by Freddy Silva
Sun Door of the Kalasasaya and its complex astronomical detail.
Posnansky adds the following remark on the condition of this calendar stone: "The Door of the Sun which was found lying on its face on the ground, has been preserved in wonderful condition with all its inscriptions; but its back, and especially the end exposed to the adverse atmospheric conditions, shows an enormous wearing away. It should be pointed out that the block from which this notable monument was carved is composed of andesitic hornblende, vitreous and very hard lava, which, if polished as it was in that period, required several thousands of years to wear away in the form in which we see it today."10 By implication it is likely that the quadrangle in which it was placed was originally built before the flood.
As I walked around the ramparts of Tiwanaku I appreciated Posnansky's passion to bring some sense of order to the site. His discoveries, together with meticulous measurements and reconstruction drawings by Alfons Stüdel and Friedrich Max Uhle in the 1890s, paint a vivid picture of a complex, well-designed city, complete with polished megalithic floors, and piers capable of accommodating thirty ocean-going vessels. This would have been when the water level of Lake Titicaca was up to one hundred feet higher and the edge of the temple city lay at its shore.11 Tiwanaku was essentially one large man-made island. Indeed by following the contours of the lake before the flood one discovers how temples around its periphery, such as Amaru Muru, Cutimbo and Silustani, were once connected to this massive inland sea and accessed by boat — not dissimilar to temples along the Nile.
HIGH TECH AT PUMA PUNKU
For me, it is the haunting beauty of nearby Puma Punku and its jumble of intricately carved andesite platforms and monoliths that captures the imagination. Its scattered, enigmatic H-blocks made from greenish lava, quarried fifty-five miles north of Titicaca, resemble building blocks made for giants, designed to interlock and form impressive walls, sections of which still existed in the late 1800s. They possess the aura of an intricate computer schematic or engine room. The blocks appear identical, as though poured from a mold, yet close inspection shows each one to have been individually made.
The same applies to the mortise and tenon method with which large masonry blocks have been cut to slot perfectly into each other, a time-consuming enterprise requiring the removal of large amounts of stone, although the result offers great structural integrity against earthquakes. The blocks were further strengthened by I-grooves cut between adjoining slabs, a feature common to megalithic sites throughout the Pacific, Cambodia and Sumeria; identical grooves can been at the temple of Kom Ombu in Egypt. It is claimed that copper was poured into each I-groove to create a connecting strap between the stones. However, this ignores the fact that the resulting profile of the straps would be concave, and yet examples recovered from the site show they are convex. Furthermore, poured copper would have molded itself to the imperfections in the stone, but the items in the local museum show they are not; rather, they were individually manufactured for the purpose. Copper is a soft metal, it would snap when the heavy stones shifted during an earthquake; using iron would have been more sensible, and it is abundant throughout the region. The only viable explanation is that copper served as a conductor.
What remains at Puma Punku gives an idea of what Tiwanaku would have looked like in its prime. One massive, recumbent stone resembles a kind of architrave, beautifully polished, without a hint of tooling, featuring parabolic curves which would tax any modern mason or machine. An identical stone exists at the Sun temple at Ollantaytambo, and again among a field of stones still waiting to be catalogued at Saqqara in Egypt! Either the stonemason responsible must have been present at all three sites, or three separate ancient architects performed the same work, in the same era, using the same manual.
H-blocks. Puma Punku.
It has been noted how the blocks dispersed around Puma Punku feature tiny drilled holes, 0.15" in diameter, into which were inserted gold nails to fasten large sheets of gold with bas reliefs of the stone carvings beneath. Some of the nails were till in existence in 1930 because the local boys in charge of the museum found it impossible to remove them without damaging the stone.12
While the Akapana and Kallassasya are essentially solar based, Puma Punku was the companion temple, a lunar site under the symbolic protection of the Puma, an animal believed to represent the watery associations of the Moon. Just as Kallassasaya had its Door of the Sun so Puma Punku had its lunar counterpart. By the time Posnansky managed to analyze it, all that remained of this "most sublime and significant monument of the Americans" were fragments, albeit beautifully crafted ones.13 This impressive monolithic door also deviated from the Door of the Sun in that the carvings were no longer of birds but of fish.
