The Ancient Enigmas of Puma Punku and Tihuanaco - Chapter 1: Introduction

[Music] amongst all of the world's archaeological mysteries all of the out-of-place artifacts and all of the astonishing advanced megalithic architecture there is perhaps nothing quite so unique as the twin sites we know today as puma punku and tiwanaku this incredible world heritage-listed site is located on the high-altitude bolivia in south america Tiahuanaco is a sprawling enigma of a place it's visible from miles around on the high desert plateau it's it's almost broodingly at an altitude of 12,000 to 600 feet or 3840 metres above sea level and it's located some 15 miles from the modern-day shorelines of what is the highest navigable lake in the world beautiful Lake Titicaca and there is really nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world at first glance Tiahuanaco and Pumapunku aren't as big or as visually arresting as other ancient sites sites like the Pyramids of Giza yet this place contains some of the most incredible precision megalithic stone work to be found anywhere on the planet worker that shows clear signs of a form of ancient advanced technology that must have been used in its creation who did this work is a real mystery as the self-evident level of technological capability that's on display here this is something that is seemingly well beyond what we know of the capabilities of the primitive people who are generally attributed with its construction the incredible masonry here is perplexing their technology evident in this work is essentially unexplainable from within the Orthodox story of history the origins and purpose of the architecture is only one of the many controversial conundrums and unanswered aspects of puma punku and tiwanaku and the mystery to be found on this site is only really matched by its importance and its relevance to the story of civilization in the Americas considered by many to be the progenitor of civilization in this region little is truly known about this site and its original inhabitants mainstream opinion considers the site to be barely 2000 years old but this is far from a settled fact and has been the subject of heated dispute for decades amongst academics and researchers independent authors and researchers using techniques like Astro archaeology and cosmic alignment evidence suggest that tiahuanaco could be as much as 17,000 years old and at least to my eyes the site shows clear evidence of at least two technologically different levels of civilization that must have occupied and worked on this site at some point during its history so the question emerges is this remarkable and unique megalithic treasure the result of a hard-working yet primitive culture a culture that existed around Lake Titicaca during the time of the Romans or does the site's true history go back much much further and is this site the inherited remnant of an advanced civilizations work a civilization that existed deep in antiquity and one that was lost to us through Cataclysm and the sands of time my name is Ben and you're watching Uncharted X I hope you'll join me as I explore the mysteries the technology and the controversial history of the twin sites we today called puma punku and tiahuanaco [Music] there is a lot to cover in that objective there are many different aspects to this place and to its history that are worthy of exploration and investigation I'm going to break this up into a multi-part series and much like my investigation into the therapy of Saqqara I want to take the time to give each aspect its due consideration and to approach each with an open mind to all possibilities I am NOT going to name the specific future chapters right now but my objectives for this series are as follows in this video I want to give a high-level introduction to the sites to their layout their history and to some of the mysteries that confront those who visit this place I also want to show some of my personal highlights to show some of my favorite objects and relate a couple of the stories from my various visits here and this is what you can expect in the future videos in this series I want to closely examine the masonry the architecture and the features of each of the main complexes at this location and yes that will include a detailed review of the proposals for geopolymer use I want to review the history of the work that's been done here and to look at the controversy over the dating of the site in particular I want to evaluate the life and works of Arthur posnansky and I'll have some more information on that specifically towards the end of this video I also want to examine the geological history of the surrounding region and how this place connects to the amazing Lake Titicaca and in doing so I want to hazard some theories as to the possible original purpose of this site so if you like that idea please hit that subscribe button so you can get notified when new content comes out please remember to give the video a thumbs up and do please consider supporting Uncharted X via the value for value model at Uncharted XCOM slash support both puma punku and tiwanaku are bound with stonework of astonishingly intricate design with embedded shapes and sharp angles that seem almost playful in their complexity these designs have been carved almost everywhere you look into the precise and clinically flat surfaces of the grey volcanic andesite blocks that have been broken and