Similar to the Egyptian pyramids, it’s aligned with high accuracy to the cardinal directions. Only around 10% of the structure now remains, with the rest of the andesite blocks having been pillaged for construction. In its time, Akapana is thought to have been a step-pyramid made from compacted earth and faced with large andesite blocks. However, we know very little of the pyramid's role in Tiwanaku society. Archeologists have largely ruled out a purely decorative or ceremonial function because of what’s inside it: the pyramid contains zig-zagging stone channels which guided water down and out to a surrounding moat. These structures are accurate to one-fiftieth of an inch.(11)
Roughly 60 metres north of the Akapana Pyramid is a nearly-square enclosed courtyard known as the Sunken Temple, or the Semi–subterranean Temple. It is believed that the first settlements were centred around this courtyard and that it was used for periodic rituals - with the structure likely aligned to celestial markers. Protruding from many of the stones making up the walls are dozens of carved stone heads known as the tenon heads. They are arranged in triangular patterns, and it’s thought that they could represent the ancestors of the many groups that comprised Tiwanaku’s ritual-political community at the time.”
West of the Sunken Temple is the Kalasasaya, also a large rectangular platform enclosed by walls, considered to have become the central ceremonial site at Tiwanaku. In the local Aymara language, Kalasasaya means “Place of the Upright Standing Stones.”(12) A standout feature in the Kalasasaya is a freestanding monolith in the north-west corner of the enclosure known as the Gateway of the Sun. It is composed of grey-green andesite, and stands roughly 12½ feet, or 3.8 m wide, and 10 feet, or 3 m high. It’s decorated with skillful carvings, with the most prominent among them being what appears to be a type of calendar composed of three rows of eight figures.(13) Some unfinished carvings suggest that the work was suddenly abandoned.(14)
There are also two significant statues in the Kalasasaya. The larger of these figures is known as the Ponce Monolith, and the smaller of the two is nicknamed “The Friar.” Both figures are clothed with fish scales from the waist down, and the scales are themselves designed with stylized fish heads. The Friar’s belt also depicts several crustaceans.
South-west of the Kalasasaya is Puma Punku, a name that translates to the Puma Gate. Puma Punku is thought to have been an independent complex used for rituals, though it appears that the south side was never finished. While the waterline of Lake Titicaca has since lowered, it’s believed that Puma Punku would have originally been positioned on the shore of the lake.(15)
Many of the enormous stones that at Puma Punku weigh between 90 and 136 metric tonnes, or 100 to 150 tons, each, with the largest in Puma Punku being 180 metric tonnes.(16) Even more giant blocks lie on the ground in disarray.(17) Mainstream archeologists are still debating how the large stone blocks were moved from the quarries as far as 90 kilometres away.(18) While some stones would have been transported over water, many stones show signs of having been dragged on one or more sides. Archeologists reason that, like the Inca, Tiwanaku’s builders would have had to have constructed roadbeds to transport these stones. However, as of 2013, only one potential road had been discovered.(19)
The high-precision of Puma Punku’s stonework is evident in the many blocks with holes, sockets, and perfectly straight lines carved into them, and those with smooth surfaces and level foundations. Many of the grey stone blocks at Puma Punku also display a perfectly-formed cross inside of another cross.(20) No tools have been recovered to account for these works, but researchers have ruled out hammerstones as being too crude for the job.(21) Many of these stones were apparently meant to be interlocked, although no adjoining “male” blocks have been discovered to confirm this.(22)
Among the many impressive stoneworks at Puma Punku are the rows of “H-Blocks,” so-called for resembling the capital letter “H.” Geological studies starting in 2017 found organic matter in the stone that was used to date their construction to roughly 600 CE. The presence of organic substances strongly suggests that the stones were forged from a poured mixture composed of volcanic andesite sand and organic matter to bind it together.(23) However, this dating and construction method are disputed.(24) Writer and researcher Brien Foerster has also found that these H-Blocks and other nearby stones exhibit unusual magnetic properties.(25)
Dating Tiwanaku
Exactly when Tiwanaku was founded is still in dispute.(26) Current estimates from mainstream archaeologists range from 1580 BCE to 724 CE.(27) A study in 2004 used radiocarbon dating on organic matter from Puma Punku which produced an estimate of between 536 and 600 CE.(28) However, excavations conducted in 2008 led archeologists to conclude that the site was founded during the first two centuries of the Common Era.(29)
Researchers such as Brien Foerster highlight how the various materials and techniques employed indicate multiple eras of construction, beginning with Puma Punku. This would suggest multiple eras of inhabitation, instead of a single rise and fall.(30) The period of highest immigration is thought to have taken place after 600 CE, resulting in the development of sectors such as Ch’iji Jawira, that apparently specialised in ceramics production.(31) Tiwakanu’s collapse is widely thought to have occurred around 1100, with historians and archeologists pointing to causes like severe environmental stress and political upheaval, among others.(32) For example, the scattered distribution of Tiwanaku’s many stone blocks and the fact that Puma Punku was buried under several feet of mud are strongly indicative of cataclysmic activity like earthquakes and flooding.(33) American geologist Robert Schoch points to several blocks with sides that appear to have been melted by extreme heat, which he suggests was caused by a cataclysmic sun plasma event.(34)
Despite the mainstream consensus of a common era timeline, the site’s architecture contains many clues pointing to a much older dating. Professor Arthur Posnansky of Bolivia’s University of La Paz, who spent 50 years studying Andean history, proposed that the calendar carved into the Gateway of the Sun, as well as the placement of the Gateway itself, were astronomically aligned to predict the seasons. Over a cycle of 41,000 years, Earth’s angle to the celestial equator shifts between 22.1° and 24.5°, making it possible to roll-back the clock until the Gateway aligns with the sunrise on the solstice and the equinox. Posnansky calculated that the Gateway was built in 15,000 BCE, but his calculations were later refined with satellite data to arrive at a date of roughly 10,000 BCE.(35) Modern archaeologists such as Neil Steede and Dr. Oswald Rivera have expressed support for Posnansky’s work.(36)
At two symmetrically opposed places on the Gateway calendar are what archeologists have argued are the heads of two crested condors. Writer Graham Hancock has suggested that viewed together, the two condor heads on the right side make up what looks to be a front-facing elephant head, displaying its ears, tusks, and trunk. Hancock notes that other carvings at Tiwanaku combine designs to make one object serve as another at varying levels of perspective.(37) What’s more, the mirror-side of the Gateway also depicts two condors side by side, but together they look distinctly different from the alleged elephant design.