Puma Punku's T-shape foundation incorporates an obscure mathematical ratio. The mound's proportion of 6:5 commemorates the Earth's precessional cycle of 25,920 years divided by its axial tilt of 21,600 years. The ratio is unique to this planet, so to incorporate it in a building project implies the architects possessed knowledge of obscure celestial mechanics observed over a vast period of time, the implication being that whoever built Puma Punku must have been around for at least that long, or they inherited the information from an even older civilization. Either way we are dealing with a staggering span of time. If this fails to impress, consider how the same ratio is created when taking the two fundamental building blocks behind all molecular structures, namely the sphere and tetrahedron. When the latter is placed inside the former, with the points of the tetrahedron touching the inner surface of the sphere, the ratio of the two surface areas is 6:5.14 This ratio also forms the earliest depiction of the ubiquitous Andean stepladder motif, the chakana or Andean cross, examples of which still existed on site a decade ago before they were stolen.
There is no doubt we are dealing with a technological and sophisticated culture in the high Andes that spanned every Dryas period, one that was clearly a cut above standard Neanderthal education.
THE MISALIGNMENT OF TIWANAKU
But there is a bigger riddle at Tiwanaku that has escaped attention. Ancient designers were masters of proportion and relationship. Countless examples around the world atest to the work of a people obsessed with placing temples in perfect relationship to each other and their natural surroundings, what later became the art of Feng Shui. And yet the Kalasasaya enclosure has been awkwardly inserted beside the tallest structure of the complex, the Akapana mound, as though the two sites are linked yet herald from two different ages.
Perhaps so. The Kalasasaya's alignment reflects its relationship to the meridian in 15,000 BC, as do the temples to the west and north. They form a unit. However the same is not true for the Akapana, nor a small enclosure immediately to the north called the semi-subterranean temple — nor Puma Punku half-a-mile to the southwest; these three are misaligned by 2º 50' to the rest of the site.15 They not only belong together, they belong to an even more remote period when they were aligned to a very different sky.
Is this possible? It is worth bearing in mind that the semi-subterranean temple was once a free-standing quadrangle of standing stones, since surrounded and buried by silt. It now stands some twelve feet below the level upon which the standing stones of the adjacent Kalasasaya rest. It stands to reason that it must far older than 15,000 BC, and by implication so must the Akapana and Puma Punku. Posnansky was of the same opinion when he noted how Tiwanaku shows signs of three distinct building periods. He too groups the three above temples into the first period, noting how the Akapana itself belonged to a remote age and was subsequently repaired and improved. In Posnansky's words: "With regard to the first, or prehistoric, period of Tiwanaku, as we have decided to call it, this is much more remote and we do not have, because of the present state of science, any basis for the establishing astronomical calculations; rather, we can only use a geological basis for the determination of the period in which it was built."16
The misalignment of Akapana and semi-subterranean temple relative t
o Kalasasaya; the same is true of Puma Punku
The second period belongs to the Kalasasaya, which,
he correctly maintained, was aligned to a different horizon, even showed signs of having been repaired after a catastrophic event hit the region. The third period is marked by refinements inside the Kalasasaya, such as an inner court, which again differs in orientation relative to its predecessor.
Semi-subterranean temple, well below the level of the Kalasasaya behind it.
Machined andesite at Puma Punku
How its H-blocks might have fitted together.
