| September 29...........Isla del Sol, Lake
Titicaca, Bolivia Only ten feet from where I am sitting is the place where Viracocha, the greatest of Andean deities, recreated the world. The precise spot is marked by a gurgling waterfall jutting from a black cliff. It is the preeminent holy place of all ancient Andean cultures and the source of a hundred cosmogenic myths. To get a deep feeling for the spiritual life of South America in pre-Columbian times, one must come to this place and learn of these myths. Here is one variant of the myth of Viracocha. Long ago in a forgotten time the world experienced a terrible storm with tremendous floods. The lands were plunged into a period of absolute darkness and frigid cold, and humankind was nearly eradicated. Some time after the deluge, the creator god Viracocha arose from the depths of Lake Titicaca. Journeying first to the island of Titicaca (now called Isla del Sol, the Island of the Sun), Viracocha commanded the sun, moon, and stars to rise. Next going to Tiahuanaco, he fashioned new men and women out of stones and, sending them to the four quarters, began the repopulation of the world. With various helpers (different legends give different numbers), Viracocha then traveled from Tiahuanaco in a northwesterly direction, bringing civilization and peace wherever he went. Known by other names including Kon Tiki and Tunupa, he was said to have been a bearded, blue-eyed, white man of large stature. A teacher and a healer, a miracle worker and an astronomer, Viracocha is also credited with introducing agriculture, writing, and metallurgy. Tales of this enigmatic character weave their way through the fabric of archaic Andean life. Archaeologists and historians assert that Viracocha is nothing more than another mythic figure, but he may well have been a real person and he may be the key to unraveling many of the riddles of ancient South America. In my travels through Peru and Bolivia, I have generally traced the reverse route of Viracocha southward through the Andes, recently arriving at sacred Lake Titicaca.
Situated at 3,856 meters (mas o menos) and covering 8000 square kilometers, Lake Titicaca is over 450 meters deep and has more than thirty (mostly uninhabited) islands. During the past week I have stayed on three of its main islands; Amantani, Isla de la Luna (the island of the moon), and Isla del Sol. My nights were spent in rustic huts of peasant farmers or camping among the windblown crags of the island summits. By day I explored crumbling ruins and swam in the ice-cold waters of the lake. I also reread (for the third time) the hundred-plus pages of notes I have taken from my readings of pre-Columbian archaeology. Soon I will leave the Andes mountains. Being here at Titicaca, at their spiritual epicenter, it feels appropriate that I begin writing of the history and prehistory of this fascinating region.
Was South America originally inhabited by Paleo-Indians walking across the Bering land bridge? When did sophisticated cultures first appear? Did additional peoples come from ancient Polynesia, Asia, and the Middle East? What mean the myths of great cataclysms of ages past? Who was the enigmatic figure Viracocha? And what are we to make of the astonishing suggestions of contact, indeed settlement, from Atlantis and the far reaches of interstellar space? Perhaps the most certain thing I can say in response to these riddles is that they have no certain answers. A legion of colonial-era Spanish chroniclers, 18th century antiquarians, 20th century archaeologists, and a mixed assortment of mystics, charlatans, and grave robbers have excavated and speculated for four hundred years. They have posed far more questions than they have answered. In the next two sections of these journal writings I will briefly discuss some of these matters. But be forewarned dear reader; I do not have the final answers. While some university-educated archaeologists will rather arrogantly insist on the veracity of their interpretations, I feel we have only scratched the surface of these subjects. A fuller knowledge is some years in the coming. According to conventional theories, humans are thought to be relatively recent arrivals in the western hemisphere. The Americas are believed to be peopled by an Asian population that entered the hemisphere by way of the Bering land bridge during the last half of the final glacial period, within the past 30,000 to 40,000 years. Much of this thinking is based on archaeological excavation and the artifacts it has produced. The nature of American stone projectile points and bone tools show close similarities with the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic. Similarities in the way of making such tools, as well as a reliance on the same game animals, is interpreted as meaning that the technology of the early hunters in the Americas was an extension of Old World patterns. Slowly, over a period of many thousands of years, our ancient ancestors walked from what is now Alaska all the way south to the tip of Argentina and Chile. A modest collection of excavated sites along the way have yielded radiocarbon dates of the period between 12,000 and 8,000 BC (a few radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dates, of suspect association and accuracy, have even indicated a pre-projectile human presence in South America as early as 29,000 years ago). The people who left these remains are