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| Tiwanaku [6] Location: 16°33'17"S, 68°40'24"W |
"This make Tiwanaku the highest, above the sea level, ancient civilisation in the world. Why would anyone went up that high just to make a living?!"
Tiwanaku may have been occupied as early as 1500 BC. There is no record that this people have any written language nor they did know about wheel [1]. Their megalith structure comprises of large stones range from several tons up to ~26 tons. The Gateway of Sun God was carved out of a single block of stone weighing up to 10 tons. The quarries where the stones may be obtained from are located at ~80 km away.
This is a bit odd! Any advance and complex construction would require precise written specification and good transportation (by air, wheels, or boats). These people didn't know about wheels and nor that they could fly. So even with boats, they would still need to drag these huge stones around from over 80 km.
Imagine how the working days of its head architect would be,
"Ahh, Tom? I'd like you to take 100-200 people and go across the valley, to the quarry, and fetch me couple of odd thousands block of stones"..."bunches of them should be the size of your head, several hundred more should be the size of (scratched his head - they didn't have written language, remember?)... ah... looked around ... There! the size of 3 of that cow putting together! ..."
Imagine when Tom returned with all the stones that perfectly fit together The construction was done!
Imagine how the working days of its head architect would be,
"Ahh, Tom? I'd like you to take 100-200 people and go across the valley, to the quarry, and fetch me couple of odd thousands block of stones"..."bunches of them should be the size of your head, several hundred more should be the size of (scratched his head - they didn't have written language, remember?)... ah... looked around ... There! the size of 3 of that cow putting together! ..."
Imagine when Tom returned with all the stones that perfectly fit together The construction was done!
Tiwanaku people did not know how the megalith construction was built, so I don't think that they were the actual builder. From this I incline to think that Tiwanaku megaliths were build way before 1500 BC. The art and carving on the surfaces do not present the same precision and complexity as the megalith construction itself. This implies that the surface arts may not be done using the same techniques, or it may be done by different people, different time, different eras. In fact, [1] suggests that these structures were built by their "Sun God":
"The Tiwanaku believed that Viracocha created giants to move the massive stones that comprise much of their archaeology, but then grew unhappy with the giants and created a flood to destroy them [1]."
Okay! So here is my interpretation...
Some good reading:
- [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwanaku
- [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gate_of_the_Sun
- [3] Sun God Image (available under Creative Commons)
- [6] Image Tiwanaku, by Alexson Scheppa Peisino(AlexSP) (available under Creative Commons)
- [7] Tiwanaku: Spiritual and Political Centre of the Tiwanaku Culture
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