tumbled around in disarray all over the site the jaw-dropping stonework here has also been the focus of much new scientific investigation in recent years and several technical papers have been published on the topic in a future video I'm going to dedicate some time to investigate the proposals that the site shows evidence of geopolymer use in its construction and that the andesite blocks may be a form of poured or molded concrete I want to acknowledge this possibility up front as it's a topic that comes up quite a lot in comment sections on my videos now I'm not saying that that is what I think they are I'll leave my conclusions for that specific video but the more important fact that is clear to me is that in either case one case being these are quarried and precision carved andesite blocks the other case being that there are some form of incredibly hard geopolymer mix that somehow creates volcanic andesite and that they've still been shaped with incredible precision in either case we're talking about a lost form of ancient high technology that just isn't easily explainable from within the currently understood paradigm of history that detailed analysis will come in a future video but just to illustrate this point let me briefly quote from one of the technical peer-reviewed scientific papers in this case my source is the website geopolymer org the link is in the description below and this is talking about some of the precision carved andesite blocks on the puma punku-- site quote they have unprecedented smooth finishes perfectly flat faces at exactly 90 degrees interior and exterior right angles how was such perfect cuts made with simple stone tools they have a Mohs hardness of 6 to 7 like quartz and even those are ko metrics people who are claiming that these artifacts were manufactured by an ancient civilization 30,000 or 60,000 years ago don't have the tool to replicate them archeologists tried to explain how such perfection could be achieved with simple Hammerstone's however one expert strongly disagrees for historian architects the making of the H sculptures remains a riddle which they cannot solve protein and others explain to their dilemma and stated to quoting to obtain the smooth finish the perfectly planar faces and exact interior and exterior right angles on the finely dressed stones they resorted to techniques unknown to the Inca and to us at this time the sharp and precise 90-degree interior angles observed on various decorative motifs most likely were not made with hammer stones no matter how find the hammer stones point it could never produce the crisp right interior angles seen on tearin' aku puma punku-- stonework comparable cuts in income a scenario all have rounded interior angles typical of the pounding technique the construction tools of the t1 Arkin's with perhaps the possible exception of hammer stones remain essentially unknown and have yet to be discovered end quote I don't think you could find a stronger acknowledgement of the mystery that's prevalent on the site than what you've just heard just to be clear that was a reference to a peer-reviewed scientific paper called who taught the Inka stonemasons their skills a comparison of Tiahuanaco and Inca cut stone masonry which was published in the Journal of the Society of architectural historians in 1997 and he's pretty much saying that the techniques used were not the same as those demonstrated by the Inka and there were also techniques both unknown to the Inka and unknown to us today so we don't know how they did it both puma punku and tiwanaku are in the same general location in a high-altitude valley that runs west from Lake Titicaca and Bolivia's northern border with Peru the archaeological site itself is a short distance from a main highway and consists of several complexes puma punku-- is around a kilometre distant from Tiahuanaco and there is plenty of debate on whether or not they are actually the same site so aside from puma punku-- there are three main features or main areas of Tiahuanaco although there are more named on maps you have the UH Capanna stepped pyramid which is still only partially excavated a condition that the entire site seems to endure there is the sunken temple with its mysterious embedded carvings of heads in the walls and the central idol to varrock OSHA and next to this looms the impressively massive raised platform called Dhekelia sessile much of the architecture here has been rebuilt from ruins and many of the monuments and the Sun gates have been moved from their original locations a topic that we'll explore in some of the future chapters built up around the site is a small town and also a museum that is well worth a visit with some very interesting objects from the site itself if you go I hope that the lights in the museum work for you as they certainly didn't for me in truth this town and much of the surrounding farmland is built directly on top of the remnants of what must have been a decently sized city similar blocks to the ones that we find on site are often unearthed or known to just be lying around in the surrounding fields and I think one of the major clues to the true antiquity of the site is the fact that it appears to be quite deeply buried in a layer of clay rich red topsoil which had to have come from somewhere it does lend a certain eerie Beauty to the place I'll admit as you wander around under the just incredibly wide sky of the Altiplano and