termed Paleo-Indians and their way of subsistence depended primarily upon hunting, fishing, and gathering. It is interesting to note that a large part of the diet of these early humans was derived from mastodons, elephants, giant sloths, and horses. By approximately 8000 BC all these megafauna were brought to extinction by over hunting. The period between roughly 8000 and 2000 BC is termed the Archaic Transition or the Preceramic. It was characterized by seasonal nomadism and subsistence food gathering giving way to sedentary life (both coastal and montane locations), technological proliferation, and the first experiments with plant and animal domestication. By 5000 BC we find evidence of cultivated beans, tubers, peppers, and corn, and by 2500 BC the first clear signs of domestication of llamas and alpacas, the camelids of the Andes. Following the Archaic Transition, from roughly 2000 BC to around 1400 AD and the rise of the Inca, archaeologists have delineated seven major periods. Each of these periods is represented by prominent cultures and their definitive styles of architecture, ceramics, and textiles. These periods and cultures are: Lower Formative or Initial (2000-1000 BC) Early Horizon (1000-300 BC); Chavin and Pukara cultures; Primary sites: Chavin de Huantar and Sechin Alto. Early Intermediate or Upper Formative (300 BC-100AD); Paracas and early Tiahuanaco cultures; Primary site: Paracas Necropolis. Florescent or Classic (100-700 AD); Nazca, Moche, and middle Tiahuanaco cultures; Primary sites: Huacas del Sol and de la Luna, Sipan, and Tiahuanaco. Middle Horizon (600-1000 AD); Huari and Final Tiahuanaco cultures; Primary sites: Huari and Tiahuanaco. Late Intermediate (1000-1400 AD); Chimu, Chachapoyas, and Chancay cultures; Primary sites: Chan-Chan, Kuelap, and others. Late Horizon (1400-1538); Inca; Numerous Inca sites from modern day Ecuador to Bolivia.
In general, the spatial development of sophisticated cultures in the central South American region proceeded in a west to east geographical direction, starting at the coasts, heading upward to the lowland valleys, and culminating in the high mountains and altiplano. We may discern three broad steps in this process and all of them may be understood as responses to the increasing food requirements of the growing populations. The first step begins at sea side. The complex of ocean currents sweeping the coasts from central Peru to northern Chile has the highest marine biomass of any of the currents in the entire Western hemisphere. Great schools of anchoveta and a rich stock of small fish usually stay close to shore and can be harvested with the simple technologies available to early peoples. This great food resource gave rise to the first large sedentary populations and supplied the foundations of the early coastal civilizations. The second step in the development of central South American civilization was made possible by the development of large scale agricultural projects in the numerous coastal valleys watered by mountain rivers flowing westward from the Andes. These agricultural projects were characterized by the reclamation and use of dessert lands by means of large-scale irrigation. Small-scale plant cultivation had certainly been practiced alongside streams in these valley for a thousand years before the growth of large social centers. However, it was the group labor forces and the principles of corporate organization developed and supported by the maritime context that made possible the huge work projects necessary to large-scale agriculture. The third broad step in the development of South American civilization and its eastward movement into the high Andes was itself based on three things: the development of sierra agriculture, camelid herding, and a unique Andean social innovation called vertical archipelagoes. The high altitude regions of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes, where the Incas were to fashion their great empire, are cold and dry for most of the year, and unsuitable for growing any but a small selection of crops. The primary crops of the region, in both ancient and contemporary times, have been tubers and potatoes (over fifty varieties of potatoes are still grown) and quinoa (pronounced keenwa; the most nutritious grain on the planet). Camelids in the Andes are represented by three main species; llamas, alpacas, and vicunas. Of these three, llamas were by far the most important to people of the mountain cultures. Llamas are superb pack animals (the Inca, for example, had supply caravans of as many as 1000 llamas), and were the primary source of both meat and wool (the wool of alpacas and vicunas was used almost solely for the Inca nobility). But the peoples of the Andean altiplano did not survive only upon potatoes, quinoa, and llama meat. Michael Moseley, a specialist in central Andean civilizations, writes that, "Extensive ethnohistorical and ethnographic sources document an ancient traditional pattern of highland communities maintaining economic self-sufficiency by establishing rights to use areas in higher and lower ecological zones outside their home territories. Because the foreign areas of use are discrete and separate from one another, they form a chain of economic islands, or an ‘archipelago.’ By exploiting different islands at different altitudes, villagers could supply themselves with products from the altiplano, Amazon basin, and coast."
