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84-592: Pumapunku or Puma Punku ( Aymara and Quechua 'Gate of the Puma') is a 6th-century T-shaped and strategically aligned man-made terraced platform mound with a sunken court and monumental structure on top. It is part of the Pumapunku complex, at the Tiwanaku Site near Tiwanacu, in western Bolivia . The Pumapunku complex is a collection of plazas and ramps centered on the Pumapunku platform mound. Today only

168-410: A radiocarbon date was obtained by Alexei Vranich from organic material from the deepest and oldest layer of mound-fill forming the Pumapunku. This layer was deposited during the first of three construction epochs, and dates the initial construction of the Pumapunku to AD 536–600 (1510 ±25 B.P. C14, calibrated date). Since the radiocarbon date came from the deepest and oldest layer of mound-fill under

252-416: A best example of extraterrestrial technology, based in part on the idea that the form and design of the monumental complex of Pumapunku has no local precursors. The buildings at Chiripa (which are similar to buildings of Pumapunku) were identified as "storage bins" because impressions of baskets and remains of food were found. Vranich notes that generations of amateur, fringe and pseudo-archeologist claimed that

336-411: A central unwalled esplanade , a terraced platform mound that is faced with stone, and a walled eastern court. At its peak, Pumapunku is thought to have been "unimaginably wondrous," adorned with polished metal plaques, brightly colored ceramic and fabric ornamentation, and visited by costumed citizens, elaborately dressed priests, and elites decked in exotic jewelry. Current understanding of this complex

420-542: A half-cross-shaped design about eight inches across, achieving the same high precision shown by the Puma Punku carvings. One element that she was unable to work out how to replicate was the accurately flat surface of the inside of the carving, and the researchers were struck by the ubiquity of such surfaces in the Tiahuanaco carvings. The process took 40 hours, although some of this was time taken in trial and error -

504-602: A human head in one hand and an axe in the other. Some authors believe that the Chachapumas demanded a "sacrifice" of humans when entering the monumental structures. Some authors believe, because of certain markings on stones found at Puma Punku, the Gate of the Sun was part of Puma Punku. According to Alan Kolata the terraced platform mound depicted on the gateway of the sun is actually a stylized depiction of Pumapunku. The backside of

588-443: A level surface and even joints. Although similar, the blocks do not have the same dimensions. The precise cuts suggest the possibility of pre-fabrication and mass production . Some of the stones are in an unfinished state, showing some of the techniques used to shape them. The architectural historians Jean-Pierre and Stella Nair who conducted the first professional field study on the stones of Tiwanaku/Pumapunku conclude: […] to obtain

672-418: A natural cobble beach for the purpose of reducing wave energy and stopping or slowing coastal erosion. Unlike solid structures, dynamic revetments are designed to allow wave action to rearrange the stones into an equilibrium profile, disrupting wave action and dissipating wave energy as the cobbles move. This can reduce the wave reflection which often contributes to beach scouring . In coastal engineering,

756-543: A tapped /ɾ/ , and an alveolar/palatal contrast for nasals and laterals, as well as two semivowels ( /w/ and /j/ ). Orthographic representation is the same as the IPA where not shown. Stress is usually on the second-to-last syllable, but long vowels may shift it. Although the final vowel of a word is elided except at the end of a phrase, the stress remains unchanged. The vast majority of roots are disyllabic and, with few exceptions, suffixes are monosyllabic . Roots conform to

840-407: A tetrapod is a four-legged concrete structure used as armour unit on breakwaters . The tetrapod's shape is designed to dissipate the force of incoming waves by allowing water to flow around rather than against it, and to reduce displacement by allowing a random distribution of tetrapods to mutually interlock. According to the U.S. National Park Service , and referring mostly to their employment in

924-411: Is a facing of impact-resistant material (such as stone, concrete, sandbags, or wooden piles) applied to a bank or wall in order to absorb the energy of incoming water and protect it from erosion . River or coastal revetments are usually built to preserve the existing uses of the shoreline and to protect the slope. In architecture generally, it means a retaining wall . In military engineering it

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1008-420: Is a structure formed to secure an area from artillery, bombing, or stored explosives. Many revetments are used to line the banks of freshwater rivers , lakes , and man-made reservoirs , especially to prevent damage during periods of floods or heavy seasonal rains (see riprap ). Many materials may be used: wooden piles, loose-piled boulders or concrete shapes, or more solid banks. Concrete revetments are

