The Legend of the Lost City of Tiahuanaco: The Gate of the Sun, the Carvings of the Altiplano, and the Pre-Inca Giants
The City of the High Altiplano At an altitude of 12,600 feet, in the dry basin of the southern Andes near the shores of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, lies the ancient ceremonial center of Tiahuanaco (Tiwanaku). Celebrated as one of the most enigmatic ruins of the South American continent, Tiahuanaco was the capital of a powerful empire that flourished between 500 and 1000 of the common era, exerting a profound cultural and religious influence over the central Andes. The legend of Tiahuanaco is the mystery of the cyclopean masonry . The city was constructed of massive blocks of red sandstone and grey andesite, some weighing over a hundred tons, which were cut with mathematical precision and joined together using bronze cramps. The early Spanish chroniclers, such as Pedro Cieza de León, recorded the local Aymara traditions, which asserted that the city was not built by the ancestors of the Inca, but had been raised in a single night by a race of pre-Inca giants who had been created by ...