Puma Punku

[zoser]

Parts 3 and 4 of the Russian documentary are also worth watching. Part 3 shows what looks like the quarry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbyLVLd9ZpE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDwE61_eBF8&feature=related

What does occur to me quite strongly looking at the footage, is the scale of the destruction is highly unlikely to be man made. Some of the immense blocks are deep into the ground at strange angles. The destruction must have happened during some immense upheaval either by a major earthquake or even some great flood.

Destruction by the Spanish can be discounted on the basis of the shear scale. The Spanish were treasure hunters, not demolition fanatics.

My final conjecture for the time being, is this:

Watching the footage gives the impression that the number of H shaped blocks to make a wall or standing structure is incomplete. The footage shows many other types and shapes of blocks, perhaps 20-30 types in all. Yet it is not possible to count that many H shaped that constitute the modular/interlocking wall blocks. That leaves only 3 possibilities to my mind:

1) The site was never completed.

2) The remainder of the blocks were removed and transported elsewhere.

3) The remainder of the site is buried underground and has been there since the upheaval.

I favour option 3, on the basis that some of the huge blocks are partially buried.

Edited January 7, 2010 by zoser

[Mortalscan]

Parts 3 and 4 of the Russian documentary are also worth watching. Part 3 shows what looks like the quarry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbyLVLd9ZpE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDwE61_eBF8&feature=related

What does occur to me quite strongly looking at the footage, is the scale of the destruction is highly unlikely to be man made. Some of the immense blocks are deep into the ground at strange angles. The destruction must have happened during some immense upheaval either by a major earthquake or even some great flood.

Destruction by the Spanish can be discounted on the basis of the shear scale. The Spanish were treasure hunters, not demolition fanatics.

My final conjecture for the time being, is this:

Watching the footage gives the impression that the number of H shaped blocks to make a wall or standing structure is incomplete. The footage shows many other types and shapes of blocks, perhaps 20-30 types in all. Yet it is not possible to count that many H shaped that constitute the modular/interlocking wall blocks. That leaves only 3 possibilities to my mind:

1) The site was never completed.

2) The remainder of the blocks were removed and transported elsewhere.

3) The remainder of the site is buried underground and has been there since the upheaval.

I favour option 3, on the basis that some of the huge blocks are partially buried.

great videos thank you for sharing ...

here is another one .. pay close attention to the detail ( not the destruction or rocks everywhere ) but the detail cutting ...Man just blows my mind ..and look at the very last part of it ...crazy to think these people had this knowledge...

I heard , floods, earthquakes but how about meteor hit ? is that even on the table ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWM9pUX-ZhA&feature=related

[Abramelin]

Parts 3 and 4 of the Russian documentary are also worth watching. Part 3 shows what looks like the quarry.

http://www.youtube.c...feature=related

http://www.youtube.c...feature=related

What does occur to me quite strongly looking at the footage, is the scale of the destruction is highly unlikely to be man made. Some of the immense blocks are deep into the ground at strange angles. The destruction must have happened during some immense upheaval either by a major earthquake or even some great flood.

Destruction by the Spanish can be discounted on the basis of the shear scale. The Spanish were treasure hunters, not demolition fanatics.

My final conjecture for the time being, is this:

Watching the footage gives the impression that the number of H shaped blocks to make a wall or standing structure is incomplete. The footage shows many other types and shapes of blocks, perhaps 20-30 types in all. Yet it is not possible to count that many H shaped that constitute the modular/interlocking wall blocks. That leaves only 3 possibilities to my mind:

1) The site was never completed.

2) The remainder of the blocks were removed and transported elsewhere.

3) The remainder of the site is buried underground and has been there since the upheaval.

I favour option 3, on the basis that some of the huge blocks are partially buried.

Somehow - and I dont know why - you seem to love to forget that the people living there now took those stones to build there houses. Whatever is left, it's nothing but ruble.

The whole place has been distorted through the millennia.

