Arthur Posnansky's alternative theory on the origin of Tiahuanaco
According to official archaeology, the foundation of the stone city that we today call Tiahuanaco (or Tiwanaku), located approximately 4000 meters above sea level in the Andean plateau, about 22 kilometers from Lake Titicaca, dates back to the 16th century.
Traditional archeology has recognized the Pukara (500 BC), Uros, Qaluyo and Chiripa cultures as the cultural substrate that successively gave rise to the classical Tiahuanaco civilization.
According to these theses, peoples of origin not only from the Amazon (Arawak language), but also from Polynesia and Mesoamerica (Colla, from the Aymara language), gave rise to the high Andean culture about 1,500 years before Christ.
The most important dating method with which these dates were defined was carbon 14. This system has, however, a limitation, since it works only when there is organic material, so it is not useful to reveal the date of construction of megalithic buildings such as those of Tiahuanaco or like those of Sacsayhuamán , for example.
One of the alternative theories that would explain the origin of Tiahuanaco was proposed by the versatile Austrian scholar Arthur Posnansky (Vienna, 1873-La Paz, 1946).
After completing his studies, graduating as a naval engineer, he traveled to South America, demonstrating a deep interest in the study of Andean civilizations.
He returned to Europe at the end of the Acre War, in which Brazil, as the victor, appropriated that territory.
Posnansky returned definitively to Bolivia in 1903, where he remained until his death in 1946.
He was director of the National Museum of Bolivia and the Archaeological Society, founded in 1930.
During the first 40 years of the 20th century, Posnansky thoroughly studied the enigmatic site of Tiahuanaco and, based on archaeo-astronomy calculations (which were later confirmed by other researchers, such as Hancook), he stated, together with the scholar Ralf Muller, that the city of Tiahuanaco was founded in 15,000 BC, in the middle of the ice age.
According to Posnansky, the antediluvian Tiahuanaco civilization had to face enormous catastrophes that occurred around the eleventh millennium BC. These cataclysms would have first raised the level of the bottom of Lake Titicaca, causing its waters to overflow, thus flooding immense areas of inhabited and cultivated land.
Posnansky came to these conclusions because during some excavations he found human skeletons very close to the remains of fish and fossils of aquatic plants that normally grow in the depths of the lake.
Posnansky's alternative theory also states that after the flood of 11,000 BC there was a progressive decrease in the lake, which made Tiahuanaco, initially built on its shores (with the docks of Puma Punku) about 22 kilometers distant, moving it away. of the coast, so important for the economic life of the city until the fifteenth millennium BC.
The survivors of the flood and the subsequent economic crisis developed advanced agricultural techniques that are only today about to be studied by some archaeo-agronomist specialists. In particular, they managed to obtain, through crossings and techniques that until now are not very well understood, excess production of corn, quinoa, kiwicha, potatoes and maca (a very powerful nutrient still used today) despite the fact that the climate had excessively cooled.
In his famous book Tiahuanaco, the Cradle of the American Man, Posnansky proposes two tests that according to him are essential to consider Tiahuanaco as the oldest city in the world.
First of all, the archaeo-astronomical proof: studying the archaeological site, Posnansky maintained that when the Kalasasaya temple was founded, the earth's axis (north-south pole) was inclined at the perpendicular of the ecliptic of 23 degrees 8' and 48' ' (in 1930 it was 23 degrees and 27').
According to the calculations of the international Ephemeris conference, this inclination of the Earth's axis corresponded precisely to 15,000 BC.
The second proof is archaeological: Posnansky found bones of a toxodont (a megafauna mammal extinct in 12,000 BC) together with human bones in the same stratigraphic layer.
In 1930 Posnansky had contact with the German scholar Edmund Kiss (1886-1960) who subsequently joined Heinrich Himmler's SS.
On September 23, 1930 the two scholars founded the Bolivian Archaeological Society in La Paz.
It should be noted that September 23, the day of the spring equinox, was considered by Kiss as the day of departure of the antediluvian Tiwanaku calendar.
The objective of the Andean studies of Edmund Kiss, who was later included in the Ahnenerbe, the archaeological research entity created by Himmler in 1935, which had the crazy purpose of demonstrating the superiority of the imaginary "Aryan race", was to find evidence to prove Hans Hörbiger's theory of universal ice.
According to this theory, the Atlanteans, after the cataclysm that destroyed their continent, would have escaped sailing south and settled in the Andean plateau, founding Tiahuanaco 15 millennia before Christ.
We do not know if Posnansky shared Kiss's Atlantean theory, but, in any case, the truth was that Tiahuanaco was very ancient.
In 1942, the Nazi government of Germany sealed an agreement with the government of Bolivia to carry out excavations in Tiahuanaco to a depth of 20 meters, in order to reveal the mystery of the city's origin.
These excavations were not carried out due to the Nazi defeat in 1945.
However, lately some of the interesting excavation work in Tiahuanaco was unexpectedly interrupted, as if to prevent the world from knowing the true origin of this enigmatic city of stone.
Maybe Arthur Posnansky was right and Tiahuanaco is really the oldest city in the world?
YURI LEVERATTO
