Tiwanaku

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The "Gate of the Sun"

Tiwanaku (old spellings: Tiahuanaco and Tiahuanacu) is an important Pre-Columbian archaeological site in Bolivia. 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, about 72 km (44 miles) west of La Paz, Bolivia - (16°33'17.00"S - 068°40'24.00"W).

Some have hypothesized that Tiwanaku's modern name is related to the Aymara term "taypikala", meaning "stone in the center". However, the name by which Tiwanaku was known to its inhabitants has been lost, as the people of Tiwanaku had no written language.

1 Cultural development
2 Architecture and art
3 Archaeology
4 Further notes
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Cultural development

The site of Tiwanaku was founded in approximately 200 BC as a small agriculturally-based village, with a number of similar neighbors. The high altitude Titicaca Basin required the development of a distinctive farming technique known as "raised-field" agriculture, which are only found today as experimental, government-funded projects. In antiquity, they comprised a small but significant percentage of the agriculture in the region, along with irrigated fields, pasture, terraced fields and cocha (small lake) farming. Artificially raised planting mounds are separated by 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, providing thermal insulation. Over time, the canals also were used to farm edible fish, and the resulting canal sludge was dredged for fertilizer. The use of various agricultural techniques allowed local communities to grow and population to increase.

The community grew to urban proportions between AD 600 and AD 800, becoming an important regional power in the southern Andes. At its maximum extent, the city covered approximately 5.0 square kilometers, and had as many as 40,000 inhabitants. Its unique art style is found in vast areas covering modern highland Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. It is difficult to tell, however, whether these areas were part of an empire in the political sense, under cultural and commercial influence, or independent trading partners.

Tiwanaku collapsed around AD 1000, possibly due to environmental reasons, from an invasion of new people from the south, a loss of faith in the Tiwankau religion, or a combination of all three. The area around Tiwanaku was not abandoned, but the city fell into decay and its characteristic art style vanished.

[edit] Architecture and art

Tiwanaku architecture is characterized by large stones, weighing up to 100 tons, with stone cutting, squaring, dressing, and notching exceeding even the Inca in artisanship. The Tiwanaku art style is distinctive, and, together with the related Huari style, defines the Middle Horizon of Andean prehistory. Both of these styles seem to have been heavily influenced by that of the earlier Pukara culture in the northern Titicaca Basin.

[edit] Archaeology

Statue in Tiwanaku

Walls around the temple Kalasasaya

"Gateway of the Sun", Tiwanaku, drawn by Ephraim Squier in 1877. The scale is exaggerated in this drawing.

Much of the architecture of the site is in a poor state of preservation, having been subjected to looting and amateur excavations attempting to locate valuables since shortly after Tiwanaku's fall. This destruction continued during the Spanish conquest and colonial period, and during 19th century and the early 20th century, and has included quarrying stone for building and railroad construction and target practice by military personnel.

Detailed study of Tiwanaku began on a small scale in the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1860s, Ephraim George Squier visited the ruins and later published maps and sketches completed during his visit. German geologist Alphons Stübel spent nine days in Tiwanaku in 1876, creating a map of the site based on careful measurements. He also made sketches and created paper impressions of carvings and other architectural features. A book containing major photographic documentation was published in 1892 by engineer B. von Grumbkow. With commentary by archaeologist Max Uhle, this was the first in-depth scientific account of the ruins.

In the 1960s, an attempt was made at restoring the site, but by very uninformed parties. The walls pictured to the right, of the Kalasasaya, are almost all reconstruction. The original stones making up the Kalasasaya would have resembled a more "Stonehenge" like style, spaced evenly apart and standing straight up. Unfortunately, the parties that made the reconstructions decided to make the Kalasasaya be enclosed by a wall that they themselves built. Ironically enough, the reconstruction itself is actually much poorer quality stoneworking than the people of Tiwanaku were capable of. It should also be noted that the Gateway of the Sun, that now stands in the Kalasasaya, is not in its original location, having been moved sometime earlier from its original location, which is unknown.

Today Tiwanaku is a UNESCO world heritage site, and is administered by the Bolivian government.

The Department of Archaeology of Bolivia (DINAR) has been conducting excavations on the Akapana pyramid. The PAPA project, or Proyecto Arqueologico Pumapunku-Akapana (Pumapunku-Akapana Archaeological Project) run by the University of Pennsylvania, has been excavating in the area surrounding the pyramid for the past few years, and also conducting Ground Penetrating Radar surveys of the area. An archaeological field school, offered every summer through Harvard's Summer School Program, offers archaeology students the chance to learn to excavate in the residential area outside the monumental core. The program directors are Dr. Gary Urton of Harvard, expert in quipu, and Dr. Alexei Vranich of the University of Pennsylvania.

[edit] Further notes

On January 21, 2006 newly-elect Bolivian president Evo Morales attended an indigenous spiritual ceremony at Tiwanaku where he was crowned as Apu Mallku of the indigenous people of the Altiplano and received gifts from many groups representing indigenous peoples from various parts of Latin America and the world.

During the fad for theories suggesting extraterrestrial visits in prehistoric times, pseudoscientists advancing these ideas were fond of ascribing an immense age to Tiwanaku, on the order of 12000 years.