And why do you love to use a font, different to what anyone else uses here?

Are you just trying top get attention to your ideas by using a different font????

[Oniomancer]

To look at PP in terms of power and economics is a non-starter. There is no indication from looking at the nature of the carvings on the blocks at PP that it was constructed for these reasons. Medieval castles for example have very high walls 20-30 feet high or more. There just is no evidence that the purpose was to fortify for military reasons. That again is looking at the past and superimposing 20th/21st Century thinking. You have to think; why build in that particular region, when there are more fertile places, with more livestock and resources and material can be transported easier? Well obviously they were trying to do something special without interference from the masses, where most likely degeneration had already started to set in.

It could well be that the site was originally close to a river, or major transportation point as is the case with most European cities that were once centres of empires. There is some evidence that PP and Tiahuanaco were at one time close to a river or perhaps when Lake Titicaca extended further south. Even if this theory is correct, I am not convinced that this was the main reason for building PP, because I strongly suspect the site was constructed much earlier than 500AD and there would have been very few adjacent population centres to justify an economic or power centre. La Paz for example was founded by the Spanish in the 16th Century.

It is far more likely as I have stated that the site was built as a religious centre although not religious as most people understand the word.

(sigh) Once again you're looking right past the problem. The greater Tiwanaku complex of which puma punku is only one part isn't just a series of temples. It's an entire city, and cities need support infrastructures. People, housing, food, goods and material, and the means to safeguard them, and that all requires an economic base and administrative organizations. Even the great churches of Europe weren't build with church money alone or free labor and supplies from eager devotees. They were heavily subsidized by the nobility, and even slave laborers need to eat.

There is at least one building in Tiwanaku proper that could've served as a defensive citadel and that's all they needed. Just because Notre Dame is a cathedral doesn't mean that the Bastille, the Louvre and the Bibliotheque Nationale were too, and vice versa.

Statements about the current productivity and isolation of the region are meaningless as you are rather pointedly ignoring the facts that:

-Even today the region is the center of a sizable fishing industry.

-The Region is known to've been more productive in the past from the presence of the remains of former raised-bed plantings.

-The site was still occupied as the center of the aforementioned "primitive" empire of established late vintage.

People live where they can.

Saying of Zoser:

If you wish to understand Egypt, then you need to think like an Egyptian.

Confucious say: Egyptians not immune from law of supply and demand.

[zoser]

Abe

Don't let the font bother you. I have reasons, but not to go into them now.

Not convinced about local indians stealing granite and diorite blocks to build houses. They were too big and heavy. Unless you mean the tiny ones. Also, no one has reported it. For example everyone knows what happened to the Tura Limestone casing blocks on the Great Pyramid and when it was removed.

I agree with Mortalscan that something fantastic and unprecedented happened at PP. I disagree also with the Onion Man and I do not even see the two sites (Puma Punka and Tiahuanaco) even though they are a few hundred metres apart as being related.

As I previously mentioned about the destruction; looking carefully at the videos, something cataclysmic hit PP. I agree that the Russians are a bit dramatic and classic and love the idea of nuclear bombs! Nonetheless, it was major, and whatever it was it did not affect Tiahuanaco the same way.

I strongly suspect that Tiahuanaco therefore is much later than PP. This theory also needs exploring. I take your point Mr Onion Man (or was it Abe) when you said that Posnansky rebuilt part of Tiahuanaco. Even so, it could not have compared to the destruction at PP.

[Oniomancer]

Oh, and one more thing:

I have to challenge you on that one Mr Searcher.

How can they date a collection of precision cut granite and diorite and tie it to a bunch of organic remains in the first place?

It's easy when other organic material of similar date is found under the base platform of said precision-cut stones.

[zoser]

Oh, and one more thing:

It's easy when other organic material of similar date is found under the base platform of said precision-cut stones.

Thanks for the info . I see the principle, however, for a specific site it must depend if any of the blocks are in their orignal position. In the case of PP because of the cataclysmic event, that is a moot question I guess.

