Lost, p.26
lost, page 26
It is a determination that confirms our own conclusion that
the megalithic structures belong to the Age of Taurus, the era
between 4000 B.C. and 2000 B.C. And, by combining modern
studies with the data provided by the chroniclers, it affirms what
the legends kept reiterating:
It all began at Lake Titicaca.
10
"BAALBEK OF THE
NEW WORLD"
Every version of every legend in the Andes points to Lake Titi-
caca for the Beginning—the place where the great god Viraco-
cha performed his creative feats, where mankind reappeared
after the Deluge, where the ancestors of the Incas were granted
a golden wand with which to establish Andean civilization. If
this be fiction, then it is supported by fact; for it is on the shores
of Lake Titicaca that the first and greatest city in all of the
Americas had stood.
Its scope, the size of its monoliths, the intricate carvings
upon its monuments and its statues have amazed all who have
seen Tiahuanacu (as the place has been called) ever since the
first chronicler described it for Europeans. Everyone equally
wondered who had built this unique city and how, and puzzled
over its untold antiquity. Yet the greatest puzzle of all is the
location itself: a barren, almost lifeless place some 13,000 feet
—four kilometers!—up among the highest Andean peaks that
are permanently snow-covered. Why would anyone expend in-
credible effort to erect colossal edifices out of stone that had to
be quarried and brought over from many miles away in this
treeless, windswept desolate place?
The thought struck Ephraim George Squier when he reached
the lake a century ago. "The islands and promontories of Lake
Titicaca," he wrote (Peru Illustrated) "are for the most part bar-
ren. The waters hide a variety of strange fishes, which contrib-
ute to support a population necessarily scanty in a region where
barley will not ripen except under very favorable circumstances,
and where maize, in its most dimunitive size, has its most pre-
carious development; where the potato, shrunk to its smallest
proportions, is bitter; where the only grain is the quinoa; and
where the only indigenous animals fit for food are the biscacha,
the llama, and the vicuna." Yet in this treeless world, he added,
"if tradition be our guide, were developed the germs of Inca
206
"Baalbek of the New World" 207
civilization" from an earlier, "original civilization which carved
its memorials in massive stones, and left them on the plain of
Tiahuanaco, and of which no tradition remains except that they
are the work of the giants of old, who reared them in a single
night."
A different thought, however, struck him as he climbed up a
promontory overlooking the lake and the ancient site. Was it
perhaps because of the isolation, because of the surrounding
peaks, because of the vista between the peaks, that the place
had been chosen? From a ridge at the southwestern edge of the
plain in which the lake is situated, near where its waters flow
out southward through the Desaguadero river, he could see not
only the lake with its southern peninsulas and islands, but also
the snowy peaks to the east.
"Here," he wrote with words accompanying a sketch he had
made, "the great snowy chain of the Andes burst on our sight in
all its majesty. Dominating the lake is the massive bulk of
Illampu, or So rata, the crown of the continent, the highest
mountain of America, rivaling, if not equaling in height, the
monarchs of the Himalayas; observers vary in their estimates
and calculations of its altitude from 25,000 to 27,000 feet."
Southward from this outstanding landmark the uninterrupted
chain of mountains and peaks "terminates in the great mountain
of Illimani, 24,500 feet in altitude." Between the western ridge
at whose edge Squier had stood and the gigantic mountains to
the east, lay the flat depression that was occupied by the lake
and its southern shores. "Nowhere else in the world, perhaps,'"
Squier went on, "can a panorama so diversified and grand be
obtained from a single point of view. The whole great tableland
of Peru and Bolivia, at its widest part, with its own system of
waters, its own rivers and lakes, its own plains and mountains,
all framed in by the ranges of the Cordilleras and the Andes, is
presented like a map" (Fig. 109).
Were these geographical and topographical features the very
reason for the selection of the site—at the edge of a great plain
basin, with two peaks that stand out not only from the ground
but also from the skies—just as the twin peaks of Ararat
(17,000 and 13,000 feet) and the two pyramids of Giza had
served to mark the landing paths of the Anunnaki?
Unbeknown to Squier, he had raised the analogy, for he had
titled the chapter describing the ancient ruins "Tiahuanaco, the
Baalbec of the New World"; for that was the only comparison
he could think of—a comparison with a place that we have
identified as the landing place of the Anunnaki to which Gilga-
mesh had set his steps five thousand years ago.