1092-700: Is actually the one of two extant members of a wider language family, the other surviving representative being Jaqaru . The family was established by the research of Lucy Briggs (a fluent speaker) and Martha Hardman de Bautista of the Program in Linguistics at the University of Florida. Jaqaru [ jaqi aru = human language] and Kawki communities are in the district of Tupe, Yauyos Valley, in the Dept. of Lima, in central Peru. Terminology for this wider language family

1176-610: Is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Bolivian Andes . It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over one million speakers. Aymara, along with Spanish and Quechua , is an official language in Bolivia and Peru . It is also spoken, to a much lesser extent, by some communities in northern Chile , where it is a recognized minority language . Some linguists have claimed that Aymara

1260-511: Is an agglutinating and, to a certain extent, a polysynthetic language . It has a subject–object–verb word order. It is based on a three-valued logic system. Aymara is normally written using the Latin alphabet. The ethnonym "Aymara" may be ultimately derived from the name of some group occupying the southern part of what is now the Quechua speaking area of Apurímac . Regardless, the use of

1344-482: Is due to "similar patterns in human way of thinking" (" Gesetzmässigkeit der menschlichen Denkentwickelung "). The architectural historian Jean-Pierre Protzen from University of California, Berkeley states that in the past it often has been argued that among the buildings at Ollantaytambo the monumental structures (e. g. the Wall of the six monoliths) were the work of the earlier Tiwanaku culture and have been reused by

1428-573: Is estimated to be 85.21 tonnes (93.93 short tons). Both of these stone blocks are part of the Plataforma Lítica , and are red sandstone . Based on detailed petrographic and chemical analyses of samples from individual stones and known quarry sites, archaeologists concluded these and other red sandstone blocks were transported up a steep incline from a quarry near Lake Titicaca roughly 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) away. Smaller andesite blocks for stone facing and carvings came from quarries within

1512-602: Is found in the eastern half of the Tacna and Moquegua departments in southern Peru and in the northeastern tip of Chile. There are roughly two million Bolivian speakers, half a million Peruvian speakers, and perhaps a few thousand speakers in Chile. At the time of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century, Aymara was the dominant language over a much larger area than today, including most of highland Peru south of Cusco . Over

1596-616: Is frequent in Aymara. Vowel deletion typically occurs due to one of three factors: (i) phonotactic, (ii) syntactic, and (iii) morphophonemic. Aymara has phonemic stops at the labial , alveolar , palatal , velar and uvular points of articulation. Stops show no distinction of voice (e.g. there is no phonemic contrast between [p] and [b] ), but each stop occurs in three laryngeal settings: plain or voiceless unaspirated (aka tenuis ), glottalized , and aspirated . Sounds such as [ ʃ, h, ŋ ] occur as allophones of / t͡ʃ, χ, n /. Aymara also has

1680-400: Is limited due to its age, the lack of a written record, and the current deteriorated state of the structures due to treasure hunting, looting , stone mining for building stone and railroad ballast, and natural weathering. When the Spanish arrived at Tiwanaku there was still standing architecture at Pumapunku. Bernabé Cobo reports that one gateway and one "window" was still standing on one of

1764-431: Is motion:" one is "time passing is motion over a landscape" (or "moving-ego"), and the other is "time passing is a moving object" ("moving-events"). The latter metaphor does not explicitly involve the individual/speaker. Events are in a queue, with prior events towards the front of the line. The individual may be facing the queue, or it may be moving from left to right in front of him/her. The claims regarding Aymara involve

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1848-607: Is not yet well established. Hardman has proposed the name 'Jaqi' ('human') while other widely respected Peruvian linguists have proposed alternative names for the same language family. Alfredo Torero uses the term 'Aru' ('speech'); Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, meanwhile, has proposed that the term 'Aymara' should be used for the whole family, distinguished into two branches, Southern (or Altiplano) Aymara and Central Aymara (Jaqaru and Kawki). Each of these three proposals has its followers in Andean linguistics . In English usage, some linguists use