There are no elephants in South America, and most mastodon species are believed to have gone extinct over 11,000 years ago. The next closest candidate is an extinct species called Cuvieronius, which resembled modern elephants, but with larger tusks and smaller ears. Cuvieronius were numerous in the southern Andes prior to their extinction around 4,000 BCE.
Another design on the Gateway appears to be a Toxodon, a large amphibious mammal resembling a mix of rhino and hippo considered to have gone extinct roughly 12,000 years ago. Hans Schindler Bellamy and Peter Allan have argued that the Gateway contains at least 46 Toxodon heads, and the animal has also been found rendered in several sculptures and depicted on many recovered pottery fragments. Posnansky has also argued that two other species, Scelidotherium and Macrauchenia, may also be depicted in the artworks. Both of these species went extinct at the end of the last ice age.(38)
World Connections
Beginning with his 1995 book, Fingerprints of the Gods, Hancock drew connections between several archeological sites of the ancient world that - according to the mainstream interpretation of history - never interacted with one another. For example, Hancock notes that the hand-made reed boats crafted by modern residents on an island in Lake Titicaca are nearly identical to those used by ancient Egyptians to sail and move stones along the Nile.(39)
Many features of Tiwanaku are anomalous to the region, and even the continent, but are found in other ancient sites around the world. For example, many of the largest monoliths in Puma Punku show evidence of having once been affixed by I-shaped metal clamps. This technique is found nowhere else in South America, but is found in the temple complexes of Dendera in central Egypt and in Cambodia’s Angkor Wat. Analysis of a surviving clamp using a scanning electron microscope revealed that the metal had been poured while molten. Further, spectrographic analysis showed that the clamp contained 1.7% nickel, despite there being no known source of nickel in Bolivia.(40)
Hancock notes that Tiwanaku is one of many ancient megalithic stone sites that is said to have been built through the power of sound and sorcery. For example, one Inca tradition claims that the stones had been “carried through the air to the sound of a trumpet” or “of their own accord.”(41) This aligns with traditions on Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui and Isla de Pascua) which state that “great magicians” used their mana power and words to “walk” the megalithic statues from the quarry.(42)
What’s more, Maya legends claim that the “Pyramid of the Magician” located in Uxmal, Yucatan, was constructed overnight. The pyramid’s other name, the “House of the Dwarf,” is a reference to another legend which holds that a dwarf with supernatural powers moved the heavy rocks by whistling.(43) Similar levitation techniques are also described in an Egyptian record of a contest between an Egyptian and an Ethiopian magician. The latter is said to have raised an enormous stone vault above the Pharaoh before the Egyptian spoke a spell which “caused a great phantom boat” to carry the stone away.(44) Modern scientists have discovered how to make an object levitate by producing a standing sound wave, although they are currently able to lift only relatively small objects.(45)
Among the Gateway's designs are 48 birdmen therianthropes - or human-animal hybrids - of various combinations. Human-headed birds are also found in ancient Egyptian art to depict the “heart-soul,” or the part of a human that survives death.(46)
Hancock connects the maritime designs on the Friar and Ponce Monoliths to Mesopotamian myths describing civilising “fish-garbed figures” known as the Apkallus. The Apkallus were said to be “endowed with reason,” and their leader gifted the people of Mesopotamia with knowledge of the arts and sciences, as well as of construction and agriculture. Several Babylonian and Assyrian reliefs portray bearded, fish-garbed men holding objects in their hands.(47) The fact that the Ponce and Friar statues have beards is significant, because the people indigenous to Tiwanaku were not able to grow beards. The pointed chins on the Easter Island statues are thought to represent beards as well.(48)
Another noteworthy feature of the Ponce and Friar statutes is that the long fingers of the statues’ hands meet at the navel. At Göbekli Tepe, an ancient site in Turkey dated to roughly 9,500 BCE, we find several megalithic stone pillars carved into anthropomorphic figures with thick belts and long fingers outstretched towards their navels. A totem pole found at the site features the same motif. Likewise, the Easter Island moai statues also place their hands on their stomachs and wear broad belts.(49) The naval connection could be a reference to the shared namesake of these locations: each was named after a creationist myth about the world emerging from the navel, or centre-point, of the Earth.(50) What’s more, the pillars at Göbekli Tepe also feature “H” designs very similar to the H-blocks at Puma Punku.(51)
The Lost Civilization
Tales of an advanced society predating the currently accepted origin of civilization date back to two of Plato’s dialogues from 360 BCE. Plato told of the island city of Atlantis, said to exist nine thousand years before the birth of the Athenian leader, Solon, or around 9630 BCE. After a war with Athens, the island nation was “sunk by an earthquake, [and] became an impassable barrier of mud.”(52)
Some see the legend of Atlantis as a mythologized version of a global cataclysm that coincided with a dramatic rise in sea levels at the end of the last ice age around 9600 BCE.(53) Canadian researchers, Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, investigated the areas of the world to which a surviving civilization would have likely fled: they argued that the regions most suited to survival would be freshwater lakes at high altitude, making Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and Lake Titicaca, top candidates.(54)
Hancock demonstrates how Tiwanaku could have been inspired by the survivors of this doomed civilization, who attempted to pass on their knowledge and technology before it was lost to history. As evidence, he points to legends of the site’s founding. Tiwanaku’s city, Viracocha, is named after its founding Creator God, who is described as having pale skin and a full beard. Viracocha and his “companions” are said to have arrived at Tiwanaku after a great flood that he caused, and “appeared in human form from Lake Titicaca.” Viracocha’s name means “foam of the sea” and he and his followers were said to walk “on the waves” as easily as they traversed the land. Viracocha is also credited with bestowing the people with his knowledge and philosophy, which he then spread to neighbouring lands.
Descriptions of Viracocha match closely with those of the ancient Mayan deity, Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl is described as a white-skinned deity with large eyes, long hair, and a rounded beard. He is said to have taught the Maya how to cook and how to calculate the seasons, and he encouraged a more peaceful lifestyle. He is also said to have arrived “from across the sea in a boat that moved by itself without paddles.” The Egyptian God, Osiris, is another bearded god who is said to have civilized the people by abolishing cannibalism and teaching agriculture and animal husbandry, as well as writing, music, and architecture. Both Osiris and Quetzalcoatl are also said to have spread their knowledge by travelling to foreign lands.(55)
Perhaps legends of Quetzalcoatl, Osiris, and other figures of the ancient world all point to one common event in world history, where a global cataclysm forced an advanced civilization to flee their native land, and plant the seeds of civilization in fertile grounds.