208
THE LOST REALMS
Figure 109
The greatest explorer of Tiahuanacu and its ruins this cen-
tury has been, without doubt, Arthur Posnansky, a European
engineer who moved to Bolivia and devoted his lifetime to un-
raveling the mysteries of these ruins. As early as 1910 he com-
plained that, from visit to visit, he saw less and less of the
artifacts, for the local natives, builders in the capital La Paz,
and even the government itself for construction of the railroad,
systematically carry off the stone blocks not for their artistic or
archaeological value, but as freely available building materials.
Half a century earlier Squier voiced the same complaint, notic-
ing that in the nearest town, on the peninsula of Copacabana,
the church as well as the villagers' abodes were built of stones
taken away from the ancient ruins as if they were a quarry. Even
the cathedral in La Paz, he found out, was erected using Tia-
huanacu's stones. Yet, the little that remained—mostly because
"Baalbek of the New World" 209
it was too massive to move—impressed him that these were
remains of a civilization that disappeared before that of the
Incas began, a civilization contemporary with that of Egypt and
the Near East. The remains indicate that the structures and the
monuments were the work of a people who were capable of a
unique, perfect, and harmonious architecture—yet one that
"had no infancy and passed through no period of growth." No
wonder, then, that the wondering Indians had told the Span-
iards that these artifacts were raised overnight by giants-
Pedro de Cieza de Leon, who traveled throughout what is
now Peru and Bolivia in the years 1532-1550. reported in his
Chronicles that, without doubt, the ruins of Tiahuanacu were
"the most ancient place of any that I have yet described."
Among the edifices that amazed him was a "hill made by the
hands of men, on a great foundation of stone" that measured
more than 900 feet by 400 feet at its base and rose some 120
feet. Beyond it he saw "two stone idols, of the human shape and
figure, the features very skillfully carved, so that they appear to
have been done by the hand of some great master. They are so
large that they seem like small giants, and it is clear that they
have the sort of clothing different from those now worn by the
natives of these parts; they seem to have some ornament on
their heads."
Nearby he saw the remains of another building, and of a wall
"very well built." It all looked very ancient and worn. In an-
other part of the ruins he saw "stones of such enormous size that
it causes wonder to think of them, and to reflect how human
force can have sufficed to move them to the place where we see
them, being so large. Many of these stones are carved in differ-
ent ways, some of them having the shape of a human body,
which must have been their idols."
He noticed near the wall and the large stone blocks "many
holes and hollow places in the ground," which puzzled him.
More to the west he saw other ancient remains, "among them
many doorways, with their jambs, lintels and thresholds all in
one stone." He wondered most particularly that "from these
great doorways there came out still larger stones upon which the
doorways were formed, some of them-thirty feet broad, fifteen
or more long and six in thickness. The whole of this," he re-
ported with utter amazement—the doorway and its jambs and
lintel—"were one single stone." He added that "the work is one
of grandeur and magnificence, when all considered," and that
"for myself I fail to understand with what instruments or tools it
can have been done, for it is very certain that before these great
stones could be brought to perfection and left as we see them.
210
THE LOST REALMS
Figure 110
the tools must have been much better than those now used by
the Indians."
Of all the artifacts seen by the first Spaniards to arrive on the
scene, so sincerely described by Cieza de Leon, these colossal
one-piece gateways still lie where they had fallen. The site,
about a mile to the southwest of the principal ruins of Tiahua-
nacu, has been called by the Indians Puma-Punku as though it
were a separate site; but it is nowadays certain that it was part
of the greater metropolis embraced by Tiahuanacu that mea-
sured a mile by almost two miles in size.
The remains there have amazed every traveler who has seen
them during the past two centuries, but were first scientifically
described by A. Stubel and Max Uhle (Die Ruinenstaette von
Tiahuanaco im Hochland des Allen Peru, 1892). The photo-
graphs and sketches that accompanied their report showed that
the gigantic stone blocks lying about were components of sev-
eral structures of amazing complexity that may have formed the
eastern edifice of the site (Fig. 110 is based on the latest stud-
ies). The four-part edifice that collapsed (or was overthrown)
lies as enormous platforms with or without the parts that formed
one piece with them vertically or at other angles (Fig. 111). The
Figure 111
Baalbek of the New World"
211
individual, broken-off portions weigh as much as one hundred
tons each; they are made of red sandstone, and Posnansky (Ti-
huanacu—The Cradle of American Man) has proved conclu-
sively that the quarry for these blocks, which weighed three or
four times as much when they were one unit, was on the western
shore of the lake some ten miles away. These stone blocks,
some measuring twelve by ten feet and almost two feet thick,
are covered with indentations, grooves, precise angles and sur-
faces that have varying levels. At certain points the blocks have
indentations (Fig. 112) that were certainly intended to hold
metal clamps, to attach each vertical section to those adjoining
it—a technical "gimmick" that we had seen at Ollantaytambu.
