– Click here for the recent interview given by Dave Truman on ‘Earth Ancients’, Tiwanaku, Ancient City of the Gods – The Uru people, who are thought to have lived on the Altiplano for longer than most of its other inhabitants, maintain a tradition that deep beneath the waters…
The Sunken Cities of Titikaka: Just Gilded Fables, or the Relics of an Ancient History that is Being Suppressed? - Graham Hancock Official Website Menu Home Books Visionary America Before Magicians of the Gods War God Entangled Supernatural Fingerprints of the Gods The Sign and the Seal Talks & Events Explore Bio Galleries Videos Archive Links Our Cloud Host Recommended Reading Blog Articles AOM News Desk Message Board The Sunken Cities of Titikaka: Just Gilded Fables, or the Relics of an Ancient History that is Being Suppressed? by Dave Truman Author links: lostscienceoftheandes.com Published 3rd March 2017 | 32 Comments | Articles First light breaks over Lake Titikaka, from the Island of the Sun. To the right, lies the Island of the moon and in the distance, on the mainland, can be seen the sacred mountain Illampu. The Lake straddles the border of Peru and Bolivia and is some 118 miles (190km) long. At over 12,000 feet (3,658 metres), Titikaka is the world’s highest navigable lake.©Dave Truman 2017. This image may be reproduced only for educational or informational purposes. – Click here for the recent interview given by Dave Truman on ‘Earth Ancients’, Tiwanaku, Ancient City of the Gods – The Uru people, who are thought to have lived on the Altiplano for longer than most of its other inhabitants, maintain a tradition that deep beneath the waters of Lake Titikaka lie the ruins of a city of gold. Over the years, the story has been dismissed as a romantic fable, or the the idle fancy of an ‘uneducated’ people. The Urus’ tradition can be seen as the epitome par excellence of the lost grandeur of a world that lies forever just beyond our reach. It has an almost universal appeal, which is probably why we find similar stories from cultures around the world; not least Plato’s Atlantis. Yet, might there be some truth to this story? Could there really be remains of cities, their walls clad with sheets of gold, beneath the waters of this sacred Andean Lake? The proposition seems the very stuff of dreams, but curiously enough, there is a line that can be traced back through time to the prehistoric depths of Titikaka’s brackish waters. The line is not a straight one and it is often obscured by the tangle of legends and folktales that cling to Andean traditions; but it is there nonetheless. Records of golden temples, if not golden cities The Convent Church of Santo Domingo in Cusco, which was built on top of the solar temple known as the Corichancha. According to Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, the cloisters of the Coricancha were clad with sheets of gold.©Dave Truman 2017. This image may be reproduced only for educational or informational purposes. Gold-clad temples and palaces are not just the subject of ancient legends. The chronicler, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616) wrote that, until the arrival of the Spanish, Cusco’s Great Solar Temple the Corichancha possessed cloisters with walls covered with sheets of gold.i Elsewhere in his writings, Garcilaso tells us that the great Solar Temple on the Island of the Sun rivalled the Coricancha for the sheer sumptuousness of its gold and silver ornamentation.ii His reference to the Island of the Sun takes us right back to Lake Titikaka and the place where the Urus´ legend originated, but Garcilaso was writing about a time just before his own birth. The great Solar Temple that once stood on the Island of the Sun. It was said by the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega to have been adorned in gold so lavishly that it rivalled the Coricancha in terms of its splendour. By Fergon – La Tierra y el Hombre Descripción pintoresca de nuestro globo y de las diferentes razas que lo pueblan de Federico de Hellwald. Traducción de Don Manuel Aranda y Sanjuan. Editado en Barcelona por Montaner y Simón, Editores (Calle de Aragón nums 309 y 311) el año de 1887; Public Domain Neither should we think of the Urus as dreaming up some kind of pastoral bliss through their legend of a golden city. They have eked out their meagre existence on the harsh altiplano for thousands of years and have been able to do so only through closely observing nature. The French explorer Simone Waisbard spent many years collecting information about Titikaka. She recalled listening to an Uru fisherman telling her he had seen an entire city protruding above the surface of the Lake during a drought when the water-level had dropped some 13ft (4 metres). He added that this was undoubtedly a city belonging to someone called the Great Zapana, “who invaded the islands of the lake that then used to be governed by Mallku de Chucuito, who was defeated.”iii 1 This account is confirmed by another chronicler, Pedro Cieza de León (1520 -1554), who wrote that the native people informed him of a leader called Zapana, who had once ruled many cities now submerged within the Lake. iv Ruins in the shallows and ruins in the depths When one of the pioneers of modern archaeology, the American Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888), visited the northern part of Lake Titikaka in 1877, he came across some ruins submerged in the shallows on the edge of the Sillustani Peninsula. He could hardly discern any stonework, because they were covered with many reeds and other aquatic plants, but he eventually made out the shape of a straight wall, or breakwater, that ran from one side of the peninsula to the other. Squier concluded that the construction had once been originally well above the water level, but that an earthquake had caused the land to subside. Curiously enough, his reasoning agreed with local custom that speaks of the Lords of Hatun Kolla, who had to abandon their palace after it had been flooded, following a great earthquake. More prosaically, the local Aymara fishermen when asked about the ruins, said that they were visible at times when the water levels on the Lake were at their lowest.v One of the shallow inlets of the Umayu Lagoon that borders the Sillustani Peninsula, just north of Lake Titikaka. The dark green plants clustered at the water’s edge are tortora reeds. ©Dave Truman 2017. This image may be reproduced only for educational or informational purposes. Accounts of ruined cities, temples and other megalithic constructions are not just confined to Titikaka’s reed encrusted shores, however. In the 1930s, no lesser person than the Commandant of the Peruvian Navy, Antonio Rodríguez Ravitch, reported the existence of submerged megalithic ruins near to the island of Kispinike at the northern end of the Lake. His account was endorsed by an academic, Dr Espinoza Sorano, who claimed to have seen beneath the clear and deep waters, “temples of the Sun and Moon, of monolithic stones,” which he attributed to, “pre-Inca architects who belonged to a totally submerged civilisation.”vi It was, however, undoubtedly the stories of gold beneath Titikaka’s waters that prompted some of the first foreign under-water explorations of Titikaka in the last century. Not least amongst these legends have been those concerning an immense golden serpent-like chain. These stories were what first motivated the US professional diver William Mardoff to explore beneath Titikaka’s waters in 1956.vii William Mardoff: underwater exploration and its challenges Mardoff was not the first to encounter the unique challenges of diving beneath the waters of Titikaka. There had been Spanish and British explorations in the 1930s, but they had found no treasures. Lake Titikaka is not the ideal place to dive and presents distinct problems for the frogman, or woman. Before a diver even gets to explore the deep he or she has to contend with the lack of oxygen in the thin air surrounding the Lake, rendering even modest physical tasks exhausting. Then, there are the biting and freezing winds that can often blow up in a matter of seconds, whipping the Lake’s surface into a frenzy of icy waves. Such squalls often include lashing rain, or even worse, hail stones. Once submerged, the diver finds that Titikaka’s water is extremely cold, whatever the time of year, since the Lake is fed by mountain streams and rivers that run from the high peaks of the adjacent cordilleras. At this extreme elevation, sunlight penetrates deep beneath the Lake’s surface, which stimulates an abundance of vegetation, especially tortora reeds and algae. Aquatic plants readily cover every surface they can cling to, including any archaeological remains. Last but by no means least, there is the ever-present layer of mud, which accumulates to a depth of some 130 feet (40 metres) over the Lake´s bed. Given such extreme conditions, it was hardly surprising that Mardoff did not find any colossal gold chain, or even any more modest golden votive offerings. After some twenty-five diving sessions, he gave up his quest. All he had to show for his efforts were a few ceramic pieces. Some said that his lack of success was because he had not shown sufficient respect for the dieties of the Sacred Lake, in that he had not appeased them before making his first dive. Certainly, Mardoff had needed to wait for a whole fortnight before the local fishermen eventually agreed to help him in his quest. As a solo diver, he should have welcomed any local information that they might have had to support his explorations. Just before he left Bolivia, Mardoff attended a dinner in La Paz that was given in his honour. Whether as a result of over indulgence at the fine banquet or not, Mardoff took the opportunity to speak about a marvellous city he had come across by accident during his under-water investigations. He told his fellow diners that it lay at a depth of about a hundred feet (30 metres) bemeath the Lake, near to the mouth of the Escoña River. It was close to a lake-isle that the local people regarded as enchanted. Mardoff waxed lyrical about the ruined city’s crumbling mud-encroached walls and the algae floating through its abandoned windows. Doubtless, some of the banquet’s Bolivian guests, who knew something of the ancient traditions of Titikaka, linked the diver’s mellifluous account to legends of the sunken City of Chiopata. The City was recorded in the local annals and was believed to have been near to where the North American had dived.viii Map of the southern part of Lake Titikaka showing the tip of the