try to puzzle out the astonishing precision carved megalithic blocks that just seem to emerge out of the very ground wherever you look the modern tourist site enclosed by its high fences is really only the central area of what must have been a very large settlement recent satellite imaging of the three main valleys of timin aku that examined the evidence for widespread agricultural methods are suggestive that the population could have numbered anywhere from two hundred thousand up to 1.5 million people the vast majority of buildings around the central stone work would have been Adobe mud brick construction with likely grass that's roofing and centuries ago all of this has long since returned to the soil interestingly the local farmers and many people in the region still utilize this ubiquitous building material and these methods today in order to build many of their structures in 2018 an announcement was made that Bolivian anthropologists had discovered a huge underground Citadel and possibly another hole stepped pyramid on the perimeter of the current archeological site a find so big that they estimate the excavation would take up to 50 years or more although I don't know exactly how to score that estimate given the glacially slow pace of the excavation work that's happened here over the past few decades to quote from the 2018 article and I should mention that this has been Google translated from the original Spanish quote with the new data obtained with the help of technology consisting of precision cameras that took pictures from the air and infrared rays was found a pre-hispanic citadel outside of the archeological perimeter where it was detected that there is an underground plaza and up to two platforms of what is considered a pyramid says a statement issued by the government agency if confirmed the archaeological finding will force a rethinking of the conception that Tiahuanaco was only a ceremonial center to consider that it was also a pre-hispanic City end quote well we can only hope that it will force a rethinking of the site but I'm not placing any bets just yet the population estimates and the evidence size of Tiahuanaco is quite a contentious issue clearly a city and civilization of this size would require a lot of people to sustain it and it's only with a lot of people and with infrastructure and with a consistent food supply that we can begin to specialize in our professions and begin the slow ascent of technological progress that might eventually result in such spectacular stonework supporting a lot of people requires a lot of food which is very hard to grow at nearly 4 kilometers or 13,000 feet above sea level we're well above the tree line here hardly anything grows well up here at all and food production would have been a major objective for much of the population due to the high altitude and the resultant extremes of temperatures growing food efficiently here requires some fairly advanced agricultural techniques something called sukkah Kulu or a flooded raised field technique it is the satellite evidence for this method of agriculture that gives us such large figures for a possible population base and it's also in this area where we see one of the typical circular arguments that is so often deployed by Orthodox academics in order to quash radical or new dating theories and this circular argument goes something like this somebody proposes that for various reasons they think that Tiahuanaco was built much further in the past than we currently think let's say around 10,000 BC ah yes the academics say for the city to be built we require a large population base for infrastructure and support for a large population base we also need a lot of food and food is hard to come by because we are way up in the air at twelve thousand six hundred feet for a lot of food we need advanced agricultural methods there is no evidence for these agricultural methods back at 10,000 BC so therefore the city cannot have been built then and we can reject your crazy theory and all of your evidence now proposals for reading the site are not based on agriculture they're based on many other aspects and much new evidence like the evidence of violent destruction on the site the erosion that is evident in the stones equatorial and celestial alignments two significant dates during the great 26,000 year cycle the precession of the equinoxes and even carbon dating results exist to challenge the Orthodox dating of the site by thousands of years so if you accept the premise that due to this evidence this place and this civilization must have existed in those times then this fact is in and of itself evidence that advanced agriculture must have existed back then as it's the only way to support the necessary population this simple assertion invalidates the entire rebuttal yet rarely do we see any debate on these topics eventually reach this point it's very similar to the Egyptologists rebuttal of the read a ting of the Sphinx which is based on the fact that according to them there are no other megalithic structures dated to the same period proposed for the reading of the Sphinx and I believe this is still somehow the argument that gets used even though that for more than ten years now it's been well established that gobekli tepe in Turkey does in fact date to that period proposed for the reading of the Sphinx around 10,000 BC not only that it's relatively close to Egypt and it's the biggest