But whereas there the suggestion was that the clamps were
made of gold (the only metal known to the Incas)—an unten-
able suggestion because of the softness of gold—here the
clamps were made of bronze. That this was so is known because
some of these bronze clamps have actually been found. This is
certainly a discovery of immense significance, for bronze is a
most difficult alloy to produce, requiring the combination of a
certain proportion of copper (about 85-90 percent) with tin;
and whereas copper can be found in its natural state, tin must be
extracted by difficult metallurgical processes from the ores in
which it is contained.
How was this bronze obtained, and was its availability not
only part of the puzzle but also a clue to the answers?
Putting aside the customary explanation that the colossal and
intricate structures of Puma-Punku were "a temple," what prac-
tical purpose did it serve?—what was the function for which
such immense effort and sophisticated technologies were ex-
212
THE LOST REALMS
pended? The German master architect Edmund Kiss (whose vi-
sualization of the way the structures might have originally
looked inspired his plans for Nazi monumental buildings) be-
lieved that the mounds and remains flanking and fronting on the
four-part collapsed section were elements of a harbor, for the
lake had certainly extended that far in antiquity. But this leaves
open and even reinforces the question, what was going on at
Puma-Punku? What did it import and what products did it ship
out at this barren altitude?
Ongoing excavations at Puma-Punku have uncovered a
series of semisubterranean enclosures constructed of perfectly
shaped stone blocks. They remind one of the sunken plazas of
Chavin de Huantar, and raise the possibility that these were
elements—reservoirs, pools, sluice-chambers—of a similar wa-
terworks system.
More answers may lie in the most puzzling (if that is still
possible) finds at the site: blocks of stone, complete by them-
selves or undoubtedly broken off from larger blocks, that have
been shaped, angled, cut, and grooved in an astonishing way
with an astounding precision and with tools that are hard to find
even today. The best way to describe these technological mira-
cles is to show some of them (Fig. 113).
There is absolutely no plausible explanation for these arti-
facts except to suggest—based on our own present technology
—that these were matrixes, dies for the casting of intricate
metal parts; parts for some complex and sophisticated equip-
ment that Man in the Andes, or for that matter anywhere else,
was absolutely incapable of possessing in pre-Inca times.
Various archaeologists and researchers had come to Tia-
huanacu since the 1930s for brief or sustained work—Wendell
C. Bennett, Thor Heyerdahl, and Carlos Ponce Sangines are
names best recognized; but by and large, they only used, built
upon, accepted, or argued with the conclusions of Arthur Pos-
nansky, who first presented his extraordinary work and insights
in the 1914 extensive volumes of Una Metropoli Prehistorica en
la America del Sur and, after another three decades of devoted
research, in the four-volumed Tihuanacu—Cuna del Hombre de
las Americas, combined with an English translation (in 1945).
This edition was honored with an official forword by the
Bolivian government (the site ended up in the Bolivian part of
the lake after its partition from Peru), and celebrated "the
12.000th year of Tiahuanacu."
For this, when all was said and done, was the most astound-
ing (and controversial) conclusion of Posnansky: That Tiahua-
"Baalbek or the New World"
213
Figure 113
nacu was millennia old; that its first phase was built when the
level of the lake was about one hundred feet higher and before
the whole area had been engulfed by an avalanche of water—
perhaps the famous Great Flood, thousands of years before the
Christian era. Combining the archaeological discoveries with
geological studies, study of flora and fauna, measurements of
skulls found in tombs and portrayed in stone heads, and bring-
ing to bear every facet of his engineering and technological ex-
pertise, Posnansky concluded that there had been three phases
in the history of Tiahuanacu; that it was settled by two races—
first the Mongoloid people, then Middle Eastern Caucasians—
and at no time by the negroid people; and that the place had
undergone two catastrophes, first a natural one by an avalanche
of water, and then another sudden upheaval of unknown na-
ture.
Without necessarily agreeing with these hard-hitting conclu-
sions or with their timetable, the geological, topographical, cli-
matic, and all scientific data amassed by Posnansky, and of
course the archaeological discoveries he made, have been ac-
cepted and used by all who have followed in the half century
since his monumental endeavors. His map of the site (Fig. 114)