I have to agree with Posnasky's assessment because it plays out in other temples throughout the Andes sharing the same mythology as Tiwanaku. I have made the journey from Lake Titicaca to Cuzco on several occasions and each time is like walking slow motion into a revealing riddle. If one pays attention to the masonry of the sites it quickly becomes obvious that Andean temples experienced four distinctive building periods. Using central Cuzco, Saqsayhuaman, Pisac and Machu Picchu as examples, even the casual observer will note how the top portions of buildings are made from the most inferior and smallest sized stones. They're also joined together with mortar, rendering every reconstruction pointless in the face of the devastating earthquakes that terrorize this region. This style represents both Spanish handiwork and recent attempts at restoration. Below comes Inka standard, where the stones are larger than colonial efforts, less mortar is used, and in some cases an attempt has been made to imitate the older layer below, with the caveat that Inka stonework lacks the same precision, and tool marks are evident to the eye.
Comparing the Inka layer to the third layer is like comparing a stagecoach to a Bugatti. The stones are impractically large, fitted without mortar, the edges are clean, sharp and precise, and the absence of tool marks makes them look as though each stone was polished to perfection. Clearly there has been a huge technological leap forward, except we are traveling back in time. The Peruvian researcher Alfredo Gamarra believes there were certainly three different building periods, which he classifies as Ukin Pacha, the Inka period of tool marks and mortar and imprecision; Uran Pacha, a more technical and sophisticated earlier craftsmanship; and Hanan Pacha, first world megaliths of natural stone shaped as though softened through the application of an intense heat.18 It's this lower layer that is the most fascinating. Megaliths as tall as forty feet and weighing 500 tons, their faces curved like pillows, with edges no longer linear but rounded and slightly recessed, as though a potter’s hand caressed a lump of clay. They are also cut into individual shapes, with anywhere between four to sixteen corners and as many angles per stone. No two are alike, and so precisely fitted that even an alpaca hair cannot be inserted between them. They interlock like an upright jigsaw puzzle, making them not only artistic wonders but also earthquake proof.
The megalithic layer (A) has been patched by less precise Inka work (B). Spanish and later work (C) gets sloppier and sloppier. Cuzco.
And, it seems, instructional as well. In 2014 Dr. Derek Cunningham discovered that the way in which the Saqsayhuaman stones have been cut are not just functional and artistic, they deliberately encode information, because their angular values correlate to known astronomical data. "Each astronomical value (there are 9 standard values in total) was chosen by ancient astronomers to aid the prediction of eclipses. These astronomical terms are a mixture of values astronomers use to measure time (the 27.32-day sidereal month) and values to determine when the moon, earth and sun align at nodes. This includes the use of the 18.6-year nodal cycle of the moon, the 6.511 draconic month period between eclipse seasons, and also the 5.1-degree angle of inclination of the moon’s orbit. The remaining values typically are either half-values of various lunar terms, or values connected to the 11-day difference between the lunar and solar years."18
To demonstrate this he measured the lowest — and oldest — tier of stones and discovered the walls of Saqsayhuaman are, literally, a library in stone.
Megalithic architects’ fastidiousness with detail; 3-inch keystone. Cuzco.
HIGH HEAT AT SAQSAYHUAMAN
Now it gets really interesting. These stones are highdensity limestone bearing the remains of small marine organisms and shells. However, something happened between the time the blocks were removed from the quarry, and shaped and placed upright to form the walls of the citadel. An intense thermal effect was applied that left “no obvious fossils and organic remains... but only clearly visible fine-grained structure.”19 The conclusion is that the blocks were subjected to an intense heating process of as much as 1500º Celsius that re-crystallized the “biogenic siliceous limestone into microcrystalline siliceous limestone. In normal conditions this process is absolutely impossible.”20 Close observation of the stones shows they are also covered with a thin glassy glaze around the joints, as though indeed subjected to intense heat. A similar example can be seen on the stone masonry along Cuzco's Loretto Street, site of the original Qorikancha temple.