Any thoughts?

[Oniomancer]

Thanks for the info . I see the principle, however, for a specific site it must depend if any of the blocks are in their orignal position. In the case of PP because of the cataclysmic event, that is a moot question I guess.

Any thoughts?

From Wiki:

These estimates for the age of the Pumapunku complex is directly refuted by a radiocarbon date of 1510+/-25 BP obtained from organic material, sample OS-17860, collected from the clay fill that forms the main platform of the Pumapunku complex and underlies the stonework and on which Posnansky's archaeoastronomical dating is based.[1]

Source citation:

1. # ^ a b c d e Vranich, A., 1999, Interpreting the Meaning of Ritual Spaces: The Temple Complex of Pumapunku, Tiwanaku, Bolivia. Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Pennsylvania. 1

[TheSearcher]

Oh, and one more thing:

It's easy when other organic material of similar date is found under the base platform of said precision-cut stones.

Beat me to it, took me a bit longer to find the info this time

[Sthenno]

For some reason this story reminds me of Coral Castle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle#Controversy_surrounding_its_construction

Maybe there really are some secret laws of weight and leverage that allow people who master them to easily manipulate huge lumps of stone.

Most likely not, but who knows.

[lightly]

anyone have any info or ideas on WHY the types of stonework tiwanaku and puma punku are so different from each other? .. if.. they were built by the same people and at nearly the same time?

[Abramelin]

anyone have any info or ideas on WHY the types of stonework tiwanaku and puma punku are so different from each other? .. if.. they were built by the same people and at nearly the same time?

Maybe because they were built for different purposes?

EDIT:

This how Tiwanaku looked in 1903:

Edited January 8, 2010 by Abramelin

[Abramelin]

And here's thread with lots of pics that show us how the Tiwanaku site actually looked before they started reconstructing it:

http://www.skyscrape...t=886390&page=3

And about the supposed age of Tiwanaku, the next info is important:

For example, the disturbance of Tiwanaku, "Tiahuanaco,"

was described in the politically incorrect and less than

polite language of his day by Verrill (1929) when he wrote:

"Through the ages that had then passed since Tiahuanaco

had become a veritable "Place of the Dead" and, through

the centuries that have passed since the days of Incan

dominion, this most ancient American city has been

desecrated, looted, literally torn to bits. Choice portions

of its magnificent sculptured stone work have been

carried off by the natives and used to build their own

miserable huts, and there is scarcely an Indian dwelling

within miles of the ruins that does not possess a doorstep,

a lintel, or some portion of its walls formed of fragments

of Tiahuanaco. Even the rough, narrow, filthy streets of

the villages are, in places, roughly paved with pieces of

carved or worked stones filched from the ruins. The

little Spanish church at the modern village of Tiahuanaco

is almost entirely constructed of portions of the ancient

town, and flanking the entrance are the heads and

shoulders of two colossal stone images that were

ruthlessly knocked from the bodies of Tiahuanaco's

stone gods. The Indian farmers have surrounded their

stony thin soiled fields with walls constructed of

stonework from the ruins, and vandals, collectors, and

curio seekers have done their part. But the greatest

damage of all, the most ruthless and inexcusable

destruction, was caused by the railway whose tracks run

directly through the center of the ancient city. Thousands

of tons of stone, idols, statues, monoliths, carved

columns, magnificent doorways, immense slabs and

priceless sculptures were broken up, crushed and used

for ballasting the tracks."

Clearly, long before Posnansky (1943) studied Tiwanaku, it

had been badly disturbed. He was studying a site severely

damaged by stone mining, looting, and vandalism. As a

result, even his pains-taking study of the site would have

been badly skewed by the severe disturbance to this site.

This is one reason why his dating of Tiwanaku has been

ignored by archaeologists.

http://members.cox.net/pyrophyllite/Tiwanaku.html

Edited January 8, 2010 by Abramelin

[zoser]

Hi Abe

Thanks for the info, and you have gone to a lot of trouble to find that info.

