More Important Topics of Cylinder

In one legend he had one son, Inti and two daughters, Mama Quilla and Pachamama.

In this legend, he destroyed the people around Lake Titicaca with a Great Flood called Unu Pachakuti, saving two to bring civilization to the rest of the world, these two beings are Manco Capac, the son of Inti (sometimes taken as the son of Viracocha), which name means "splendid

foundation", and Mama Ocllo, which means "mother fertility". These two founded the Inca civilization carrying a golden staff, called ‘tapac-yauri’. In another legend, he fathered the first eight civilized human beings. In some stories, he has a wife called Mama Cocha.

In another legend, Viracocha (The Creator) had two sons - Imahmana Viracocha and Tocapo Virachocha. After the Great Flood and the Creation, Viracocha sent his sons to visit the tribes to the Northeast and Northwest to determine if they still obeyed his commandments. Viracocha himself traveled North. During their journey, Imaymana and Tocapo gave names to all the trees, flowers, fruits and herbs.

They also taught the tribes which of these were edible, which had medicinal properties, and which were poisonous. Eventually, Viracocha, Tocapo and Imahmana arrived at Cuzco (in modern day Peru) and the seacoast where they walked across the water until they disappeared. The word "Viracocha" literally means "Sea Foam."

For the meaning of Tiqsi Huiracocha, tiqsi means foundation or base in Quechua, huira means fat (which the Inca knew as a source of energy), and cocha means lake, sea, or reservoir. His many epithets include great, all knowing, powerful, etc.

Huiracocha was also the name of an Inca, father of Pachacutec.

Another name for Viracocha is Con-Tici Viracocha, and he is identifiable with the Polynesian sun god. The Kon-Tiki took its name from this alternate theonym.

Graham Hancock has speculated that Viracocha was in some way related to Quetzalcoatl, a deity of the Mexica (Aztecs). While the mythology of the two deities is quite similar, many respected Aztec historians, archeologists, anthropologists, and other Aztec experts do not agree, mostly due to a lack of orthodox historical evidence.

Temple of Kalasasaya (kala = stone; saya or sayasta = stopped) or Temple of Stopped Stones, is in Tiwanaku, Bolivia, in the changes of stations and [were verified with exactitude [solar year]] of 365 days.

In both equinoxes (autumn: March 21 and spring: September 21) the Sun was born by the center of the fore door of entrance, to which it is acceded by a magnificent perron. In the winter solstice (June 21) the Sun was born in

murario angle N.E the solstice of summer (December 21) was marked by the birth of the Sun in murario angle S.E.

This wall is known like “balconera wall” or “chunchukala”. The “temple of Stopped Stones covers approximately 2 hectares and its structure is based on cut, ready columns of arenaceous and sillares between these, excels gargoyles or goteros of water-drainage for pluvial waters. In the interior the rest can be seen of which they would have been small semi-underground rooms ready so that 7 were to each side of the patio.

In the enclosure a wall with sillares of arenaceous that manages to close the sectors this, North and South exists, leaving to both flanks a species of vestibule, that separates the central or “ceremonial” enclosure. In this second wall towards the North side two blocks are observed in which, in its superior third, an orifice that it imitates, on scale practiced, human an auditory apparatus, and by means of which noises or conversations can be listened that take place in remote sites.

These “amplifiers of sounds” allow us to deduce that in the pre-Columbian world the acoustics was known and applied. In Kalasasaya three important sculptures exist: wake 8 (Ponce), the monolith the Friar and Door of the Sun.

In the monolith Ponce fine iconográficos engravings like winged men, fish, heads of puma are appraised or of camelidae s, cóndor is, eagle s, stepped symbols; in the purest art tiwanakota. The wake “the Friar” is not adorned, is a piece worked in arenaceous grained, showing an enigmatic personage who takes to a walking stick and keru in the hands; it carries a ventral strip where some tracks in relief of crabs are appraised.

Putuni

Is an almost square area (55 x 60 meters) just outside the Kalasasaya. A German archaeologist excavated it when no one else was interested. It turned out to be the graveyard of rich people. There were many gold and silver artifacts. The village and cathedral of Tiahuanaco are in the background.

The Bennett Stela , a huge monolithic Tiahuanaco sculpture, was contemporaneous with Kalasasaya. Found resting in the semi-subterranean courtyard, this 24 foot high monolith depicts a rigidly frontal figure holding a kero (beaker) in one hand and a knife in the other.