megalithic site in the world we find a similar case of strangely circular arguments at good and padding in Indonesia much of the new scientific work on that site is suggestive that the history of the structure and likely the civilization that built it goes back much further in time than the established narrative yet the entire body of work that supporting these new findings just gets dismissed simply because of the established narrative that it challenges this can't have been built back then because we know there wasn't a civilization back then how does this make any sense at all ultimately I think this type of reasoning is both intellectually dishonest and closed-minded as it dismisses all sorts of new evidence and potentially important new information simply based on the lack of evidence in another area or by simply stating that it can't be true because it doesn't match our version of history yet it's this version of history that is the very thing the new discoveries are challenging I have to wonder about the motivation behind the almost rabid resistance to new ideas and a new model of history particularly with all of the new evidence coming from other adjacent areas of science the Younger Dryas cataclysm the extension of the human timeline but when these topics get applied to history they are almost immediately dismissed by our resident academia perhaps it has something to do with the fact that very much like a religious priest these academics derive their position their authority and even their livelihood from this particular story or version of history and they really don't like the idea of the rug being yanked out from under their feet now I'm not saying that we need to just blindly accept every proposal comes out but we should be able to debate and discuss new evidence in a rational manner and to actually consider the implications of such findings on the story of history and to do so with open minds rather than just dismissing such claims out of hand and claiming that you know they can't be true simply because the established narrative of history the very narrative that is being challenged says they can't be true so what do we know about Tiahuanaco and Pumapunku well we do know that the site had been long abandoned likely for hundreds of years when it was rediscovered at least rediscovered by European cultures in 1549 by Spanish conquistador Pedro Piazza de Leon who stumbled upon the remains while searching for that mythical Inca capital Kula tzuyu according to historical accounts the indians of the tihuanaco tree j'en first told the Spaniards that the ruins had appeared overnight and that they were either raised by giants or that it was the result of magic a God who turned an entire population to stone because they refused to house the God's messenger these local people also laughed at the suggestion that it was built by the Inca and they affirmed that it had existed long before that civilization ever emerged Orthodox history considers this place to be the progenitor of the Inca civilization and that the culture who lived here were forced to leave the area either because the local people the Aymara who still inhabit this region forced amount or they had to leave because the region suffered a 40-year drought and ultimately agricultural methods failed as a result and the region could not sustain such a population base in either case it is thought that roughly 1,000 years ago the Tiwanaku culture left and journeyed north into Peru and the Sacred Valley eventually finding cusco and establishing a capital there and they grew to become the great civilization we know as the Inca all of this is very hypothetical with only scant traces of real evidence to support it the earliest carbon dating results found put a human presence here around 1500 BC although the mainstream accepted date for the origins of Tiahuanaco and Pumapunku is around 200 AD the time of the Roman civilization in Europe I don't need to get into a discussion about the specific efficacy of carbon dating organic remains but it's worth noting that all you're really establishing with this method is likely the last time that somebody made a campfire here it has nothing to do whatsoever with stonework or architecture also some environments are just not conductive to preserving many organic remains from which to date things it's the same case for fossils it's basically an mirakl that any fossils get formed at all and the lack of fossils or in this case the lack of carbon dating evidence isn't actually evidence for anything at all other than just a big question mark I think that there is plenty of evidence that this site is far older than the Orthodox story would have us believe and this evidence is supported by the geological history of the surrounding region and the massive Lake Titicaca this connection may also provide significant clues towards the original purpose for the site and I intend to explore this evidence in some detail in the later chapters of this series I've spent four full days at puma punku and tiwanaku across two separate visits here in 2013 i was here with graham hancock and brian forester we were only supposed to have a single day on site but given that the museums in lop has that we were supposed to visit the following day were inexplicably closed which is a situation that's not all that unusual for Bolivia most of the group decided to just take a welcome rest day it's a beautiful place