Tiwanaku

It’s hard to imagine a time before the Incas built Machu Picchu, the Aztec built Tenochtitlan or the ancient Egyptians built the Pyramids of Giza.

As far back as 1200 BCE, the Tiwanaku people built a beautiful port at an astonishing altitude of 3,850m on the southern edge of Lago Titicaca, the side of the lake that now belongs to Bolivia. Recognised as being the oldest ruins in the world, Tiwanaku is one the most important precursors to the Inca Empire.

We took the local bus (van) to the site for about 20 cents and arrived after tirelessly waiting for the bus to fill up completely in La Paz and a very cramped 2 hour journey. The driver dropped us off a mere 3km from the archaeological site, although he had insisted he could take us directly there. We began the exhausting walk in the dry, windy high altitude heat before we hitched a ride on the back of a local's truck. The thrill of living on the wild ride was short lived as we soon approached our destination and profusely thanked our driver.

At first glance Tiwanaku was not what I had been expecting, no giant pyramid in your face or herds of tourists living through the lens of their cameras. It was quiet and sparse, and completely soaked in rich, mysterious history that archaeologists are mostly still uncovering.

It’s monumental architecture is composed of large, perfectly rectangle blocks made from ashlar. Each block is fitted perfectly above the other with no evidence of mortar to hold them together and were frequently fitted with elaborate drainage systems. More impressively is that the blocks were quarried at the volcanoes at least 40km away and it is a mystery as to how they were transported to the site, what with the largest block weighing 131 metric tons.

The Tiwanaku people believed the god Viracocha (creator of all things including the universe, the sun, moon and stars) created people from a great piece of rock and brought them to life through the earth. They also believed that he created giants to move the massive stone blocks but then grew unhappy with them and destroyed them in a flood.

The most impressive remains of the port are those of the Kalasasaya temple, now protected by UNESCO and which dates back to 200 BCE. The temple, a large courtyard of about 130m by 120m in size, was used as a ceremonial centre and for astronomical observations. Its four corners point north, south, east and west. In the centre of the courtyard once stood the Puerta del Sol (Gateway of the Sun), made from a single slab of andesite and estimated to weigh 44 tons. The light of the sun would shine through the gateway twice a year, indicating the autumn and spring equinoxes. However, the Spanish conquistadors tried to rob the gateway. Just as they were about to leave the courtyard, they dropped it and the gateway cracked into two parts. It now stands in this location, still with the huge crack scarring its archway.

Viracocha is carved into the middle of its arch so that he can overlook his people and lands. He is surrounded by what is thought to be either calendar signs or natural forces for agricultural worship. There also appear 12 faces covered by a solar mask and 30 running or kneeling figures, which seem to represent the 12 months of the calendar and their 30 days.

The Gateway of the Sun belongs to a series of gateways at the site, including the Puerta de la Luna (Gateway of the Moon) and Puma Punku (Gateway of the Puma). The puma, king of the animal kingdom, represented the present, the condor represented the future and the serpent was the representation of the past. The condor was the only animal that could carry the soul to the heavens and the serpent took the body back into the earth from where it first came from.

The archaeological site is also home to the temple of Akapana, a pyramid originally compiled of 7 superimposed platforms with stone retaining walls rising up to 18m. Only the lowest of these and part of one of the intermediate walls survive intact. Much of Tiwanaku was destroyed, looted or exposed to amateur excavations. Not much is known about the site and its people as there exists no local written language yet to be deciphered and even today, a lot of Tiwanaku still remains underground.

Our guide called the Tiwanaku people the forefathers of the Incas. When the lake began to dry up and Tiwanaku no longer deemed an appropriate place to live, the people moved west towards Peru and it was there that their sons became the Inca kings.

As one of the locals who still live at the Tiwanaku site, our guide was full of insightful and mysterious stories about the Tiwanaku people and yet hidden behind a perfectly, upright wall he would always try to sell us a piece of stone craftsmanship that he himself had excavated from the site. Indeed, he was a strange mix of morals.