1932-413: Is occupied by the Plataforma Lítica . This structure consists of a stone terrace 6.8 by 38.7 metres (22 by 127 feet) in dimension. This terrace is paved with multiple enormous stone blocks. It contains the largest stone slab in the Pumapunku and Tiwanaku Site, measuring 7.8 metres (26 feet) long, 5.2 metres (17 feet) wide and averages 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) thick. Based on the specific gravity of

2016-416: Is related to its more widely spoken neighbor, Quechua . That claim, however, is disputed. Although there are indeed similarities, like the nearly identical phonologies, the majority position among linguists today is that the similarities are better explained as areal features arising from prolonged cohabitation , rather than natural genealogical changes that would stem from a common protolanguage . Aymara

2100-532: Is that Tiahuanacoid elements were brought to Ollantaytambo by […] stonemasons from Lake Titicaca. […] The only question here is why stonesmasons from Lake Titicaca should have remembered anything Tiahaunacoid when for several centuries nothing like it had been built. If anything remembers me of Tiahuanaco it is […] the T-shaped sockets and the regularly coursed masonry of strongly altered andesite. […] Many T-shaped sockets are indeed found at Tiahuanaco in particular at

2184-426: Is the one used by the lexicographer Juan Francisco Deza Galindo in his Diccionario Aymara – Castellano / Castellano – Aymara . This alphabet has five vowels ⟨a, e, i, o, u⟩, aspiration is conveyed with an ⟨h⟩ next to the consonant, and ejectives with ⟨'⟩. The most unusual characteristic is the expression of the uvular /χ/ with ⟨jh⟩. The other uvular segment, /q/, is expressed by ⟨q⟩, but transcription rules mandate that

2268-569: The American Civil War , a revetment is defined as a " retaining wall constructed to support the interior slope of a parapet . Made of logs, wood planks, fence rails, fascines , gabions , hurdles, sods, or stones, the revetment provided additional protection from enemy fire, and, most importantly, kept the interior slope nearly vertical. Stone revetments commonly survive. A few log revetments have been preserved due to high resin pine or cypress and porous sandy soils. After an entrenchment

2352-590: The Incas : An argument persists that the Wall of the six monoliths and the vanished structures from which the blocks have been recycled predate the Incas and were work of the earlier Tiahuanaco culture. Support for the argument is found in the step motif carved on the fourth monolith and the T-shape sockets cut into several blocks, both believed to be hallmarks of Tiahuanaco-style architecture. […] A variant of this argument

2436-488: The andesite and sandstone stonework, the stonework was probably constructed sometime after AD 536–600. The excavation trenches of Vranich show the clay, sand, and gravel fill of the Pumapunku complex were laid directly on the sterile middle Pleistocene sediments. These excavation trenches also demonstrated the lack of any pre-Andean Middle Horizon cultural deposits within the area of the Tiwanaku Site adjacent to

2520-572: The "apparent geometric perfection of Tiwanaku architecture" is a result of extraterrestrial intervention or a lost super civilization instead attributing the ruins to the inhabitants of the Titicaca basin. In the 2019 issue of Public Archaeology , Franco D. Rossi of Johns Hopkins University criticizes that ancient alien theorists have called the Aymara "stone age people" who could not have built Pumapunku. Aymara language Aymara ( IPA: [aj.ˈma.ɾa] ; also Aymar aru )

2604-583: The Alfabeto Unificado. The alphabet, later sanctioned in Bolivia by Decree 20227 on 9 May 1984 and in Peru as la Resolución Ministerial Peruana 1218ED on 18 November 1985, consists of 3 vowels, 26 consonants and an umlaut to mark vowel length. The orthography was shown in the phonological table in the previous section, and is the same where angle brackets are not shown. In 2015 a full writing system

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2688-422: The Aymara have an apparently unique (or at least very rare) understanding of time. Aymara is, with Quechua, one of very few [Núñez & Sweetser, 2006, p. 403] languages in which speakers seem to represent the past as in front of them and the future as behind them. Their argument is mainly within the framework of conceptual metaphor , which recognizes in general two subtypes of the metaphor "the passage of time

2772-519: The Aymara under the Inca empire. More than a century passed before "Aymara" entered general usage to refer to the language spoken by the Aymara people (Briggs, 1976:14). In the meantime the Aymara language was referred to as "the language of the Colla". The best account of the history of Aymara is that of Cerrón-Palomino, who shows that the ethnonym Aymara, which came from the glottonym, is likely derived from