The Andes gave rise to two great empires, the Inca (discussed in a earlier section of this journal) and that of Tiahuanaco. While the Inca empire is much the better known, both by archeologists and tourist visitors to South America, and its sites far more numerous and visually remarkable, Tiahuanaco is the Andes sacred center. Now almost entirely in ruins, it is to South America what the Great Pyramid is to Egypt, Avebury to England, or Teotihuacan to Mexico. Twelve miles from the coast of Lake Titicaca, and inseparably tied to that lake in ancient legends, Tiahuanaco was the source of the cosmogenic myths, the social order, and the enigmatic pan-Andean preoccupation with astronomy that underwrote more than two thousand years of Andean culture. Yet, for all its importance, little is known of Tiahuanaco. This is not because the place has not been excavated or studied, for a handful of researchers have explored the site during the past seventy years. Rather, the reason for the enduring mystery of Tiahuanaco stems from some of its structures - and the astronomical alignments of those structures - that seemingly indicate a construction period far more ancient than any other site in South America. In the next section of these journal writings, I will discuss some of these controversial matters, but here, in the final paragraphs of this section, let me relate the more conventional and accepted theories of the site. Archaeologists generally agree that the civilization that spawned Tiahuanaco rose around 600 BC and fell into decline sometime soon after 1000 AD (probably as a result of prolonged drought associated with El Nino weather patterns). Alan Kolata, a leading specialist on Tiahuanaco (also written as Tiwanaku), gives the following succinct chronology and descriptions of the site: "For an entire millennium (AD 0 - 1000), the political and cultural history of the Titicaca basin was determined by the fortunes of a single people and their singular city - Tiwanaku. Tiwanaku rose to prominence during the Early Intermediate period, first in the southern Lake Titicaca region and then, late in this period, around 400 AD, throughout the entire lake basin. Monumental construction projects, both architectural and agrarian, began at Tiwanaku during phase 3 (AD 100 - 375). The continued unabated through the succeeding Classic Tiwanaku phase, Tiwanaku 4 (AD 375 - 725). In this latter phase, Tiwanaku achieved true imperial status, establishing administrative centers, satellite cities, and economic colonies over the altiplano, in the Bolivian selva, and on the coasts of southern Peru and northern Chile." Archaeological research has demonstrated "that the minimal area of the civic/ceremonial core, together with the surrounding sectors of dense habitations, extends over four square kilometers, and that the entire urban environment sprawls over an area of six square kilometers. It is clear that a substantial population was permanently resident at Tiwanaku; an estimate of thirty to sixty thousand is not unreasonable." "Since the Spanish conquest, innumerable stones of the city have been torn from their original context and reused in the construction of churches, private houses, and the roadbed of the railroad that runs through the site to the village of Huaqui on Lake Titicaca. Yet, despite the devastation wrought by looters over the centuries, enough architecture remains intact to enable us to identify structures that fulfilled various religious, administrative, and residential functions." (Kolata) Tiahuanaco has four (surviving) primary structures, called the Akapana pyramid, the Kalasasaya ritual platform, the Sunken or Subterranean temple, and the Puma Punku (we have no idea what the original inhabitants called either the entire site or any of its structures, the preceding terms are Aymara and English names). The ceremonial core of Tiahuanaco was surrounded by an immense artificial moat that Kolata believes was "not to provide the Tiwanaku elite with a defensive structure....but rather evoked the image of the city core as an island, not a common, generic island, but the sacred island of Titicaca, the mythic situs of world creation and human emergence." Further commenting on this idea of the mythic centrality of Tiahuanaco, Kolata explains that, "the true name of Tiwanaku was Taypikhala, in Aymara (a local language), ‘the stone in the center.’ Such a name had a geocentric and ethnocentric meaning signifying that the city was conceived not only as the political capital of the state but also as the central point of the universe."