Conclusion
Tiwanaku is one of several sites in South America and around the world that may be much older than mainstream archeologists currently believe. While it was no doubt inhabited for hundreds of years after, it may have originally been built by the survivors of a global cataclysm corresponding with the end of the last Ice Age. It was thus not only the template for the Inca civilization that followed it, but it may be a monument to a lost civilization that came before.
Tiwanaku is a megalithic stone site in Bolivia that mainstream archeologists believe was erected around the sixth century CE. However, some compelling evidence suggests that the once-bustling city may have been founded around the end of the last ice age: a cataclysmic period in Earth history. The advanced quality of the stonework, as well as a few clues in the remaining carvings, suggest that Tiwanaku may, in part, be a monument to a doomed civilization, whose survivors tried to share their knowledge with the world.
Discovery & Documentation
Tiwanaku (also spelled Tiahuanaco or Tiahuanacu) is located on the south-eastern shore of Lake Titicaca in modern-day Bolivia, near the Peruvian border. The site is over 3800 metres above sea level, significantly higher than most of the world’s ancient ruins. The site is believed to have once been home to a thriving civilization, but there are no contemporary sources describing the city, so we know very little about it. Mainstream historians and archeologists generally agree that the collapse of the Tiwanaku civilization occurred around 1100 CE.(1) A century later, the Inca empire began to emerge along South America’s western coast, and it is widely believed that Tiwanaku’s buildings served as the primary template for Inca architecture.
The first written records of the ruins appear after the Spanish conquest of the Incas. One of the first and most thorough descriptions was written by a Spanish soldier named Pedro Cieza de León in 1549. León was surprised when natives told him that the monuments predated the Incas(2) and that their ancestors claim that the city “appeared suddenly in the course of a single night.”(3)
In 1799, the Czech naturalist, Thaddeus Haenke, produced an illustrated account of the sites around Lake Titicaca. Haenke’s sketches include one of the earliest depictions of Tiwanaku’s now-famous Gateway of the Sun. The French naturalist, Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny, was one of many foreign scholars to arrive after Bolivia gained its independence from Spain in 1825. In June 1833, d’Orbigny defined the three temple complexes with the names still used today: the Kalasasaya, Akapana, and Puma Punku. D’Orbigny’s work helped inspire the Bolivian president, José Ballivián Segurola, to establish the first national museum devoted to Tiwanaku in 1846, and to begin collecting relics from the site.
The first photos of Tiwanaku were captured by the U.S. government’s Commissioner to Peru, Ephraim George Squier, who also mapped and sketched many of the structures for a book in 1877.(4) More rigorous excavations began at the end of the nineteenth century, leading Swiss-American archeologist, Adolph Bandelier, to argue the now widely-accepted belief that the site was not only a ceremonial centre, but a city that once supported several thousand people.(5)
By 1900, the Andes region had become a popular tourist destination, and many artifacts in Tiwanaku were looted as a result. Hundreds of monuments were also damaged when the stone was repurposed for modern construction, and as a result of poor archaeological work.(6) Political changes in Bolivia after 1958 spurred the government to put all excavations under the leadership of Bolivian archeologist Carlos Ponce Sanginés, though collaboration with international researchers resumed in the early 1980s.(7)
Recent discoveries continue to uncover valuable finds. In March 2015, Bolivia’s Tiahuanaco Archeological Research Center announced that a ground-penetrating radar survey revealed several “underground anomalies” that are likely monoliths, as well as a buried pyramid.(8) Exploration in Lake Titicaca has been particularly fruitful because the lakebed was inaccessible to 20th-century looters. For example, in 2019, marine archaeologists recovered ritual artifacts alongside animal remains dated from 700 to 1000 CE.(9) The vast majority of Tiwanaku remains unexplored: by 2015, under two percent of the site had been excavated.(10) There’s no doubt that much more remains to be found.
The Site
The site of Tiwakanu can be divided into two sections: the first is a cluster of structures around the Akapana Pyramid one kilometre east of the modern town of Tiwanaku. The second is the Puma Punku temple a kilometre to the southwest of that.
The artificial hill known as the Akapana Pyramid is 50 feet, or 15 m high, and roughly 690 feet, or 210 m, on each side. Similar to the Egyptian pyramids, it’s aligned with high accuracy to the cardinal directions. Only around 10% of the structure now remains, with the rest of the andesite blocks having been pillaged for construction. In its time, Akapana is thought to have been a step-pyramid made from compacted earth and faced with large andesite blocks. However, we know very little of the pyramid's role in Tiwanaku society. Archeologists have largely ruled out a purely decorative or ceremonial function because of what’s inside it: the pyramid contains zig-zagging stone channels which guided water down and out to a surrounding moat. These structures are accurate to one-fiftieth of an inch.(11)
Roughly 60 metres north of the Akapana Pyramid is a nearly-square enclosed courtyard known as the Sunken Temple, or the Semi–subterranean Temple. It is believed that the first settlements were centred around this courtyard and that it was used for periodic rituals - with the structure likely aligned to celestial markers. Protruding from many of the stones making up the walls are dozens of carved stone heads known as the tenon heads. They are arranged in triangular patterns, and it’s thought that they could represent the ancestors of the many groups that comprised Tiwanaku’s ritual-political community at the time.”
West of the Sunken Temple is the Kalasasaya, also a large rectangular platform enclosed by walls, considered to have become the central ceremonial site at Tiwanaku. In the local Aymara language, Kalasasaya means “Place of the Upright Standing Stones.”(12) A standout feature in the Kalasasaya is a freestanding monolith in the north-west corner of the enclosure known as the Gateway of the Sun. It is composed of grey-green andesite, and stands roughly 12½ feet, or 3.8 m wide, and 10 feet, or 3 m high. It’s decorated with skillful carvings, with the most prominent among them being what appears to be a type of calendar composed of three rows of eight figures.(13) Some unfinished carvings suggest that the work was suddenly abandoned.(14)
There are also two significant statues in the Kalasasaya. The larger of these figures is known as the Ponce Monolith, and the smaller of the two is nicknamed “The Friar.” Both figures are clothed with fish scales from the waist down, and the scales are themselves designed with stylized fish heads. The Friar’s belt also depicts several crustaceans.
