The prehistoric city of Tiwanaku, on the southern shore of Bolivia’s famous Lake Titicaca, was abandoned around 1000 AD, some 400 years before the Inca established their Andean empire. Its monumental ruins have often been compared to Stonehenge in that no one knows how an ancient civilization could have made them. It is puzzling not only because some of the stones weigh as much as 130 tons, but because there are no quarries nearby, but rather on the other side of Lake Titicaca.

Did a race of mighty giants build the city? Was it a result of Viracocha, the Incan creator God? Did one of Earth’s former moons crash into the mountain side? Is the city a result of extraterrestrial technology? Were the stones magically transported through the air to the sound of a trumpet? Did the ancients know how to "liquefy" stones and return them to their original state after transport? Or could it have been something a little simpler, but equally as impressive?

Our theory is that these giant andesite stones were transported across Lake Titicaca on reed boats of ancient design to the closest shores to Tiwanaku, then laboriously dragged 10 kilometers to the city. We wanted to test this theory by recreating the Tiwanaku building process with a multi-national team of volunteers, aided by leading Aymara experts in totora reed boat building.

This project was to:

• Quarry a 9 ton stone.
• Build a totora boat to carry the stone and sail it across the lake.
• Load and unload the stone using only natural ancient means.
• Carve the stone into a monolith celebrating the local culture, old, new, and future.

If we emulated the ancient design successfully, the boat's porous nature would have filtered out water from the waves kicked up by the fierce winds of the Altiplano. If not, we could have been swamped, and lost the 9 ton stone, or worse. Would our reed boat sink under the weight of a 9 ton stone, or would it simply fold and collapse around it as some experts had claimed?

Engel Brothers, an independent film company out of New York City, was there to film every aspect of our project, capturing the conflicts between cultures, the challenges of ancient methods versus modern methods, the storms that turned the lake into an ocean of 6 foot seas and 30 knot winds, and the superstitions and fears that provided for more than a few intense moments along the way. If all goes well, our story will become a television film and a book.

Oh...by the way...in case you were wondering, Qala means "stone" in Aymara, and Yampu means "totora boat". The Stone Boat, appropriate...no?

Enjoy your visit with us and learn more about each aspect of our project by clicking on the links to the left.

 

Tiwanaku

The Ponce Monolith stands guard within the mysterious walls.

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