Sonmething puzzles me that just does not sound right:

My understanding is that part of Posnansky's independant study of Tiahuanaco was based on two main pillar features, and he did some calculations on solar positioning. He apparently did some calculations concerning procession of the equinox, and this is how he arrived at his controversial date of 17,500 years old (or was it BC?)

How was he able to do this with so much of the site in ruins? It does not make sense! He could have only performed accurate calculations if he knew that key points of the main structure were in place, otherwise his work would amount to pure conjecture.

As usual, due to interference, claims, counter claims, the truth is difficult to discern. Just like the GP, and Howard Vysse with his graffiti. No one will ever know the truth.

I also have to apologise again because I just don't believe the dating for PP - again something is wrong. Nothing was happening on the planet in 500AD to compare with the sophistication and accuracy of those blocks. It is however typical of work that goes much much further back in time.

[Abramelin]

Hi Abe

Thanks for the info, and you have gone to a lot of trouble to find that info.

Sonmething puzzles me that just does not sound right:

My understanding is that part of Posnansky's independant study of Tiahuanaco was based on two main pillar features, and he did some calculations on solar positioning. He apparently did some calculations concerning procession of the equinox, and this is how he arrived at his controversial date of 17,500 years old (or was it BC?)

How was he able to do this with so much of the site in ruins? It does not make sense! He could have only performed accurate calculations if he knew that key points of the main structure were in place, otherwise his work would amount to pure conjecture.

As usual, due to interference, claims, counter claims, the truth is difficult to discern. Just like the GP, and Howard Vysse with his graffiti. No one will ever know the truth.

I also have to apologise again because I just don't believe the dating for PP - again something is wrong. Nothing was happening on the planet in 500AD to compare with the sophistication and accuracy of those blocks. It is however typical of work that goes much much further back in time.

How did he do it with so much of the site in ruins? Using a LOT of assumptions and guess work.

Here's another quote from the link in my former post:

A real mystery about the Tiwanaku Site is that Posnansky

(1943) clearly knew how badly trashed the Tiwanaku Site

was when he mapped it. Yet, he disregarded these obvious

problems and tried to date the site using archaeoastronomical

methods that he should have known would produce relatively

meaningless results. He simplistically assumes without any

hard evidence that astronomical alignments were unaltered

by the destruction that the Tiwanaku site has suffered. He

also assumes without either the benefit of inscriptions or

any ethnographic or other data that buildings were

astronomically aligned to a high degree precision in specific

directions.

It is like an archaeologist finding the base of the

Louisiana State Capitol a thousand years from now and

lacking any written record of it. Because it is aligned

in an east-west direction, he /she assumes that it must

have been aligned a high degree precision to some

astronomical event and uses that assumption to date it.

The result is "Garbage In, Garbage Out" regardless of how

skillfully the surviving parts of the building have been

mapped.

About Tiwanaku, Browman (1981) states:

"The site is very poorly preserved and imaginatively

reconstructed."

Similarly, Isbell (1986) states:

"the original megalithic facade of the Kalasasaya,

the other great U-shaped complex at Tiwanaku, is

poorly preserved and imaginatively reconstructed."

Likely, too much undocumented destruction and alteration

has occurred at Tiwanaku for archaeoastronomy dating to be

done on it. It would be like getting a watch that has had

most of its springs and gears ripped from it to work, much

less correctly tell time.

EDIT:

I visited Tiwanaku in 1991, and all I could say was "WOW !!" It's a huge area, something you can hardly imagine if you only see pics of it..

But through the years I have learned that like 95 percent of that site was completely reconstructed, and much based on Posnansky's ideas of how it should have looked, but also with the idea in mind to attract tourists (gullible idiots like me back then).

.

Edited January 8, 2010 by Abramelin

[zoser]

Hi Abe

I cannot find references to the idea that Posnansky rebuilt Tiahuanaco to the extent you describe. Your sources are the only ones I have seen. Until I can find more information or actually get hold of a book about him, I will have to remain open minded about it.