South-west of the Kalasasaya is Puma Punku, a name that translates to the Puma Gate. Puma Punku is thought to have been an independent complex used for rituals, though it appears that the south side was never finished. While the waterline of Lake Titicaca has since lowered, it’s believed that Puma Punku would have originally been positioned on the shore of the lake.(15)
Many of the enormous stones that at Puma Punku weigh between 90 and 136 metric tonnes, or 100 to 150 tons, each, with the largest in Puma Punku being 180 metric tonnes.(16) Even more giant blocks lie on the ground in disarray.(17) Mainstream archeologists are still debating how the large stone blocks were moved from the quarries as far as 90 kilometres away.(18) While some stones would have been transported over water, many stones show signs of having been dragged on one or more sides. Archeologists reason that, like the Inca, Tiwanaku’s builders would have had to have constructed roadbeds to transport these stones. However, as of 2013, only one potential road had been discovered.(19)
The high-precision of Puma Punku’s stonework is evident in the many blocks with holes, sockets, and perfectly straight lines carved into them, and those with smooth surfaces and level foundations. Many of the grey stone blocks at Puma Punku also display a perfectly-formed cross inside of another cross.(20) No tools have been recovered to account for these works, but researchers have ruled out hammerstones as being too crude for the job.(21) Many of these stones were apparently meant to be interlocked, although no adjoining “male” blocks have been discovered to confirm this.(22)
Among the many impressive stoneworks at Puma Punku are the rows of “H-Blocks,” so-called for resembling the capital letter “H.” Geological studies starting in 2017 found organic matter in the stone that was used to date their construction to roughly 600 CE. The presence of organic substances strongly suggests that the stones were forged from a poured mixture composed of volcanic andesite sand and organic matter to bind it together.(23) However, this dating and construction method are disputed.(24) Writer and researcher Brien Foerster has also found that these H-Blocks and other nearby stones exhibit unusual magnetic properties.(25)
Dating Tiwanaku
Exactly when Tiwanaku was founded is still in dispute.(26) Current estimates from mainstream archaeologists range from 1580 BCE to 724 CE.(27) A study in 2004 used radiocarbon dating on organic matter from Puma Punku which produced an estimate of between 536 and 600 CE.(28) However, excavations conducted in 2008 led archeologists to conclude that the site was founded during the first two centuries of the Common Era.(29)
Researchers such as Brien Foerster highlight how the various materials and techniques employed indicate multiple eras of construction, beginning with Puma Punku. This would suggest multiple eras of inhabitation, instead of a single rise and fall.(30) The period of highest immigration is thought to have taken place after 600 CE, resulting in the development of sectors such as Ch’iji Jawira, that apparently specialised in ceramics production.(31) Tiwakanu’s collapse is widely thought to have occurred around 1100, with historians and archeologists pointing to causes like severe environmental stress and political upheaval, among others.(32) For example, the scattered distribution of Tiwanaku’s many stone blocks and the fact that Puma Punku was buried under several feet of mud are strongly indicative of cataclysmic activity like earthquakes and flooding.(33) American geologist Robert Schoch points to several blocks with sides that appear to have been melted by extreme heat, which he suggests was caused by a cataclysmic sun plasma event.(34)
Despite the mainstream consensus of a common era timeline, the site’s architecture contains many clues pointing to a much older dating. Professor Arthur Posnansky of Bolivia’s University of La Paz, who spent 50 years studying Andean history, proposed that the calendar carved into the Gateway of the Sun, as well as the placement of the Gateway itself, were astronomically aligned to predict the seasons. Over a cycle of 41,000 years, Earth’s angle to the celestial equator shifts between 22.1° and 24.5°, making it possible to roll-back the clock until the Gateway aligns with the sunrise on the solstice and the equinox. Posnansky calculated that the Gateway was built in 15,000 BCE, but his calculations were later refined with satellite data to arrive at a date of roughly 10,000 BCE.(35) Modern archaeologists such as Neil Steede and Dr. Oswald Rivera have expressed support for Posnansky’s work.(36)
At two symmetrically opposed places on the Gateway calendar are what archeologists have argued are the heads of two crested condors. Writer Graham Hancock has suggested that viewed together, the two condor heads on the right side make up what looks to be a front-facing elephant head, displaying its ears, tusks, and trunk. Hancock notes that other carvings at Tiwanaku combine designs to make one object serve as another at varying levels of perspective.(37) What’s more, the mirror-side of the Gateway also depicts two condors side by side, but together they look distinctly different from the alleged elephant design.
There are no elephants in South America, and most mastodon species are believed to have gone extinct over 11,000 years ago. The next closest candidate is an extinct species called Cuvieronius, which resembled modern elephants, but with larger tusks and smaller ears. Cuvieronius were numerous in the southern Andes prior to their extinction around 4,000 BCE.
Another design on the Gateway appears to be a Toxodon, a large amphibious mammal resembling a mix of rhino and hippo considered to have gone extinct roughly 12,000 years ago. Hans Schindler Bellamy and Peter Allan have argued that the Gateway contains at least 46 Toxodon heads, and the animal has also been found rendered in several sculptures and depicted on many recovered pottery fragments. Posnansky has also argued that two other species, Scelidotherium and Macrauchenia, may also be depicted in the artworks. Both of these species went extinct at the end of the last ice age.(38)
World Connections
Beginning with his 1995 book, Fingerprints of the Gods, Hancock drew connections between several archeological sites of the ancient world that - according to the mainstream interpretation of history - never interacted with one another. For example, Hancock notes that the hand-made reed boats crafted by modern residents on an island in Lake Titicaca are nearly identical to those used by ancient Egyptians to sail and move stones along the Nile.(39)
Many features of Tiwanaku are anomalous to the region, and even the continent, but are found in other ancient sites around the world. For example, many of the largest monoliths in Puma Punku show evidence of having once been affixed by I-shaped metal clamps. This technique is found nowhere else in South America, but is found in the temple complexes of Dendera in central Egypt and in Cambodia’s Angkor Wat. Analysis of a surviving clamp using a scanning electron microscope revealed that the metal had been poured while molten. Further, spectrographic analysis showed that the clamp contained 1.7% nickel, despite there being no known source of nickel in Bolivia.(40)
Hancock notes that Tiwanaku is one of many ancient megalithic stone sites that is said to have been built through the power of sound and sorcery. For example, one Inca tradition claims that the stones had been “carried through the air to the sound of a trumpet” or “of their own accord.”(41) This aligns with traditions on Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui and Isla de Pascua) which state that “great magicians” used their mana power and words to “walk” the megalithic statues from the quarry.(42)