2856-503: The Copacabana Peninsula about 90 kilometres (56 miles) away from and across Lake Titicaca from the Pumapunku and the rest of the Tiwanaku Site. Archaeologists dispute whether the transport of these stones was by the large labor force of ancient Tiwanaku. Several conflicting theories attempt to imagine the ways this labor force transported the stones, although these theories remain speculative. Two common proposals involve

2940-666: The Northern Aymara dialect, which encompasses the department of La Paz in Bolivia and the department of Puno in Peru. The Southern Aymara dialect is spoken in the eastern half of the Iquique province in northern Chile and in most of the Bolivian department of Oruro . It is also found in northern Potosi and southwest Cochabamba but is slowly being replaced by Quechua in those regions. Intermediate Aymara shares dialectical features with both Northern and Southern Aymara and

3024-448: The Pumapunku complex. The largest of Pumapunku's stone blocks is 7.81 metres (25.6 feet) long, 5.17 metres (17.0 feet) wide, averages 1.07 metres (3 feet 6 inches) thick, and is estimated to weigh about 131 tonnes (144 short tons). The second largest stone block found within the complex is 7.90 metres (25.9 feet) long, 2.50 metres (8 feet 2 inches) wide, and averages 1.86 metres (6 feet 1 inch) thick. Its weight

3108-562: The Pumapunku monumental complex. The foundation platform of Pumapunku supported as many as eight andesite gateways. The fragments of five andesite gateways with similar characteristics to the Gateway of the Sun were found. Tiwanaku, the location of Pumapunku, is significant in Inca traditions. According to traditions, Tiwanaku is believed to be the site where the world was created. The Pumapunku complex consists of an unwalled western court,

3192-431: The Pumapunku monumental complex. The foundation platform of Pumapunku supported as many as eight andesite gateways. The fragments of five andesite gateways with similar characteristics to the Gateway of the Sun were found. There also exist miniature gateways at Pumapunku which are perfect replicas of once standing monumental full-sized gateways. When reducing the full-sized monumental architecture to miniature architecture

3276-506: The Pumapunku platform mound. One of these monoliths is the Pumapunku monolith (or Pumapunku stela). It was discovered west of the Pumapunku campus and first documented in photographs in 1876. There is evidence that like in the case of Akapana sculptures known as Chachapumas once were guarding the entrance to Pumapunku. Chachapumas usually were placed on andesite pedestals on either side of the entrance. These sculptures show fearsome traits of predatory animals, they crouch or kneel while clutching

3360-464: The Quechuaized toponym ayma-ra-y 'place of communal property'. The entire history of this term is thoroughly outlined in his book, Voces del Ande (2008:19–32) and Lingüística Aimara . The suggestion that "Aymara" comes from the Aymara words " jaya " (ancient) and " mara " (year, time) is almost certainly a mistaken folk etymology . It is often assumed that the Aymara language descends from

3444-515: The Tiahuanacans applied a specific formula. There also exist replicas of larger monumental structures. For example it has been shown that the much-admired carved block known as the "Escritorio del Inca" is an accurate and reduced-scale model of full-scale architecture. Some of these "model stones" like "little Pumapunku" are not isolated stones but, rather, seem to fit in the context of other stones and stone fragments. According to Protzen and Nair

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3528-596: The Tiwanaku culture dominated the Lake Titicaca basin as well as portions of Bolivia and Chile. Apparently, this culture dissolved abruptly some time around AD 1000, and researchers can only guess the reasons. A likely scenario involves rapid onset extended drought. Unable to produce the massive crop yields necessary for their large population, the Tiwanaku apparently scattered into the local mountain ranges , then disappeared shortly thereafter. Apparently, Puma Punku

3612-589: The Tiwanaku. This area might be the center of the Andean world, attracting pilgrims from far away to marvel in its beauty. These structures transformed the local landscape; Pumapunku was integrated with Illimani mountain. The spiritual significance and the sense of wonder might be amplified into a "mind-altering and life-changing experience" through the use of hallucinogenic plants. Examinations of hair samples exhibit remnants of psychoactive substances in many mummies found in Tiwanaku culture from Northern Chile, including babies as young as one year of age, demonstrating