but the altitude can be a real struggle Graham however wanted to go back to Tiahuanaco and a small group of us decided to roll back out there with him for a second day on site and it was really just a great decision the weather cleared up and we had just some wonderful conditions for photography and the chance to captures just some amazing aspects of the site and let's face it I was going to take any opportunity I had to hang out with Graham Hancock it's why I was on that tour after all then again in late 2015 my mate Luke and I were there with another small group of friends this time armed with decent stabilized video cameras and most of the footage that you're seeing is from that trip I had the chance to stay overnight on site that time in a small Chicana shaped guest house looking right at one of the Sun gates that was in the plaza and this was just a magical experience a storm rolled in and we had some wonderful high-altitude night sky views we even met their local shamans wife who was selling some locally made haberdashery okay check that off I've always wanted to say haberdashery in one of my videos I was in South America for five weeks on this trip and the only thing of significance that I bought during that entire time was the shawl that she is wearing in this picture and yep I bought it pretty much right off her back my trips to Tiahuanaco and Pumapunku are some of the most memorable experiences I've ever had chasing all of these silly unanswerable questions all around the world I definitely want to go back someday and to that end I've kind of been thinking about putting together a South America trip for some time maybe in 2020 and if anyone's interested in that idea or you might consider coming along please do let me know in the comment section below I can't do an introductory video without sharing some of the most memorable mind-boggling things that I've witnessed here so let's just explore a few of my personal favorite highlights that are on this site it's worth noting that they don't actually permit you to take video footage here at least they didn't in 2015 and for whatever reason I'm not really sure they have also been systematically roping off more and more of these stones with the accursed blue ropes of thou shalt not pass lest I accost you with my furious whistle it's frustrating and it's a global trend that's happening on many ancient sites I'm fundamentally opposed to measures like this because I think that history itself and in particular the vastly mysterious places like Tiahuanaco or Giza they belong to the entire world and not just to a few privileged academics and archaeologists I tend to push on these types of boundaries when I'm confronted by them my friends and family might say that it's not exactly out of character for me so for some technical reason during this time my camera was accidentally set to take some video when I was last here I'd encourage everyone who visits these types of places to just occasionally step over that rope at least metaphorically speaking when you can these stones they're eternal we can't hurt them by touching them or by standing on them or by examining them closely as really should be our right we should resist the trend that visitors to these places should be fenced off and herded like cattle and to not be allowed to experience what they've come to see so let's wrap this video up with a look at some of my favorite bits of stonework that are spread across puma punku and tiwanaku obviously the h-blocks they're the most famous piece at puma punku-- they are just tremendous examples of the very sharp angles and precision masonry work that happens on this site there's lots of different examples and types of this work they're just incredible I also happen to really dig the left-turn arrow that's carved into one of the andesite blocks but it's really these smaller details that is in some of the stonework that is truly astonishing to me there's really no better example of this than this tiny little channel that's been drilled into a very flat surface of one of the andesite blocks and in this channel there are evenly spaced just tiny drill holes this is very difficult and precise work to explain using hand tools and these drill holes are not just located on this one block either you can find these little things all over the place in many bits of rock you even find some of these drill holes in the red sandstone floor tiles as well as put into various andesite blocks both over puma punku and tiwanaku they're also in what I like to call the super block this isn't just an incredible piece of masonry that's over at Tiwanaku it has clamp marks it has drill holes it's whole front has been carved in the iconic tiwanaku art style that's similar to the Sun gates it has all sorts of precision surfaces on it the backside of this block has been curved in a very complex three-dimensional shape that makes me think it's got something to do with water almost looks like a sluice gate but again this is a very precise and complex shape to have been carved by hand just a brief look at a couple of my favorite examples there we will take a closer look at all of those objects as well as many more in the future chapters in this series much of the controversy surrounding the history of Tiahuanaco and Pumapunku stems from the life and works of arthur posnansky he was an Austrian who spent much of his life as a public figure in Bolivia he was