What’s more, Maya legends claim that the “Pyramid of the Magician” located in Uxmal, Yucatan, was constructed overnight. The pyramid’s other name, the “House of the Dwarf,” is a reference to another legend which holds that a dwarf with supernatural powers moved the heavy rocks by whistling.(43) Similar levitation techniques are also described in an Egyptian record of a contest between an Egyptian and an Ethiopian magician. The latter is said to have raised an enormous stone vault above the Pharaoh before the Egyptian spoke a spell which “caused a great phantom boat” to carry the stone away.(44) Modern scientists have discovered how to make an object levitate by producing a standing sound wave, although they are currently able to lift only relatively small objects.(45)
Among the Gateway's designs are 48 birdmen therianthropes - or human-animal hybrids - of various combinations. Human-headed birds are also found in ancient Egyptian art to depict the “heart-soul,” or the part of a human that survives death.(46)
Hancock connects the maritime designs on the Friar and Ponce Monoliths to Mesopotamian myths describing civilising “fish-garbed figures” known as the Apkallus. The Apkallus were said to be “endowed with reason,” and their leader gifted the people of Mesopotamia with knowledge of the arts and sciences, as well as of construction and agriculture. Several Babylonian and Assyrian reliefs portray bearded, fish-garbed men holding objects in their hands.(47) The fact that the Ponce and Friar statues have beards is significant, because the people indigenous to Tiwanaku were not able to grow beards. The pointed chins on the Easter Island statues are thought to represent beards as well.(48)
Another noteworthy feature of the Ponce and Friar statutes is that the long fingers of the statues’ hands meet at the navel. At Göbekli Tepe, an ancient site in Turkey dated to roughly 9,500 BCE, we find several megalithic stone pillars carved into anthropomorphic figures with thick belts and long fingers outstretched towards their navels. A totem pole found at the site features the same motif. Likewise, the Easter Island moai statues also place their hands on their stomachs and wear broad belts.(49) The naval connection could be a reference to the shared namesake of these locations: each was named after a creationist myth about the world emerging from the navel, or centre-point, of the Earth.(50) What’s more, the pillars at Göbekli Tepe also feature “H” designs very similar to the H-blocks at Puma Punku.(51)
The Lost Civilization
Tales of an advanced society predating the currently accepted origin of civilization date back to two of Plato’s dialogues from 360 BCE. Plato told of the island city of Atlantis, said to exist nine thousand years before the birth of the Athenian leader, Solon, or around 9630 BCE. After a war with Athens, the island nation was “sunk by an earthquake, [and] became an impassable barrier of mud.”(52)
Some see the legend of Atlantis as a mythologized version of a global cataclysm that coincided with a dramatic rise in sea levels at the end of the last ice age around 9600 BCE.(53) Canadian researchers, Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, investigated the areas of the world to which a surviving civilization would have likely fled: they argued that the regions most suited to survival would be freshwater lakes at high altitude, making Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and Lake Titicaca, top candidates.(54)
Hancock demonstrates how Tiwanaku could have been inspired by the survivors of this doomed civilization, who attempted to pass on their knowledge and technology before it was lost to history. As evidence, he points to legends of the site’s founding. Tiwanaku’s city, Viracocha, is named after its founding Creator God, who is described as having pale skin and a full beard. Viracocha and his “companions” are said to have arrived at Tiwanaku after a great flood that he caused, and “appeared in human form from Lake Titicaca.” Viracocha’s name means “foam of the sea” and he and his followers were said to walk “on the waves” as easily as they traversed the land. Viracocha is also credited with bestowing the people with his knowledge and philosophy, which he then spread to neighbouring lands.
Descriptions of Viracocha match closely with those of the ancient Mayan deity, Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl is described as a white-skinned deity with large eyes, long hair, and a rounded beard. He is said to have taught the Maya how to cook and how to calculate the seasons, and he encouraged a more peaceful lifestyle. He is also said to have arrived “from across the sea in a boat that moved by itself without paddles.” The Egyptian God, Osiris, is another bearded god who is said to have civilized the people by abolishing cannibalism and teaching agriculture and animal husbandry, as well as writing, music, and architecture. Both Osiris and Quetzalcoatl are also said to have spread their knowledge by travelling to foreign lands.(55)
Perhaps legends of Quetzalcoatl, Osiris, and other figures of the ancient world all point to one common event in world history, where a global cataclysm forced an advanced civilization to flee their native land, and plant the seeds of civilization in fertile grounds.
Conclusion
Tiwanaku is one of several sites in South America and around the world that may be much older than mainstream archeologists currently believe. While it was no doubt inhabited for hundreds of years after, it may have originally been built by the survivors of a global cataclysm corresponding with the end of the last Ice Age. It was thus not only the template for the Inca civilization that followed it, but it may be a monument to a lost civilization that came before.
Notes:
1) John Wayne Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1; Erik J. Marsh et al. “The center cannot hold: A Bayesian chronology for the collapse of Tiwanaku,” PLoS One, 18(11): e0288798, November 22, 2023, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288798.
2) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 4-5.
3) Cieza wrote: “I asked the natives whether these edifices were built in the time of the Inca. They laughed at the question, affirming that they were made long before the Inca reign and ... that they had heard from their forebears that everything to be seen there appeared suddenly in the course of a single night …”, appears in Hancock, Fingerprints, 77, citing Pedro Cieza de Leon, Chronicle of Peru, Hakluyt Society: London, 1864 and 1883, Part I, Chapter 87; Hancock, Heaven’s, 272.
4) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 6; Ephraim George Squier, Peru: Incidents of travel and exploration in the land of the Incas (New York, NY, USA: Harper, 1877); The National Museum of Archaeology of Bolivia’s inception is credited to Ballivian in 1846 according to the museum’s website in “MUSEO NACIONAL DE ARQUEOLOGIA,” http://www.bolivian.com/arqueologia/mna.html.
5) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 8-10. Swiss and American archaeologist, Adolph Bandelier, “The ruins at Tiahuanaco,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 21: 218-265, 1911.
6) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 10-12.
7) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 12-14.
8) Hancock, Magicians, 387-88.
9) Ian Sample. “Archaeologists discover 'exceptional' site at Lake Titicaca,” The Guardian, April 1, 2019; Christophe Delaere et al., “Underwater ritual offerings in the Island of the Sun and the formation of the Tiwanaku state,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 17 (April 1, 2019), 8233-8238.
10) Hancock, Magicians, 387.
11) Hancock, Fingerprints, 80. To clarify, the “largely ruled out a purely decorative or ceremonial function”, also meant to apply the “purely” to ceremonial function because it could have been used in ceremony and ritual but its design suggests it was more than just that alone.
