Tiahuanaco: the mysterious city
More than 2 miles above the sea level, about 12 miles from the Titicaca lake, in the Bolivian Andes, there are the ruins of Tiahuanaco. This city has been dated to year 500 AD by official archeologists, but the correct dating could put its origin way farther back in time, around 17.000 years ago.
The first thing that tickles one's curiosity is that Tiahuanaco is obviously a port-town, but the Titicaca is 12 miles away, as remarked above.
What is the reason of this anomaly?
Let's take a closer look to the Titicaca lake, which is a key to entering the mysteries connected to Tiahuanaco.
The Titicaca is a lake of a special kind. Its water presents a very high concentration of salt, and all the lakes in the surroundings (the Bolivia's Uyuni, Coipasa, Chiguana, the Chile's Atacama, Punta Negra, the Argentina's Arizaro, Hombre Muerto etc.) are completely salty.
On the banks of the Titicaca runs a white-yellow stripe formed of salty sediments and of calcareous deposits of seaweeds; the surrounding area is covered with several millions of fossil sea-shells.
Through this strange findings has been discovered that there has been a huge lifting of the land which formed the South America.
Due to this lifting enormous masses of sea-water got lifted up - togheter with billions of sea-creatures - to the level of the Andes' highplains and peaks. This is estimated to have happened around 100 million years ago.
Still today, in the lake lives an abundant sea fauna, like the Hippocampus and other oceanic creatures, evidence of the fact that the lake was actually a part of the Ocean millions years ago.
Moreover, after its formation, the lake and the area have gone through several more major changings and adjustments, since there are several coastal lines all around the lake testifying the relevant changes of width and lenght of it, with big discrepances between the northern side, much higher, and the southern one.
In this geologic scenery enters Tiahuanaco. As said above, it is clear that the city was a port, with several docks and piers, some so big that they would allow the docking of hundreds of ships.
The anomaly is that there is no lake anymore. What's left is a coastline made of sediments.
The Titicaca now is 12 miles far, and 30 meters lower than the level of the city. What happened after the foundation of Tiahuanaco to cause such a phenomenon?
The official archeology set a date for its foundation around year 500 AD. Tiahuanaco was discovered in the 16th century.
This implies that in 1000 years supposedly to have happened such a disaster able to move the city (or the lake) 12 miles away and to lift it up till 30 meters higher.
But the geologic disaster able to create such a changing of the area would have not just passed unnoticed by archeologists and geologists.
The city
The city is made up of five main buildings. Four of them - the Pyramid Accapàna, the Door of the Sun, the Subterranean Temple and the Kalasasàya - are all in the same area, close to each other.
Several hundreds meters south-west there is the Puma Punku (which means the Door of the Puma), the main port of the city.
Here several hundred ships could dock, being able to simultaneously load on and off their heavy cargos. The area is filled with enormous stone blocks scattered here and there and varying between 100 and 150 tons of weight.
There is one block which still is in its place on the dock which weighs around 400 tons!
Two more things are intriguing: it seems clear that the to keep togheter the blocks of this building there has been used a method never used anywhere else in South America.
The blocks are kept togheter through metal clamps shaped as an I.
Instead, this is the same method used in Egypt on the ruins located at the Elephantine island of the Nile.
The second strange thing is that the place is filled with cross symbols, which could not relate anyway with the Christian cross, even according to the official dating of the site: still there were 1000 years before the christians would reach there.
The Pyramid Accapàna is a steps pyramid. It is aligned quite precisely with the cardinal directions and it had a covering made of andesit which now is almost all gone.
The pyramid is very ruined because it has been used as a quarry along the time.
In its interior the archeologists found a complicated grid of shafts. All through the grid there are many sort of weirs used to gather the water coming from a tank placed on top of the buildings through a series of levels descending to a ditch which surrounds the whole pyramid.
The function of this hydraulic system is not clear so far. Some archeologist thought it was related to some kind of primitive cult in connection with the powers of the water and of the rain.
There is a hint of something quite different hidden in the name of the pyramid. The name Accapàna is made of two aymarà (a dialect still spoken by the indians of the region) words : "Hake" and "Apana".
They mean respectively "water" and "to die" (which may be indicating a water death). Could it be that this pyramid was a place of death?
One more theory claims that the hydraulic system had a function related to the washing of minerals...
The main interest in the Subterranean Temple is a face carved in a high red rock column. It is believed with no doubts to be the face of Viracocha, a God-Hero found under different names all through the pre-colombian civilizations.
He has big round eyes, a straight nose narrow on the top and larger on the nostrils. He has a peculiar beard, with naked skin all around the mouth and a very big goatee.
Besides him, above and below the ears and around the head, there are carved strange animals, prehistoric figures with big tails and weird legs. His bodily figure stands with the arms and the hands crossed and he wears a long dress.
A snake ascends aside the dress till his shoulders.
The Kalasasàya and the Door of the Sun are parts of the same buildings. The Kalasasàya (it means the place of the vertical stones) looks like a huge fence with stones 4 meters high placed all around the site.
Posnansky's theory
Arthur Posnansky, a bolivian-german researcher who dedicated fifty years of studies to Tiahuanaco, in his four-volumes book "Tiahuanacu: The cradle of American man" explains his revolutionary theories which made him date the building of the city back to year 15.000 BC.
