Tiwanaku

20 Feb 2012

Sorry for the belated post... over the weekend I took a day trip to Tiwanaku (also called Tiahuanaco), about 1.5 hrs bus ride west of La Paz.  The ancient city of Tiwanaku formed about 1000 BC.  By 700 AD this empire dominated modern day Bolivia, southern Peru, northeast Argentina, and northern Chile, with a population of 50,000.   Tiwanaku served as a major political and religious center, used a system of raised agricultural fields called sukakullos which produced enough food for 100,000 people, built temples of sandstone blocks some weighing >100 tons, and complexes astrologically aligned so the open doorways capture the sun during spring and autumn equinoxes.  Unfortunately, eventually the Spaniards looted and destroyed much of the city; stones were dragged off to build other buildings like churches, or blown with dynamite to make gravel for railways.  Today, excavations continue but much remains underground or destroyed.