Tihuanacu,
Bolivia
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Took a day trip out to Tihuanacu, the pre-Inkan ruins situated on a cold, bleak, windswept valley near Lake Titicaca. It is such a desolate poor place that it seems incredible that anyone would ever want to live there but this lot lasted maybe a thousand years and it became one of the most densely populated areas on the Altiplano supporting about 125,000 people. They had this amazing system of raised fields - a thick cobblestone base covered in a layer of impermeable clay, then a layer of course gravel and a layer of fine gravel under a good layer of fertile topsoil. Then they had a beautiful system of irrigation channels. The result - fields that could withstand floods and droughts. It blew me away - how on earth did they work all that out? And why do we find it so hard to design similar systems now? We seem always to resort to less environmentally -friendly means.
The Tihuanacans ruled most of Bolivia and were almost totally self-sufficient then they suddenly disappeared. Very mysterious and leaves you with lots of questions about how much we attribute to the Inkans that may well have been designed or built hundreds of years earlier. The size of the rocks alone that they used to build their temples etc makes you wonder - how strong were these people? Too many questions and not many answers it seems.