3696-503: The blocks comprising the walls and bottom of stone-lined canals to drain sunken courts. In the south canal of the Pumapunku, the I -shaped cramps were cast in place. In sharp contrast, the cramps used at the Akapana canal were fashioned by the cold hammering of copper-arsenic-nickel bronze ingots. The unique copper-arsenic-nickel bronze alloy is also found in metal artifacts within the region between Tiwanaku and San Pedro de Atacama during

3780-597: The centuries, Aymara has gradually lost speakers both to Spanish and to Quechua; many Peruvian and Bolivian communities that were once Aymara-speaking now speak Quechua. Aymara has three phonemic vowel qualities /a i u/ , which, in most varieties of the language, occur as either long or short (i.e. /iː i aː a uː u/ ). Long vowels are indicated in the spelling with a diaeresis in writing: ä , ï , ü . The high vowels /i u/ occur as mid-high [e o] when near uvular consonants /q qʰ qʼ χ/. The three vowel sounds are heard as [ə, ɪ, ʊ] when in unstressed positions. Vowel deletion

3864-438: The claims regarding Aymara uniqueness. However, those words relate events to other events and are part of the moving-events metaphor. In fact, when before means in front of ego , it can mean only future . For instance, our future is laid out before us while our past is behind us . Parallel Aymara examples describe future days as qhipa uru , literally 'back days', and they are sometimes accompanied by gestures to behind

3948-525: The coastline. Wooden revetments are made of planks laid against wooden frames so that they disrupt the force of the water. Although once popular, the use of wooden revetments has largely been replaced by modern concrete-based defense structures such as tetrapods . In the 1730s, wooden revetments protecting dikes in the Netherlands were phased out due to the spread of shipworm infestations. Dynamic revetments use gravel or cobble-sized rocks to mimic

4032-455: The domain of the morpheme, syllable, and phonological word/phrase. The phonological/morphophonological processes observed include syllabic reduction, epenthesis, deletion, and reduplication. Beginning with Spanish missionary efforts, there have been many attempts to create a writing system for Aymara. The colonial sources employed a variety of writing systems heavily influenced by Spanish, the most widespread one being that of Bertonio . Many of

4116-665: The early grammars employed unique alphabets as well as the one of Middendorf's Aymara-Sprache (1891). The first official alphabet to be adopted for Aymara was the Scientific Alphabet. It was approved by the III Congreso Indigenista Interamericano de la Paz in 1954, though its origins can be traced as far back as 1931. Rs. No 1593 (Deza Galindo 1989, 17). It was the first official record of an alphabet, but in 1914, Sisko Chukiwanka Ayulo and Julián Palacios Ríos had recorded what may be

4200-624: The experiments of Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair showed that the Tiwanaku artisans may have possessed additional tools other than hammerstones which facilitated the creation of exact geometric cuts and forms and of which archeology has no record. Nair subsequently experimented with replicating a small section of a carving using a variety of possible stone tools, including blades, flakes and thin chisels made of stones including flint, agate, jasper, obsidian, hydrated obsidian, greywacke, quartzite, and hematite. (Bronze tools proved to be largely ineffective against hard andesite). She succeeded in carving

4284-588: The fact that many of these "model stones" were executed in multiple exemplars bespeaks mass production. At Pumapunku and other areals of Tiwanaku such as Kantatayita doubly curved lintels with complicated surfaces were found. Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair point out that the "steep parabolic curve" of the doubly curved lintels (like the one of the Kantatayita lintel) would be difficult to replicate for modern stonemasons ("would tax any stonemason's skills today"). There are at least two monoliths associated with

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4368-436: The fine-cut masonry and the location of Pumapunku in the high Altiplano as mysteries. The archeologist Alexei Vranich counters the ancient alien enthusiasts that well-preserved local precursors regarding the monumental complex of Pumapunku are now known (some monumental structures at Pukara and Chiripa ). This fact is in his view "a solid piece of evidence" against the claims by ancient alien enthusiasts that hold Pumapunku as

4452-717: The first of many attempts to have one alphabet for both Quechua and Aymara, the Syentifiko Qheshwa-Aymara Alfabeto with 37 graphemes. Several other attempts followed, with varying degrees of success. Some orthographic attempts even expand further: the Alfabeto Funcional Trilingüe , made up of 40 letters (including the voiced stops necessary for Spanish) and created by the Academia de las Lenguas Aymara y Quechua in Puno in 1944