12) Hancock, Fingerprints, 79-80, states about the tenon heads: “There were several different (and contradictory) scholarly opinions as to their function.”; Hancock, Magicians, 390; Shelley Burian, “Semi-subterranean Court at the site of Tiwanaku,” Smarthistory.org, August 17, 2020; Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 110-111, states, “tenoned effigy heads… Some depict deity-like beings with impassive faces and elaborate headdresses, others appear to represent skulls with desiccated skin and sunken eye sockets, and still others appear to be wailing phantasms like the banshees of Irish lore. Many depict beings with culturally modified heads.” The Sunken Temple “may have been positioned to mark the rise of important constellations in the nighttime sky. … rituals that periodically took place within its confines.”
13) Hancock, Fingerprints, 81, 87-88. Also referred to as the Gate of the Sun or Sun Portal or older literature called it the "monolithic Gateway of Ak-kapana." Note the fact it’s not universally agreed the Gateway’s designs are a type of calendar.
14) Hancock, Fingerprints, 91; Hancock cites Posnansky, Tiahuanacu, Vol. II, 4; Brien Foerster, The Enigma Of Tiwanaku And Puma Punku (Self Published, 2013), 117.
15) Foerster, “Puma Punku,” at 23:15.
16) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 118-123; Hancock, Fingerprints, 92; Hancock, Heaven’s, 304; referring to excavations conducted by Posnansky; Note Hancock’s claim of a stone weighing at least 440 tonnes cannot be confirmed independently, with the largest stone in Puma Punku confirmed being 180 tonnes in Joseph Davidovits, et al., “Tiahuanaco Monuments (Tiwanaku / Pumapunku), Bolivia are made of geopolymer artificial stones created 1400 years ago,” Geopolymer Institute, March 3, 2019.
17) Hancock, Fingerprints, 93.
18) Hancock, Heaven’s, 304; Brien Foerster, The Enigma, 24-25.
19) Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair, The Stones of Tiahuanaco: A Study of Architecture and Construction (Los Angeles, USA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013), 175-200. Transportation and drag marks mentioned on 180-81.
20) Joseph Davidovits, et al. “Ancient geopolymer in South-American monument. SEM and petrographic evidence.” Materials Letters, Volume 235, 15 January 2019, 120-124; Joseph Davidovits and Frédéric Davidovits, “Ancient geopolymers in South-American Monuments, Part IV (*) : use of natural andesite volcanic sand (not crushed),” Geopolymer and Archaeology, December 2020, 36-43; Hancock, Magicians, 389. Foerster, “Puma Punku,” at 14:40 - 18:05.
21) There are also remnants of a thin coat of possible mortar hinting at their construction process. Jean-Pierre Protzen,and Stella Nair.,"Who taught the Inca stonemasons their skills? A comparison of Tiahuanaco and Inca cut-stone masonry," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 56 (2), 1997, 146 - 167. doi:10.2307/991281.
22) [Updates soon]
Sources: [Updates soon]
Andrade, Marco A. B., Anne L. Bernassau, and Julio C. Adamowski. “Acoustic levitation of a large solid sphere.” Applied Physics Letters, Volume 109, Issue 4. July 26, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4959862.
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/apl/article-abstract/109/4/044101/892084/Acoustic-levitation-of-a-large-solid-sphere?redirectedFrom=fulltext.
Bandelier, Adolph. “The ruins at Tiahuanaco,.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 21: 218-265, 1911.
Becker, Sara K. “Skeletal evidence of craft production from the Ch'iji Jawira site in Tiwanaku, Bolivia.” Journal of Archaeological Science. Vol. 9, October 2016, 405-415. https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X16304837.
Budge, Ernest Alfred Wallis. Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. The Meidic Society Ltd. London, Philip Lee Warner. New York, G P Putnam's Sons, 1911. Vol. 2. https://archive.org/details/osirisegyptianre02budg/mode/2up.
Burian, Shelley. “Semi-subterranean Court at the site of Tiwanaku.” SmartHistory.org. August 17, 2020. https://smarthistory.org/semi-subterranean-court-tiwanaku.
Darin, Paul. “Enduring Mystery Surrounds the Ancient Site of Puma Punku.” February 8, 2016. Ancient-Origins.net. https://ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/enduring-mystery-surrounds-ancient-site-puma-punku-005317.
Davidovits, Joseph, et al. “Ancient geopolymer in south-American monument. SEM and petrographic evidence.” Materials Letters, Volume 235, January 15, 2019, 120-124. https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167577X18315982.
Davidovits, Joseph. Frédéric Davidovits. “Ancient geopolymers in South-American Monuments, Part IV (*) : use of natural andesite volcanic sand (not crushed).” Geopolymer and Archaeology. December 2020. 36-43. DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.10021.93929/2. https://researchgate.net/publication/347188837_Ancient_geopolymers_in_South-American_Monuments_Part_IV_use_of_natural_andesite_volcanic_sand_not_crushed.
Delaere et al., Christophe. “Underwater ritual offerings in the Island of the Sun and the formation of the Tiwanaku state.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 17 (April 1, 2019), 8233-8238. https://pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1820749116.
Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Atlantis.” Britannica. Updated Jun 20, 2024. https://britannica.com/topic/Atlantis-legendary-island.
Foerster, Brien. “The Enduring Enigma Of Puma Punku.” Self-published?? [date of publication not specified] circa 2013. https://academia.edu/5631443/The_Enduring_Enigma_Of_Puma_Punku_in_Bolivia .
Foerster, Brien. “More Strange Magnetic Anomalies At Puma Punku In Bolivia: July 2016.” Brien Foerster. YouTube video, 5:43. https://youtube.com/watch?v=AJwSdXyJ598.
Foerster, Brien. “Puma Punku And Tiwanaku Bolivia: Ancient High Technology Full Lecture.” Brien Foerster. YouTube video, 46:28, 2018. https://youtube.com/watch?v=1fOYU-3wyyE.
Hancock, Graham. Fingerprints of the gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization. New York, NY, USA: Crown Publishers, 1995. https://archive.org/details/fingerprintsofthegodsbygrahamhancock/mode/2up.
Hancock, Graham. Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the lost civilization. New York, NY, USA: Crown Publishers, 1998.
https://archive.org/details/heavensmirrorque0000hanc_j3n0/mode/2up.
Hancock, Graham. Magicians of the Gods: The forgotten wisdom of Earth's lost civilisation. New York, USA: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2015. https://archive.org/details/magiciansofgodsf0000hanc.