Who possessed the knowledge to work stone like this? The Inka knew nothing of it nor did they have memory of such unparalleled architectural achievements, let alone the understanding of moving enormous blocks of stone from one hill to another. The chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega recounts in his Royal Commentaries of the Incas how one Inka king tried to emulate the efforts of the ancients by having a monolith brought to Ollantaytambo from the quarry several miles across the valley, to help rebuild the temple: “This boulder was hauled across the mountain by more than 20,000 Indians, going up and down very steep hills... At a certain spot, it fell from their hands and over a precipice killing more than 3000 men.”21
Twenty thousand men to shift a single stone? Given the amount of masonry used to build thousands of temples, who was left to tend to the fields, to fight a civil war, to attend to lovemaking and procreation? The chroniclers of the period offer only shrugs: everything to be seen throughout the Andes had been made long, long ago by magicians using some unknown force.22
One of many large buttes carved with stairs leading nowhere, alcoves with astronomical functions, and upside down staircases depicting creation myths.
The question is, who? Garcilaso recorded the traditions of the founding of Cuzco following the great flood, a period when survivors fell into a lowly, uncivilized state, living without clothing in caves. A god then sent "one of his sons and one of his daughters from heaven to earth" to bring civilization to the people. Bearing a golden rod, this couple was instructed to plunge it into the earth at certain points along the Andes, and wherever the rod disappeared into the soil they were to establish temple cities, one being Cuzco Cara Urumi, the ‘uncovered navel stone'. 23
This story is not unique to Andean gods, because it mirrors the actions of the Zoroastrian flood hero Yim. The opening section of the Zend Avesta describes this antediluvian figure as the first human and founder of civilization, who is presented with a golden ring and knife by the god Ahura Mazda, which "he pressed into the earth and bore it with the poniard."24 For his services Yim was forewarned of the flood and prepared accordingly. 25
The Cuzco valley is unique for its huacas (sacred sites), hundreds of them fashioned into steps, seats, alcoves, and other various geometric shapes from outcrops of living stone. Their creators are known to the indigenous people as Ñaupaq Machula (Wise Old Ones), gods from an era long ago. Many huacas exhibit signs of considerable water erosion in a region that last experienced a prolonged wet climate over five thousand years ago. In some cases there are signs that the worked stone has been marked by glaciers, a sign of profound antiquity.26 This places Cuzco’s huacas close to the Younger Dryas era, not a far-fetched idea given that the giant mound of Huaca Prieta, on Peru's northern coast, shows evidence of human involvement in 11,700 BC. 27
Andean traditions refer to the megalithic monument builders by the nickname huari, a race of white-skinned, bearded, red-haired tall people led by a god named Viracocha, who appeared after the flood on a boat on Lake Titicaca together with seve
n Hayhuaypanti — Shining Ones — one of whom was his wife and sister.
Did these huari move the stones through the air and build megalithic sites to the sound of a trumpet? Polynesian people might agree, because in their culture a oaro is actually a type of trumpet.
The mechanical precision of second generation masonry. Qorikancha, Cuzco.
HOME OF THE SHINING PEOPLE
From these morsels of information we can now connect the events in the Andes to the narrative so elegantly told by the Waitaha. If these Shining Ones were white-skinned and red-haired tall people, they are most likely the Urukehu gods who voyaged between New Zealand, Easter Island and South America, taking with them the two totem birds, titi and caca. If so it explains why a group of strangers magically appear at Tiwanaku, on a remote altiplano 12,500 feet above sea level. They had prior knowledge of its existence, they had been there before. If so, I feel confident in proposing the following scenario: the Urukehu returned to Lake Titicaca after the flood to assess the damage. They most likely rebuilt Tiwanaku, just as Posnansky speculated. Certainly the site was already long established and was geodetically important, as evidenced by its Aymara nickname taypikala (stone at the center). Like Kura Tawhiti, Easter Island and Cuzco, Tiwanaku was a navel of the earth, a birthplace of gods.28 Its original name tiwa naku comes from the Tongareva dialect of the Cook Islands and means My People.29 Or more accurately, My Shining People, since the syllable aku is Egyptian for Shining Being. Tiwanaku was the home of the Shining Ones.