4536-464: The following vowel must be ⟨a, e, o⟩ (not ⟨i, u⟩), presumably to account for uvular lowering and to facilitate multilingual orthography. The alphabet created by the Comisión de Alfabetización y Literatura Aymara (CALA) was officially recognized in Bolivia in 1968 (co-existing with the 1954 Scientific Alphabet). Besides being the alphabet employed by Protestant missionaries, it is also the one used for

4620-466: The gateway of the sun has patterns which can be found on the stone slabs and gates of Pumapunku. Therefore some assume that the gateway of the sun once formed the main entrance to Pumapunku. The roofs of the entrance to Pumapunku were most likely out of Totora-reed stones. At the west entrance of Pumapunku Totora-reed stones were found. Early visitors who saw standing architecture at Tiwanaku reported about stones which resemble "straw": […] [T]he roof of

4704-569: The hall, on the outside, looks like straw, although it is of stone. Because the Indians cover their houses with straw, and for this [room] to look like the others [houses], they dressed the stone and incised it so that it would appear like a cover of straw. Large Totora-reed stones can be found in the museum at Tiwanaku. According to some theories, the Pumapunku complex and surrounding monumental structures like Akapana, Kalasasaya , Putuni , and Kerikala functioned as spiritual and ritual centers for

4788-491: The importance of these substances to the Tiwanaku. The Tiwanaku civilization and the use of these enclosures and platform mounds appears to peak from AD 700 to 1000, by which point, the city core and surrounding area could house 400,000 residents. An extensive infrastructure was developed, including a complex irrigation system extending more than 30 square miles (80 km) to support cultivation of potatoes, quinoa , corn, and other various crops. During their peak centuries,

4872-421: The interior and layers of composite from the exterior, the fills overlap at the joints, grading the contact points to create a sturdy base. Notable features at Pumapunku are I -shaped architectural cramps, composed of a unique copper-arsenic-nickel bronze alloy. These I -shaped cramps were also used on a section of canal found at the base of the terraced platform mound Akapana at Tiwanaku. These cramps hold

4956-399: The kilometer separating the Pumapunku and Kalasasaya complexes was surveyed using ground-penetrating radar , magnetometry , induced electrical conductivity , and magnetic susceptibility . The geophysical data collected from these surveys and excavations indicate the presence of numerous man-made structures in the area between the Pumapunku and Kalasasaya complexes. These structures include

5040-535: The language may have first occurred in the works of the lawyer, magistrate and tax collector in Potosí and Cusco , Polo de Ondegardo . This man, who later assisted Viceroy Toledo in creating a system under which the indigenous population would be ruled for the next 200 years, wrote a report in 1559 entitled 'On the lineage of the Yncas and how they extended their conquests' in which he discusses land and taxation issues of

5124-567: The language spoken in Tiwanaku on the grounds that it is the native language of that area today. That is very far from certain, however, and most specialists now incline to the idea that Aymara did not expand into the Tiwanaku area until rather recently, as it spread southwards from an original homeland that was more likely to have been in Central Peru. Aymara placenames are found all the way north into central Peru. Indeed, (Altiplano) Aymara

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5208-727: The last two decades. There are even projects to offer Aymara through the internet, such as by ILCA. The following is a sample text in Ayamara, Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (by the United Nations): Taqi /ˈtaqi jaqinakaxa haqinaˈkaχa qhispiyata qʰispiˈjata yuripxi juˈɾipχi ukhamaraki ukʰamaˈɾaki jerarquía hiɾaɾˈkia ukhamaraki ukʰamaˈɾaki derechos Revetment A revetment in stream restoration , river engineering or coastal engineering

5292-787: The late Middle Horizon around 600–900. Within Peru, T-shaped sockets can also be found at the Qorikancha and Ollantaytambo . The cramp technique can also be found at buildings of Ancient Egypt (e. g. at the temple of Khnum) and Ancient Greece (e.g. at the Erechtheion ). According to Stübel and Uhle the cramp sockets of Olympia and the Erechtheum in Athens are of the same shape as the ones of Tiwanaku. They call it "strikingly consistent choice of technical means" (" auffallend übereinstimmenden Wahl der technischen Mittel ") which they think