Mainly, he based his calculations on archeoastronomy studies. The main concept he used to recalculate the dating of Tiahuanaco is the "obliqueness of the ecliptic" of the terrestrial globe.
The obliqueness of the ecliptic is the angle formed by the plane of the terrestrial orbit and the plane of the heavenly equator. Now this angle is around 23° 27'.
We will explain the phenomenon using the example made by Graham Hankock in his "Fingerprints of Gods" - check out our review.
He said to imagine being in a boat. This boat would roll upwards and downwards following the rhythm of the waves.
Thus, if one was to be in the front side of the boat looking straight ahead, the angle between that person and the horizon would change following a constant oscillation.
The terrestrial globe has the same oscillation along its orbit around the sun, which generates modifications in the obliqueness of the ecliptic.
This oscillation makes the angle vary from 22,1° to 24,5° over a period of 41.000 years, then it starts over.
Through graphics and equations it is possible to obtain precise angles and historic dates.
Arthur Posnansky was able to calculate the date of the construction through the alignments of the Kalasasàya with the dawn and the sunset (they vary due to the cycle of the obliqueness which alterates their azimuth position through the centuries). The angle Posnansky established quite precisely for the construction of the Kalasasàya was 23° 8' 48''. Then he obtained the dating: around year 15.000 BC.
Several researchers studied Posnansky's results afterwards. Between 1927 and 1930, the scientists Hans Ludendorff (chief of the Astronomic Observatory of Potsdam), Friedrich Becker (member of the Specula Vaticana), Arnold Kohlschutter (astronomist of the Bonn University) and Rolf Muller (astronomist of the Astrofisic Institute of Potsdam) verified Posnansky's results and stated that they were reliable.
Of course the official position of the archeology could not accept it.
But there's more.
Inside the Kalasasàya there are two huge statues: one located in the south-west corner, called "El Fraile" (the monk), the other one located in the middle of the eastern side of the building's fence.
The statue called "El Fraile" is about 1,80 meters high. The face - androgin-like - shows huge eyes and lips.
He is holding in his right hand something like a knife with a wavy blade, and in his left hand something like a book with a kind of bookmarker coming out as from a folder.
The lower part of the statue presents the most thrilling thing.
The whole lower body is covered with a dress made of fish scales, each of them made out of very small and stylized fish heads. Thus "El Fraile" looks like a fish-man.
In the region there is a legend which talks about the Gods of the lake, Chullua and Umantua, which have fish tails.
The fish-man symbolism isn't a peculiarity of Tiahuanaco. Right away we think of certain legends of the Mesopotamian area.
These legends talk about strange amphibian beings who came to Mesopotamia before history begun. Their leader was called Oannes.
They have been described as fish-looking beings, with a human head under a fish-like outter one. They would talk like humans.
They are said to have taught mankind all kind of things, from agriculture to geometry, from art to laws. In the nitetime they would leave for the sea and stay there till the next day.
Some bas-reliefs still picture those beings, and in fact they look very similar to "El Fraile", with dresses made of fish scales, and with their hands holding something not identified but very similar to what "El Fraile" holds in his hands.
The coincidence strikes and the brain starts wondering......
But moreover, the Dogon tribe of Africa - check the article -, when asked about their deep astronomic knowledge by two french antrohopologists, said that they had been taught by fish-like beings called Nommo who came from Sirius thousand years before....
But let's move on.
Another very strange thing relates to the Door of the Sun. It is a marvelous building, a monolith of andesit about 3,80 meters wide, 3 meters high and 45 cm. deep; it weighs 10 tons.
In the middle of the upper side there is what is called the "frieze of the calendar".
The main figure most probably pictures Viracocha in his terrifying aspect, as a God-Warrior holding lightenings in his hands (and we may find Gods holding the power of lightening all through the world's mythology....we just think of the Greek Zeus).
On both sides there is a series of figures moving towards Viracocha. The base of the frieze is decorated with what is known as the "bend"; it is made of a series of step pyramids put alternatively right side and upside down.
Here we find something astonishing: the figure of an elephant.
Now, it is known that there are no elephants in America. But elephants had been living there - in America - for a long time, till they disappeared around year 10.000 BC.
The species which lived there was the "Cuvieronius", but it isn't the only extinct species carved into the rock of the Door of the Sun.
One in particular - the "Toxodontis" - seems to be very common in Tiahuanaco: there are no less than 40 heads carved on the Door of the Sun, and it has been also found pictured on pottery and sculptured in little 3D statues.
The Toxodontis lived in South America from year 1.600.000 BC till around 10.000 BC.
So it most probably disappeared at the same time as the Cuvieronius and other extinct animals - like the "Shelidoterium" or the "Macrauchenia" - that have been found carved and pictured in Tiahuanaco.
These pictures of extinct animals seem to confirm the dating made by Posnansky through his archeo-astronomic calculations, where the remnants of the city could seem an ancient book of zoology....
One more thing: the Door of the Sun is missing some of its parts, but accurate studies seem to have proven that it was never completed.
It seems as if it had been left there before the building was complete, as if the only concern was to run away from something......
Year 10.000 BC......when the earth was about to drown in the Universal Flood.......