Isbell, William H. "Palaces and Politics in the Andean Middle Horizon," in Susan Toby Evans and Joanne Pillsbury, editors. Palaces of the Ancient New World. Washington, DC, USA: Dumbarton Oaks, 2004, 191–246.
https://ens9004-infd.mendoza.edu.ar/sitio/historia-america-latina/upload/05-%20EVANS%20&%20PILLSBURY%20-%20LIBRO%20-%20Palaces%20of%20the%20Ancient%20New%20World.pdf.
Janusek, John Wayne. Ancient Tiwanaku. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Marsh, Erik J. “The Founding of Tiwanaku.” Journal of the Institute of Andean Studies 32, Issue 2 (January 2012), 169 - 188. https://researchgate.net/publication/274310288_The_Founding_of_Tiwanaku_Evidence_from_Kk'arana.
Marsh, Erik J. “Arthur Posnansky, the Czar of Tiwanaku Archaeology.” Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, March 6, 2019, Volume 29, Issue 1, 1, DOI: 10.5334/bha-605. https://archaeologybulletin.org/articles/10.5334/bha-605.
Marsh, Erik J., et al. “The center cannot hold: A Bayesian chronology for the collapse of Tiwanaku.” PLoS One. 2023; 18(11): e0288798. November 22, 2023. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288798. https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10664893.
National Museum of Archaeology of Bolivia. “MUSEO NACIONAL DE ARQUEOLOGIA.” http://www.bolivian.com/arqueologia/mna.html.
Protzen, Jean-Pierre, and Stella Nair. "Who taught the Inca stonemasons their skills? A comparison of Tiahuanaco and Inca cut-stone masonry." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 56 (2), 1997, 146–167. doi:10.2307/991281.
Protzen, Jean-Pierre, and Stella Nair. The Stones of Tiahuanaco: A Study of Architecture and Construction. Los Angeles, USA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013. https://archive.org/details/the-stones-of-tiahuanaco.
Puiu, Tibi. “Scientists levitate largest object yet with an acoustic tractor beam, might one day work for humans.” zmescience.com. January 22, 2018. https://zmescience.com/science/news-science/acoustic-tractor-beam-042342.
Sample, Ian. “Archaeologists discover 'exceptional' site at Lake Titicaca.” The Guardian. April 1, 2019. https://theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/01/archaeologists-discover-exceptional-site-at-lake-titicaca.
Squier, Ephraim George. Peru: incidents of travel and exploration in the land of the Incas (New York, NY, USA: Harper, 1877). https://archive.org/details/peruincidentsoft00squi/mode/2up.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Research and draft writing by Clark Murphy. Illustrations by V. R. Laurence. Some illustrations from earlier videos by Colin Campbell. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
1) John Wayne Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1; Erik J. Marsh et al. “The center cannot hold: A Bayesian chronology for the collapse of Tiwanaku,” PLoS One, 18(11): e0288798, November 22, 2023, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288798.
2) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 4-5.
3) Cieza wrote: “I asked the natives whether these edifices were built in the time of the Inca. They laughed at the question, affirming that they were made long before the Inca reign and ... that they had heard from their forebears that everything to be seen there appeared suddenly in the course of a single night …”, appears in Hancock, Fingerprints, 77, citing Pedro Cieza de Leon, Chronicle of Peru, Hakluyt Society: London, 1864 and 1883, Part I, Chapter 87; Hancock, Heaven’s, 272.
4) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 6; Ephraim George Squier, Peru: Incidents of travel and exploration in the land of the Incas (New York, NY, USA: Harper, 1877); The National Museum of Archaeology of Bolivia’s inception is credited to Ballivian in 1846 according to the museum’s website in “MUSEO NACIONAL DE ARQUEOLOGIA,” http://www.bolivian.com/arqueologia/mna.html.
5) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 8-10. Swiss and American archaeologist, Adolph Bandelier, “The ruins at Tiahuanaco,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 21: 218-265, 1911.
6) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 10-12.
7) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 12-14.
8) Hancock, Magicians, 387-88.
9) Ian Sample. “Archaeologists discover 'exceptional' site at Lake Titicaca,” The Guardian, April 1, 2019; Christophe Delaere et al., “Underwater ritual offerings in the Island of the Sun and the formation of the Tiwanaku state,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 17 (April 1, 2019), 8233-8238.
10) Hancock, Magicians, 387.
11) Hancock, Fingerprints, 80. To clarify, the “largely ruled out a purely decorative or ceremonial function”, also meant to apply the “purely” to ceremonial function because it could have been used in ceremony and ritual but its design suggests it was more than just that alone.
12) Hancock, Fingerprints, 79-80, states about the tenon heads: “There were several different (and contradictory) scholarly opinions as to their function.”; Hancock, Magicians, 390; Shelley Burian, “Semi-subterranean Court at the site of Tiwanaku,” Smarthistory.org, August 17, 2020; Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 110-111, states, “tenoned effigy heads… Some depict deity-like beings with impassive faces and elaborate headdresses, others appear to represent skulls with desiccated skin and sunken eye sockets, and still others appear to be wailing phantasms like the banshees of Irish lore. Many depict beings with culturally modified heads.” The Sunken Temple “may have been positioned to mark the rise of important constellations in the nighttime sky. … rituals that periodically took place within its confines.”
13) Hancock, Fingerprints, 81, 87-88. Also referred to as the Gate of the Sun or Sun Portal or older literature called it the "monolithic Gateway of Ak-kapana." Note the fact it’s not universally agreed the Gateway’s designs are a type of calendar.
14) Hancock, Fingerprints, 91; Hancock cites Posnansky, Tiahuanacu, Vol. II, 4; Brien Foerster, The Enigma Of Tiwanaku And Puma Punku (Self Published, 2013), 117.
15) Foerster, “Puma Punku,” at 23:15.
16) Janusek, Ancient Tiwanaku, 118-123; Hancock, Fingerprints, 92; Hancock, Heaven’s, 304; referring to excavations conducted by Posnansky; Note Hancock’s claim of a stone weighing at least 440 tonnes cannot be confirmed independently, with the largest stone in Puma Punku confirmed being 180 tonnes in Joseph Davidovits, et al., “Tiahuanaco Monuments (Tiwanaku / Pumapunku), Bolivia are made of geopolymer artificial stones created 1400 years ago,” Geopolymer Institute, March 3, 2019.
17) Hancock, Fingerprints, 93.
18) Hancock, Heaven’s, 304; Brien Foerster, The Enigma, 24-25.
19) Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair, The Stones of Tiahuanaco: A Study of Architecture and Construction (Los Angeles, USA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013), 175-200. Transportation and drag marks mentioned on 180-81.