5376-566: The most common type of infrastructure used to control the Mississippi River . More than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of concrete matting has been placed in river bends between Cairo, Illinois and the Gulf of Mexico to slow the natural erosion that would otherwise frequently change small parts of the river's course. Revetments are used as a low-cost solution for coastal erosion defense in areas where crashing waves may otherwise deplete

5460-598: The moving-ego metaphor. Most languages conceptualize the ego as moving forward into the future, with ego's back to the past. The English sentences prepare for what lies before us and we are facing a prosperous future exemplify the metaphor. In contrast, Aymara seems to encode the past as in front of individuals and the future behind them. That is typologically a rare phenomenon [Núñez & Sweetser, 2006, p. 416]. The fact that English has words like before and after that are (currently or archaically) polysemous between 'front/earlier' or 'back/later' may seem to refute

5544-410: The platforms. The Pumapunku is a terraced earthen mound faced with blocks. It is 167.4 metres (549 feet) wide along its north–south axis and 116.7 metres (383 feet) long along its east–west axis. On the northeast and southeast corners of the Pumapunku, it has 20-metre (66-foot) wide projections extending 27.6 metres (91 feet) north and south from the rectangular mound. The eastern edge of the Pumapunku

5628-402: The pounding technique […]. The construction tools of the Tiahuanacans, with perhaps the possible exception of hammerstones, remain essentially unknown and have yet to be discovered. According to Protzen and Nair, no tools have been excavated that were used in the construction of Tiwanaku, or if they have they have not been identified as tools. According to the art historian Jessica Joyce Christie,

5712-577: The red sandstone from which it was carved, this stone slab is estimated to weigh 131 tonnes (144 short tons). The remarkable aspects of the sandstone slabs, including their size and smooth surfaces have drawn comments for several centuries. The other stonework and facing of the Pumapunku consists of a mixture of andesite and red sandstone. Pumapunku's core consists of clay, while the fill under parts of its edge consists of river sand and cobbles instead of clay. Excavations documented "three major building epochs plus repairs and re-modeling". The area within

5796-412: The researchers estimated that it would take an experienced person about 25 hours. Tiwanaku engineers also developed a civic infrastructure at this complex, constructing functional irrigation systems, hydraulic mechanisms, and leak-proof sewage lines. Pumapunku was a large earthen platform mound with three levels of stone retaining walls . Its layout is not square in plan, but rather T-shaped. To sustain

5880-649: The ruins of the monumental complex on top of the Puma Punku platform mound remain. Construction of Puma Punku is believed to have begun after AD 536. Pumapunku was the most important construction in Tiwanaku, other than Akapana , which is believed to be "Pumapunku's twin". Among the place names in Tiwanaku, only the names "Akapana" and "Pumapunku" have historical relevance. Pumapunku holds several miniature gates that are perfect replicas of once standing full-size gateways. In addition to these miniature gateways, likely, at least five gateways (and several blind miniature gateways) were once (or were intended to be) integrated into

5964-538: The site of Puma Punku […]. However, according to Protzen, in Ollantaytambo only T-shaped sockets are found, whereas in Tiwanaku cramp sockets of a wide range of shapes — L, T, double-T or ‡, U, Y, Z — and dimensions are found. Similarities between Ollantaytambo and Tiwanaku were also noticed by Heinrich Ubbelohde-Doering , Alphons Stübel and Max Uhle . At least five gateways (and several blind miniature gateways) were once (or were intended to be) integrated into

6048-531: The smooth finishes, the perfectly planar faces and exact interior and exterior right angles on the finely dressed stones, they resorted to techniques unknown to the Incas and to us at this time. […] The sharp and precise 90° interior angles observed on various decorative motifs most likely were not made with hammerstones. No matter how fine the hammerstone's point, it could never produce the crisp right interior angles seen on Tiahuanaco stonework. Comparable cuts in Inca masonry all have rounded interior angles typical of

6132-481: The speaker. The same applies to Quechua-speakers, whose expression qhipa pʼunchaw corresponds directly to Aymara qhipa uru . Possibly, the metaphor is from the fact that the past is visible (in front of one's eyes), but the future is not. There is increasing use of Aymara locally and there are increased numbers learning the language, both Bolivian and abroad. In Bolivia and Peru, intercultural bilingual education programs with Aymara and Spanish have been introduced in

