Today we visited Tiahuanaco (or Tiwanaku), an archaeological site about an hour outside of La Paz. Tiahuanaco is, in many ways, the cradle of Andean civilization. It's still the spiritual center of the Aymara world. On the Winter Solstice (in June south of the equator), which is the Aymara New Year, thousands of Yatiris and other Aymara gather to perform elaborate rituals, akin to those I experienced at Alasitas and in the Mercado de Hechiceria in La Paz.Little is known about Tiahuanaco society, given that the site was abandoned by the time Europeans reached it, and no written or clear oral record survives. It was established around 1000 BC, and by 100 BC it was a complex, highly organized empire. By 700 AD the society controlled much of Bolivia, Southern Peru, Northern Argentina and Chile. Both the Aymara and the Quechua (aka the Inca) claim to be descendants of the Tiahuanacos, while the former's claim is somewhat stronger than the latter's.
The success of this society is remarkable, given that it was based on potato and quinoa cultivation and llama herding. Once, the Titicaca basin fed over 100,000 people. Today, some 7000 people barely eke out an existence. The Tiauanaco society was so successful because they adapted to the environment, building huge agricultural beds called sukakullos. The beds we saw were about three feet high and twice the size of a football field. They are filled with layers of gravel, they clay, then sand, then topsoil, tilled into rows with deep depressions in between. The rocks salinization from slightly salty Lago Titicaca, while the raised beds kept the plants warmer, extending the growing season, and the depressions prevented flooding in the wet season and provided more even irrigation in the dry season. It's been estimated that yields were up to 1000 times higher, so Altiplano farmers today are actually experimenting with reviving the sukakullo. Awesome, huh? Yes, I am a huge agricultural dork.
From about 1000 AD on, Tiahuanaco was in decline. The glacial record suggests a that there was prolonged drought, possibly in combination with an invasion and/or earthquake. It's a great example of the theories in Jared Diamond's Collapse: A society grows beyond it's ecological carrying capacity, in part because of empire building and conspicuous consumption/monument building. It's unable to produce enough to feed everyone, nor to trade for necessary goods found only in other ecological zones, and it can't survive environmental upsets. Unfortunately, we know so little about Tiahuanaco society because it was looted by Spanish conquistadors, looking for gold. Then some of the ruins were dynamited for rocks for railroad construction. And of course, social scientists from our supposedly advanced society have stolen some of the most valuable artifacts for our museums.
Today they're doing a somewhat more professional job preserving what's left. Experts believe most of the society is still buried. We saw all the trappings of a traditionally archaeological dig, including a human and llama burial being excavated with hand brushes. A few really cool monuments remain, including two portals, elaboratley adorned with creation gods, pumas, condors and snakes, aligned so that the sun shows through one on the summer and winter solstices and through the other on the spring and autumn equinoxes, as well as a number of monoliths and a subterranean temple, filled with faces like the one pictured above, which were believed to be representations of conquered cultures.
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