Tiwanaku

Here are a few pics of Tiwanaku - Bolivia´s most significant archeological site, and centre of the pre-Inca Tiwanaku civilisation. There isn´t really much known about these guys, excect that they were pretty smart chaps who were great at building temples and carving rocks. By AD1200 they had figured out a bunch of stuff about astronomy that I still dont understand.

They´d worked out the length of a year precicesly, built a bunch of temples and monuments tracking the path of the sun, developed an intricate and accurate calander, plus carved out a whole stack of amazing statues and monoliths depicting the extreme importance of Llamas, Pumas, Condors and Snakes.... very interesting stuff.

The view from above - the temple of the sun. At each of the equinoxes, the sun shines in either through the front door, or from one corner of the temple, illuminating the main statue in the middle. And I can´t even draw a straight line on a piece of paper....

Also they´d created this awesome hearing aid (this means a lot to me!) basically by duplicating the shape of the ear canal, carved out of a lump of solid granite.

If you put your ear at one end, and someone else stands about 15m in front of the rock on the other side and talks quietly, you can hear them perfectly! (yes, even me!). This marvelous device could also be used to make your own voice louder. Pity they never developed a more portable version huh?!?

One interesting thing is that all the gods and worship objects around the site really scared the Spanish a bit when they rocked up (although the Tiwanaku civilisation had long since folded by then). The god-fearing invaders performed exorcists on most of the statues, breaking chuncks off the shoulders and carving christian crosses into the figurines. They knocked over most of the figurines and even stole most of the stone from the central pyramid - to build a church of all things!

This guy would look a lot happier if he still had his nose and head intact. Damn Spaniards.