20) Joseph Davidovits, et al. “Ancient geopolymer in South-American monument. SEM and petrographic evidence.” Materials Letters, Volume 235, 15 January 2019, 120-124; Joseph Davidovits and Frédéric Davidovits, “Ancient geopolymers in South-American Monuments, Part IV (*) : use of natural andesite volcanic sand (not crushed),” Geopolymer and Archaeology, December 2020, 36-43; Hancock, Magicians, 389. Foerster, “Puma Punku,” at 14:40 - 18:05.
21) There are also remnants of a thin coat of possible mortar hinting at their construction process. Jean-Pierre Protzen,and Stella Nair.,"Who taught the Inca stonemasons their skills? A comparison of Tiahuanaco and Inca cut-stone masonry," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 56 (2), 1997, 146 - 167. doi:10.2307/991281.
22) [Updates soon]
Sources: [Updates soon]
Andrade, Marco A. B., Anne L. Bernassau, and Julio C. Adamowski. “Acoustic levitation of a large solid sphere.” Applied Physics Letters, Volume 109, Issue 4. July 26, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4959862.
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/apl/article-abstract/109/4/044101/892084/Acoustic-levitation-of-a-large-solid-sphere?redirectedFrom=fulltext.
Bandelier, Adolph. “The ruins at Tiahuanaco,.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 21: 218-265, 1911.
Becker, Sara K. “Skeletal evidence of craft production from the Ch'iji Jawira site in Tiwanaku, Bolivia.” Journal of Archaeological Science. Vol. 9, October 2016, 405-415. https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X16304837.
Budge, Ernest Alfred Wallis. Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. The Meidic Society Ltd. London, Philip Lee Warner. New York, G P Putnam's Sons, 1911. Vol. 2. https://archive.org/details/osirisegyptianre02budg/mode/2up.
Burian, Shelley. “Semi-subterranean Court at the site of Tiwanaku.” SmartHistory.org. August 17, 2020. https://smarthistory.org/semi-subterranean-court-tiwanaku.
Darin, Paul. “Enduring Mystery Surrounds the Ancient Site of Puma Punku.” February 8, 2016. Ancient-Origins.net. https://ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/enduring-mystery-surrounds-ancient-site-puma-punku-005317.
Davidovits, Joseph, et al. “Ancient geopolymer in south-American monument. SEM and petrographic evidence.” Materials Letters, Volume 235, January 15, 2019, 120-124. https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167577X18315982.
Davidovits, Joseph. Frédéric Davidovits. “Ancient geopolymers in South-American Monuments, Part IV (*) : use of natural andesite volcanic sand (not crushed).” Geopolymer and Archaeology. December 2020. 36-43. DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.10021.93929/2. https://researchgate.net/publication/347188837_Ancient_geopolymers_in_South-American_Monuments_Part_IV_use_of_natural_andesite_volcanic_sand_not_crushed.
Delaere et al., Christophe. “Underwater ritual offerings in the Island of the Sun and the formation of the Tiwanaku state.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 17 (April 1, 2019), 8233-8238. https://pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1820749116.
Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Atlantis.” Britannica. Updated Jun 20, 2024. https://britannica.com/topic/Atlantis-legendary-island.
Foerster, Brien. “The Enduring Enigma Of Puma Punku.” Self-published?? [date of publication not specified] circa 2013. https://academia.edu/5631443/The_Enduring_Enigma_Of_Puma_Punku_in_Bolivia .
Foerster, Brien. “More Strange Magnetic Anomalies At Puma Punku In Bolivia: July 2016.” Brien Foerster. YouTube video, 5:43. https://youtube.com/watch?v=AJwSdXyJ598.
Foerster, Brien. “Puma Punku And Tiwanaku Bolivia: Ancient High Technology Full Lecture.” Brien Foerster. YouTube video, 46:28, 2018. https://youtube.com/watch?v=1fOYU-3wyyE.
Hancock, Graham. Fingerprints of the gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization. New York, NY, USA: Crown Publishers, 1995. https://archive.org/details/fingerprintsofthegodsbygrahamhancock/mode/2up.
Hancock, Graham. Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the lost civilization. New York, NY, USA: Crown Publishers, 1998.
https://archive.org/details/heavensmirrorque0000hanc_j3n0/mode/2up.
Hancock, Graham. Magicians of the Gods: The forgotten wisdom of Earth's lost civilisation. New York, USA: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2015. https://archive.org/details/magiciansofgodsf0000hanc.
Isbell, William H. "Palaces and Politics in the Andean Middle Horizon," in Susan Toby Evans and Joanne Pillsbury, editors. Palaces of the Ancient New World. Washington, DC, USA: Dumbarton Oaks, 2004, 191–246.
https://ens9004-infd.mendoza.edu.ar/sitio/historia-america-latina/upload/05-%20EVANS%20&%20PILLSBURY%20-%20LIBRO%20-%20Palaces%20of%20the%20Ancient%20New%20World.pdf.
Janusek, John Wayne. Ancient Tiwanaku. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Marsh, Erik J. “The Founding of Tiwanaku.” Journal of the Institute of Andean Studies 32, Issue 2 (January 2012), 169 - 188. https://researchgate.net/publication/274310288_The_Founding_of_Tiwanaku_Evidence_from_Kk'arana.
Marsh, Erik J. “Arthur Posnansky, the Czar of Tiwanaku Archaeology.” Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, March 6, 2019, Volume 29, Issue 1, 1, DOI: 10.5334/bha-605. https://archaeologybulletin.org/articles/10.5334/bha-605.
Marsh, Erik J., et al. “The center cannot hold: A Bayesian chronology for the collapse of Tiwanaku.” PLoS One. 2023; 18(11): e0288798. November 22, 2023. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288798. https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10664893.
National Museum of Archaeology of Bolivia. “MUSEO NACIONAL DE ARQUEOLOGIA.” http://www.bolivian.com/arqueologia/mna.html.
Protzen, Jean-Pierre, and Stella Nair. "Who taught the Inca stonemasons their skills? A comparison of Tiahuanaco and Inca cut-stone masonry." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 56 (2), 1997, 146–167. doi:10.2307/991281.
Protzen, Jean-Pierre, and Stella Nair. The Stones of Tiahuanaco: A Study of Architecture and Construction. Los Angeles, USA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013. https://archive.org/details/the-stones-of-tiahuanaco.
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Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Research and draft writing by Clark Murphy. Illustrations by V. R. Laurence. Some illustrations from earlier videos by Colin Campbell. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
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