6216-416: The template (C)V(C)CV, with CVCV being predominant. The majority of suffixes are CV, though there are some exceptions: CVCV, CCV, CCVCV and even VCV are possible but rare. The agglutinative nature of this predominantly suffixing language, coupled with morphophonological alternations caused by vowel deletion and phonologically conditioned constraints, gives rise to interesting surface structures that operate in

6300-468: The term Aymaran languages for the family and reserve 'Aymara' for the Altiplano branch. There is some degree of regional variation within Aymara, but all dialects are mutually intelligible. Most studies of the language focused on either the Aymara spoken on the southern Peruvian shore of Lake Titicaca or the Aymara spoken around La Paz . Lucy Therina Briggs classifies both regions as being part of

6384-447: The top of the lower stone at a certain angle, and placing another stone on top of it which was cut at the same angle. The precision with which these angles create flush joints is indicative of sophisticated knowledge of stone-cutting and a thorough understanding of descriptive geometry . Much of the masonry is characterized by accurately cut rectilinear blocks of such uniformity, they could be interchanged for one another while maintaining

6468-575: The translation of the Book of Mormon . Also in 1968, de Dios Yapita created his take on the Aymara alphabet at the Instituto de Lenga y Cultura Aymara (ILCA). Nearly 15 years later, the Servicio Nacional de Alfabetización y Educación Popular (SENALEP) attempted to consolidate these alphabets to create a system which could be used to write both Aymara and Quechua, creating what was known as

6552-455: The use of llama skin ropes, and the use of ramps and inclined planes . In assembling the walls of Pumapunku, each stone interlocked with the surrounding stones. The blocks were fit together like a puzzle, forming load-bearing joints. Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair identified a 1 to 1.5 millimeters thick thin coat of whiteish material covering some of the stones as a possible layer of mortar. One common engineering technique involves cutting

6636-523: The wall foundations of buildings and compounds, water conduits, pool-like features, revetments , terraces, residential compounds, and widespread gravel pavements, all of which are buried and hidden beneath the modern ground surface. After the area was mapped with a drone in 2016, the results showed the site has a size of seventeen hectares of which only two hectares are unearthed. There are two additional platforms still underground. Noted by Andean specialist, W. H. Isbell, professor at Binghamton University ,

6720-406: The weight of these massive structures, Tiwanaku architects were meticulous in creating foundations, often fitting stones directly to bedrock or digging precise trenches and carefully filling them with layered sedimentary stones to support large stone blocks. Modern engineers argue that base of Pumapunku was constructed using a technique called layering and depositing. By alternating layers of sand from

6804-469: The word "Aymara" as a label for this people was standard practice as early as 1567, as evident from Garci Diez de San Miguel's report of his inspection of the province of Chucuito (1567, 14; cited in Lafaye 1964). In this document, he uses the term aymaraes to refer to the people. The language was then called Colla . It is believed that Colla was the name of an Aymara nation at the time of conquest, and later

6888-492: Was abandoned before its builders could complete it. Pumapunku is subject of pseudoscience theories on lost continents and extraterrestrial interventions. Thousands of websites and references which refer to pseudoscientific theories of alien and Atlantis enthusiasts exist. The archeologist Jeb J. Card notes that Pumapunku is a fixture of books and television programs on alternative archeology and especially ancient aliens . According to Card, Atlantis and aliens enthusiasts point to

6972-664: Was developed for Aymara using the Korean script Hangeul . Aymara is a highly agglutinative, predominantly suffixing language. All suffixes can be categorized into the nominal, verbal, transpositional and those not subcategorized for lexical category (including stem-external word-level suffixes and phrase-final suffixes), as below: All verbs require at least one suffix to be grammatical. A given word can take several transpositional suffixes: There are two kinds of suffixes not subcategorized for lexical categories: Linguistic and gestural analysis by Núñez and Sweetser also asserts that

7056-481: Was the southernmost region of the Inca empire Collasuyu. However, Cerrón Palomino disputes this claim and asserts that Colla were in fact Puquina speakers who were the rulers of Tiwanaku in the first and third centuries (2008:246). This hypothesis suggests that the linguistically-diverse area ruled by the Puquina came to adopt Aymara languages in their southern region. In any case, the use of "Aymara" to refer to

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