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Some archaeologists think that the ruins at Tiahuanaco are the oldest in the world and that it was once a thriving port of call. Located about twelve miles south of the southern tip of Lake Titicaca, at an altitude of 13,300 feet, the remains of ancient site of Tiahuanaco predate the arrival of the Incas. Archaeologists speculate that since the site is now about 800 feet above the edge of the lake the waters must have dropped 800 feet and receded for about 12 miles. Although the Peruvian-Bolivian altiplano basin in the Lake Titicaca region is now inhabited by a large population of Aymara Indians who are subsistence farmers, the statues and monolithic remains of Tiahuanaco bear silent testimony to the prior existence of a technologically advanced culture in the region. About a mile from the site at an area called Puma Punku, there are gigantic bluish gray stones that have a reddish rust covering most of them and produce a metallic ringing sound when tapped. Archaeologists believe that they were most likely toppled thousands of years ago during a cataclysmic global flood and/or eruption of the Andes mountains. The uniqueness of the Tiahuanaco people has been amply illustrated by the stone sculptures, like the Gate of the Sun Portal carved from a single block of stone, and the rectangular thirty feet wide Kalasasaya Stone Steps. Chronicle records depict the residents of ancient Tiahuanaco, the Vairacochas, as a fair skinned people who wore long white robes. Vairacocha, the creator god worshipped by the Huari, the Inca, and the Chavin (as a distant relative of their sky god), was portrayed as a fair skinned man with a white beard who wore sandals and a long robe, and carried a staff. From the ancient past to more recent times, South American Indians use the titles Vairacocha when they address white people. The most important of the gold statues representing the Pantheon of Deities in the main sanctuary at Cuzco was that God Vairacocha. Ilya-Tiqsi Wiraqoca Pacayacaiq was his full Inca name, which meant ancient foundation world teacher lord.
God Vairacocha was
portrayed in the mythos as a peace loving shaman with the cougar, condor, falcon
and snake for animal totems. According to the legends, a belligerent evil people
dressed in short clothes came to the sacred lake of Titicaca which also borders
Bolivia. Their discordant presence forced god Vairacocha and his people to leave
Tiahuanaco, promising that they would return one day.
The religion of the Tiahuanaco area revolves around the creator god Vairacocha who is usually depicted with a radiant halo around his head, holding a staff in each hand. On the bas relief on the upper part of the Sun Gate at Tiahuanaco there was a image of a Sun God. The monolithic Sun Gate has also been called the Calendar Gate because the gateway calendar sculpture was a repository for the astronomical, mathematical, and scientific knowledge of the ancient peoples of Tiahuanaco who counted using pictorial or conceptual units of measurement. The storytellers of the Indians of the Lake Titicaca region told legends about stone structures beneath the lake waters, which explorers searched for unsuccessfully. Then in 1980, Hugo Boero Rojo, a Bolivian scholar, guided by information form the local Indians, located monumental ruins with stone roads and temples built from gigantic blocks of stone about 15-20 metres beneath the surface of the lake off the coast of Puerto Acosta, Bolivia. Rojo concluded that the findings indicated the existence of an advanced pre-Columbian civilization long before the arrival of the Spaniards. Some archaeologists have placed the timeframe for the Tiahuanaco culture at more than 12,000 years before the present era. From analysis of the arrangement of the geometrical elements on the Calendar Gate, researchers have surmised that the original inhabitants of Tiahuanaco divided the circle both mathematically and astronomically. They knew trigonometry and how to measure angles and their functions. They were also able to calculate squares, square roots, and fractions. Although they do not appear to have used the duodecimal system, the number 11 and multiples of the number 11 frequently occurred. The Calendar Gate was an artistic masterpiece noted for the precision of its design. Different symbols were used to show sunrise, noon, and sunset solar eclipses. The calendar also gave other astronomical and geographical information including: the beginning of the year, the days of the equinoxes and solstices, and the latitude of Tiahuanaco.
They must have used exceptional tools to cut, incise, and transport the
extremely hard stone that they used as their building material. Since all the
calculations, designs, and detailed plans needed to build a city as grand and
imposing as Tiahuanaco required some form of writing...Continue on
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Peruvian Ancient Civilization 