a really an interesting cat when it comes to the history of this place he spent fifty years of his life investigating these mysteries on both of these sites and in several other places he self-published a full volume culmination of his life's work shortly before he died in Bolivia in 1946 and he called this work to anarcho the cradle of American man this work consists of two books of two volumes each and it's extremely difficult to find really any accurate information on it but in these books posnansky States his reasoning for dating to cite to around 15,000 BC and his work is also the source for many of the earliest images of the site that you can go and find on the Internet he's mentioned extensively in Graham Hancock's seminal work the fingerprints of the gods he published that in 1996 and posnansky was and really still is to this day just widely criticized by a mainstream archaeology although he's really made tremendous contributions to the field and in his life he arranged permits for several mainstream archaeologists to work on the site he had all of tihuanaco for some time I think being a tactful radical idea certainly seems to go with the territory in archeology yet I'm sort of having trouble finding the specifics of the arguments here whether it's exactly what posnansky said all the details of the rebuttal against it and this is kind of where it gets a little interesting for me because thanks to a very generous supporter of the channel I've actually been able to order a copy of the first volume of posnansky x' works then the copies of these are very very hard to come by and they're actually quite expensive we're talking several hundred dollars for a copy so just a huge thank you to the person who made this happen you know who you are and the funny thing is just as I was finishing up this video it it turned up so I'm super excited to get into it I really haven't had a chance to do much more than just page through it at this point because I kind of really need to finish this video first it's taken quite a lot of time I do plan to make a full study of this work in this series and include it in upcoming chapters in detail so I'm greatly looking forward to getting into that research and I kind of have an idea that I'm hoping you guys can maybe help me with I would really love to get my hands on the second volume in this series or the second book and to also include it in my research and my work going forward so you know if you like that idea any donations or any contributions to the channel that mention a book fund or just put it in an email or put it in the paypal I'll put that directly towards hopefully one day being able to make that purchase and include it for anyone that does contribute to this book fund well I've got a very good scanner here and a good camera here and I'm more than willing to share what I would consider crowd-sourced information with those who enable me to get my hands on it it's just an idea I'm really just testing the waters to hear to see if this is the type of thing that you guys want me to be doing and in any case I think I've located a copy of the second book in a library that's a couple of hours away maybe I can get some access to that we'll see so I hope you all enjoyed this presentation I've been working really hard on it for quite a while now there's been a lot of hours that have gone into this and to be honest there's quite a lot more to come in this series I've got a lot to say about this site I want to say welcome to all of the new subscribers to the channel I hope you enjoyed there are plenty more videos like this one in my back catalogue just go and click on the video tab please make sure to check those out and as always just a huge thank you to all of my supporters on patreon on paypal and on subscribes and on subscribe start you guys really showing me that there might be a path to sustainability in this crazy caper I do try to run the channel on the value for value model so if you get some value from this or from any of my work please do consider returning some of that value back to me there are lots of ways you can do that and they're all listed on my website at Uncharted XCOM slash support I really do greatly appreciate any consideration at all along those lines you might think of it like the value you get from tipping a server or perhaps the very from a movie ticket I really don't like doing these little bits of debugging in my videos but the reality is that I just can't spend the time producing these videos and doing this research without your support I'd have to go back and get a day job so that's always a possibility I have a lot more planned though in the future so please do remember to hit that subscribe button and I will see you guys in the next video peace [Music] you

Channel: UnchartedX

Views: 213,379

Keywords: Egypt, megalithic, pyramid, serapeum, granite, tomb, pyramids, cheops, peru, Bolivia, Giza, Technology, ancient aliens, Ancient, History, Archaeology, Egyptology, graham hancock, randall carlson, Underground, Catacombs, Limestone, Caves, Tunnels, yousef awyan, Apis, Greek, Strabo, Roman, Masonry, brien forester, younger dryas, comet, evidence, science, scientific, dynastic, joe rogan, documentary, tiwanaku, puma punku, pumapunku, tihuanaco, titicaca, puno, copacobana, lake, geology, andecite, mason

Id: g0kf82I6ffc

Length: 31min 0sec (1860 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 23 2019