La Paz & Around - Bolivia - page 149

gists point to climate change as the most likely cause of the civilization's rapid decline.
During this period pottery grew less elaborate, construction projects slowed and stopped,
and no large-scale monuments were added after the early phases of this period.
When the Spaniards arrived in South America, local indigenous legends recounted that
Tiwanaku had been the capital of the bearded, white god-king called Viracocha, and that
from his city Viracocha had reigned over the civilization.
Pieces from the three more recent Tiwanaku periods may be found scattered around
Bolivia, but the majority are housed in archaeological museums in La Paz and
Cochabamba. The ruins themselves have been so badly looted, however, that much of the
information they could have revealed about their builders is now lost forever.
At the request of Unesco, they ceased excavations of the site in 2005, and are concen-
trating now on preserving what they've already dug up. About 100,000 visitors come to
the site every year.
Sights & Activities
Entrance to the site and museum (B$80; tickets 9am to 4pm, site open until 5pm) is paid
opposite the visitor's center. If you go on your own, start your visit in the museum to get a
basic understanding of the history, then head to the ruins.
The true star of the show at the onsite museum, Museo Litico Monumental , is the
massive 7.3m Monolito Bennett Pachamama , rescued in 2002 from its former smoggy
home at the outdoor Templete Semisubterráneo ( Click here ) in La Paz. You'll also find a
basic collection of artifacts, pottery, exhibits on the practice of cranial deformation, and
other items dug up on the site here. Labeling is in Spanish. Much of the collection is cur-
rently mothballed, as the roof of the recently built museum is already collapsing.
Scattered around the Tiwanaku site, you'll find heaps of jumbled basalt and sandstone
slabs weighing as much as 25 tons each. Oddly enough, the nearest quarries that could
have produced the basalt megaliths are on the Copacabana peninsula, 40km away beyond
the lake. Even the sandstone blocks had to be transported from a site more than 5km
away. It's no wonder, then, that when the Spanish asked local Aymará how the buildings
were constructed, they replied that it was done with the aid of the leader/deity Viracocha.
They could conceive of no other plausible explanation.
At the entrance to the site two stone blocks can be used as megaphones . After enter-
taining yourself for a minute or two with this interesting pre-Columbian, pre-iPod techno-
logy, climb the hill up to Tiwanaku's most outstanding structure, the partially excavated
Akapana pyramid , which was built on an existing geological formation. At its base this
roughly square 16m hill covers a surface area of about 200 sq meters. In the center of its