Meanwhile, here is something that I keep coming across; I have seen this on many sites now, and I think it is worthy of consideration:

Refering to Tiahuanaco:

The figures flanking the centerpiece are unfinished, causing viewers to wonder what could have interrupted the craftsmen. Of the animals represented on the gate, two have been extinct for thousands of years. Jaguars and condors are still with us, but toxodons and elephants can no longer be found in the area.

History shows that an elephant-like creature thrived in the area during the Pleistocene era, some 11,000-12,000 years ago." [2/3]

[1] AtlantisQuest.com

[2] http://www.s8int.com/page9.html

[3] John Stafford

[lightly]

Thanks Abramelin and zoser

[Abramelin]

Hi Abe

I cannot find references to the idea that Posnansky rebuilt Tiahuanaco to the extent you describe. Your sources are the only ones I have seen. Until I can find more information or actually get hold of a book about him, I will have to remain open minded about it.

That's right, and that's because I didn't say that, lol.

and much based on Posnansky's ideas of how it should have looked, but also with the idea in mind to attract tourists

It wasn't Posnansky doing all the reconstruction, much of the reconstruction was done after him.

And about finding more sources: the photos I posted are from a book, and I know I had it in my hands, many years ago. When I found the photos online, I immediately recognized them.

And the 95 % reconstruction was just my guess; but if you read in what state they rediscovered Tiwanaku, then I don't think I'm far off. Even stones and statues that were still in place were tilted or badly damaged.

[Abramelin]

PERU - Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the LAND OF THE INCAS

by E. George Squier, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1877

http://www.jqjacobs....anaku.html#peru

NOTE: This excerpt serves to provide a description of the ruins before the harvesting of many stones for railroad construction. It also provides insights into some nineteenth-century attitudes towards archaeology sites by and the racism of its author, cited writers, and the local priest (cura) in Tiahuanaco village.

EDIT: to prevent any confusion, this is not the book I said I once read. This book is far older and only (well, only..) contains drawings.

==

Btw, if you click on that link in an earlier post, you come to a site called "Skyscrapercity", and the one posting all these very old photos of Tiwanaku stole them from the 'bibliotecapleyades" site.

So I searched on that site for those photos, and didn't find them, but maybe I didn't look good enough.

Anyway, on that Bibliotecapleyades site are a few chapters from Posnansky's book:

http://www.bibliotec...tiahuanaco5.htm

Edited January 9, 2010 by Abramelin

[Shadow_of_Man]

Are the history books in our schools the real science fiction?

Absolutely! The history we have been taught is manipulated history. Even in American history, events such as Paul Revere’s Ride, the Liberty Bell, Plymouth Rock, the Fourth of July, etc., etc. are not the true accounts of what actually happened. Some of them never even happened.

[Oniomancer]

Absolutely! The history we have been taught is manipulated history. Even in American history, events such as Paul Revere’s Ride, the Liberty Bell, Plymouth Rock, the Fourth of July, etc., etc. are not the true accounts of what actually happened. Some of them never even happened.

I've noticed though that people who bring this up tend to be very selective about which histories they think were altered.

[lightly]

Abramelin, Thanks for the informative info and for posting this site http://www.jqjacobs.net/andes/tiwanaku.html#peru .. it shows and speaks about the same sort of complex interlocking blocks at Tiwanaku as Puma Punku. The two sites are much more similar than i knew.

[Lander7]

You can see a clip of that site on www.thinkonyourown.com under "Timeline" called "Advanced Oldest Race"

[zoser]

You can see a clip of that site on www.thinkonyourown.com under "Timeline" called "Advanced Oldest Race"

Lander

Tried to watch the video. The stream download is slower than molasses in January! Why so painfully slow?

Edited January 15, 2010 by zoser

[Abramelin]

Just ignore what I posted.It's better for your state of mind.