The Akapana pyramid, sometimes called the sacred mountain of Tiahuanaco, is a much eroded, seven-level, truncated pyramid measuring some 200 meters on a side and nearly 17 meters tall. Like the nearby Subterranean Temple and the Kalasasaya, the Akapana is precisely oriented to the cardinal directions. Each of the seven levels is constructed with beautifully cut and precisely joined blocks that were faced with panels once covered with metal plaques, carvings, and paintings. Kolata surmises that, "The upper terraces constituted a public, symbolic text, the specific content of which is now irrevocably lost. Given the ritual meaning we ascribe to the Akapana, these ‘public texts’ most likely referred to the role of this structure in Tiwanaku’s cosmogenic myths." In the center of the Akapana’s flat summit is a small, sunken courtyard laid out in the form of a square superimposed over a Greek cross; this courtyard is also oriented to the cardinal directions. Recent excavations of this courtyard, the interior of the pyramid, and the grounds beneath it have revealed an unexpected, sophisticated, and monumental system of interlinked surface and subterranean channels. These channels brought water collected upon the summit down and through the seven levels, where it exited below ground level, merged into a major subterranean drain system underneath the civic/ceremonial core of Tiwanaku, and ultimately flowed into Lake Titicaca. Commenting on this magnificent engineering, Kolata states, "It is apparent that the complex system of draining the Akapana was not a structural imperative. A much simpler and smaller set of canals could have drained the accumulated water from the summit. In fact the system installed by the architects of Akapana, although superbly functional, is overengineered, a piece of technical stone-cutting and joinery that is pure virtuosity." Kolata goes on to wonder about why all this work was done and concludes that, "the Akapana was conceived by the people of Tiwanaku as their principal emblem of the sacred mountain, a simulacrum of the highly visible, natural mountain huacas (sacred places) in the Quimsachata range....The Akapana partook of the spiritual essence of the of the Quimsachata range and evoked its image by its shape and by its mimicry of the natural circulation of mountain waters in the rainy season....The Akapana was Tiwanaku’s principal earth shrine, an icon of fertility and agricultural abundance. It was the mountain at the center of the island-world and may even have evoked the specific image of sacred mountains on Lake Titicaca’s Island of the Sun. In this context, the Akapana was the principal huaca of cosmogenic myth, the mountain of human origins and emergence, which took on specific mytho-historic significance." Kolata’s excavations at Tiwanaku are to be applauded and his interpretations of the Akapana’s meaning and function seem to make a lot of sense. But reading his works and considering his theories, I am again visited with a concern I frequently have when perusing the works of many "main-stream" archaeologists. This concern is the (what I judge to be) rather narrow-minded vantage point of conventional archaeologists. It is their extreme hesitancy to consider ideas and artifacts that do not fit nicely within the currently accepted theories regarding the origins and chronological development of archaic cultures. It is their limited knowledge of the ancient myths and astronomical preoccupations of the cultures and sites they ostensibly study. This matter is strikingly evident when we take a more comprehensive tour of Tiahuanaco in the company of certain thinkers and scholars branded as fringe by the university establishment. Yes, we run the risk of encountering some wild ideas and unsubstantiated theories, but sifting through this (often quite entertaining) material we may attain insights every bit as valuable as those offered by the conservative archaeological community. In the following section, I will present some of these alternative ideas regarding the origin and function of the great site of Tiahuanaco.
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