Its legs bear relief designs suggesting metal disks; over the rest of its body are incised birds, fish, anthropomorphic jaguars, human beings, and geometric patterns. The kero held by the Bennett Stela deity is identical in form to one of the major ceramic types manufactured at Tiahuanaco.

The Akapana pyramid, sometimes called the sacred mountain of Tiahuanaco, is a much eroded, seven-level, truncated pyramid measuring some 200 meters on a side and nearly 17 meters tall.

Like the nearby Subterranean Temple and the Kalasasaya, the Akapana is precisely oriented to the cardinal directions. Each of the seven levels is constructed with beautifully cut and precisely joined blocks that were faced with panels

once covered with metal plaques, carvings, and paintings. Kolata surmises that, "The upper terraces constituted a public, symbolic text, the specific content of which is now irrevocably lost. Given the ritual meaning we ascribe to the Akapana, these ‘public texts’ most likely referred to the role of this structure in Tiwanaku’s cosmogenic myths."

In the center of the Akapana's flat summit is a small, sunken courtyard laid out in the form of a square superimposed over a Greek cross; this courtyard is also oriented to the cardinal directions. Recent excavations of this courtyard, the interior of the pyramid, and the grounds beneath it have revealed an unexpected, sophisticated, and monumental system of interlinked surface and subterranean channels.

These channels brought water collected upon the summit down and through the seven levels, where it exited below ground level, merged into a major subterranean drain system underneath the civic/ceremonial core of Tiwanaku, and ultimately flowed into Lake Titicaca.

Commenting on this magnificent engineering, Kolata states, "It is apparent that the complex system of draining the Akapana was not a structural imperative. A much simpler and smaller set of canals could have drained the accumulated water from the summit. In fact the system installed by the architects of Akapana, although superbly functional, is overengineered, a piece of technical stone-cutting and joinery that is pure virtuosity."

Kolata goes on to wonder about why all this work was done and concludes that, "the Akapana was conceived by the people of Tiwanaku as their principal emblem of the sacred mountain, a simulacrum of the highly visible, natural mountain huacas (sacred places) in the Quimsachata range....The Akapana partook of the spiritual essence of the of the Quimsachata range and evoked its image by its shape and by its mimicry of the natural circulation of mountain waters in the rainy season....The Akapana was Tiwanaku’s principal earth shrine, an icon of fertility and agricultural abundance.

It was the mountain at the center of the island-world and may even have evoked the specific image of sacred mountains on Lake Titicaca’s Island of the Sun. In this context, the Akapana was the principal huaca of cosmogenic myth, the mountain of human origins and emergence, which took on specific mytho-historic significance."

Kolata’s excavations at Tiwanaku are to be applauded and his interpretations of the Akapana’s meaning and function seem to make a lot of sense. But reading his works and considering his theories, I am again visited with a concern I frequently have when perusing the works of many "main-stream" archaeologists.

This concern is the (what I judge to be) rather narrow-minded vantage point of conventional archaeologists. It is their extreme hesitancy to consider ideas and artifacts that do not fit nicely within the currently accepted theories regarding the origins and chronological development of archaic cultures. It is their limited knowledge of the ancient myths and astronomical preoccupations of the cultures and sites they ostensibly study.

This matter is strikingly evident when we take a more comprehensive tour of Tiahuanaco in the company of certain thinkers and scholars branded as fringe by the university establishment.

Yes, we run the risk of encountering some wild ideas and unsubstantiated theories, but sifting through this (often quite entertaining) material we may attain insights every bit as valuable as those offered by the conservative archaeological community. In the following section, I will present some of these alternative ideas regarding the origin and function of the great site of Tiahuanaco.

Outside and to the SW of the main Tiwanaku complex is another large site, called Puma Punku. It is largely in ruins, but excavations are still going on.

At one spot there is a large collection of shaped stones brought from several places of Puma Punku.

Among these stones are many Chacanas (Andean crosses) and fragments of stones with delicate designs. What remains often unnoticed however, is that several large flat stone slabs have been decorated with lines, spirals and dot-designs.

The engravings are weathering severely and the stone is flaky in places.

Chullpas Tombs locally known as chullpas dominate ridges and high places seen by the ancient people as people as being closer to the sky and their hilltop gods.

Some chullpas were built of mud-sods or adobe , others were of stone. Some were elaborate and other simple. Bodies of the deceased were placed inside, usually knees to chin in beautifully made baskets.