Yunguyu Peninsula, where Peru borders Bolivia. To the right of the map is the little lake of Wiñay Marka, in which several underwater explorers have found polygonal megalithic ruins. It is possible that these may date from the Younger Dryas ´big freeze´ at the end of the last Ice Age when the little lake´s bed was dry. Significantly, Wiñay Marka in the Aymara language means ´The Eternal City’.This work “Isla del Sol” is a derivative of an untitled picture by NASA WorldWind, Public domain, is used under CC by “Isla del Sol” is licensed under CC by Dave Truman and Tony Cross. Whether Mardoff’s account was true or not, the idea of ancient sunken cities abandoned beneath Titikaka’s waters had begun to rise in the consciousness of Bolivians, even though no actual relics had yet been brought to the surface. In the decade that followed, another underwater expedition claimed to have seen the archaeological remains of buildings near to the Island of Simillaque. This was in the ‘little lake’ of Wiñay Marka, which lies to the south of the Yunguyu Peninsula. The success of these early underwater explorations was hampered by the ambivalence of the local Aymara people towards them. More often than not, they were reticent about helping the frogmen because they thought that they would enrage the lake’s spirits, or that the divers would remove votive offerings to deities that had themselves been given to the lake. Yet, Titikaka’s Aymara fishermen possessed an intimate knowledge of the lake; and especially of its submerged ruins, some of which occasionally peeped above the water’s surface. Their accounts of such places not only told of worked stones and walls, but often included the presence of deities and of strange beings that floated between the ruined megalithic structures. Too often, their stories suffered the fate of peremptory dismissal by the underwater explorers. The Fer de Lance Expedition The Argentinian diver Ramón Avallaneda learned of Mardoff’s encounter with a ruined city and was inspired to explore the Lake´s depths for himself. He obtained financial support from a Buenos Aires newspaper, as well as from the Bolivian government, and headed off for Copacabana in the company of two other divers. Avallaneda’s team began by diving directly above the place they thought that Mardoff had reported having seen the submerged city, but found nothing. Eventually Avallaneda decided to dive elsewhere after asking of one of the locals, who remembered having seen some ruined buildings on the opposite side of the Lake as a child. The change proved fruitful. The three frogmen emerged from the waters shouting in excitement and with a sense of triumph. At some 25ft (8 metres) below the Lake’s surface they had seen enormous worked blocks of stone, some of which were nested inside each other, like a gigantic jigsaw. They discovered whole walls, the stones of which had been cut regularly and which they described as, “in the Inca style,” although some suspected that they were much older. The description of the megaliths beneath Titikaka’s waters as being interlocking, like a vast jigsaw, is particularly interesting because it is redolent of the kinds of polygonal megalithic structures found in parts of Cusco and in the ‘fortress’ of Sacsayhuayaman, which overlooks that city. It should be stressed here that polygonal megalithic architecture is a very different building technology from the megaliths that comprise Tiwanaku, or Puma Punku. At those sites, the megalithic blocks are usually rectangular and they do not interlock in the way that the giant stones of Sacsayhuayaman do. Nearly all conventional archaeologists attribute the construction of polygonal megalithic structures to the Incas, but others, who have studied them in detail, beg to differ. The Peruvian father and son, Alfredo and Jesús Gamarra, have made an extensive study of Andean megalithic architecture. They have concluded that it belongs to a much more ancient construction technology than any used by the Inca.ix In particular, they believe these massive polygonal structures to have been erected in the distant past; in an era which Alfredo Gamarra named the Uran Pacha.x Some of the immense interlocking blocks of limestone at Sacsayhuayaman. Several of those who have dived beneath the waters of Titikaka report having seen the remains of constructions that resemble this stonework. Are those ruins the remains of buildings that existed before the altiplano flooded, at the very end of the last Ice Age?©Dave Truman 2017. This image may be reproduced only for educational or informational purposes. If the Gamarras are correct in the broad thrust of their assertions, then the discovery of polygonal megalithic buildings from the remote past beneath the waters of Lake Titikaka may be highly significant. To my mind, the Gamarras’ diligent observations of South American megaliths over many years suggest the existence of a Pleistocene advanced culture in the Andes that may have pre-dated the Younger Dryas event.2 In my previous article, I outlined how a flood, or floods, may have set the altiplano awash with the waters of the Pacific. Could it be that the interlocking stone megaliths seen by Avellenada and his team dated back to before the end of the last Ice Age? The massive and interlocking three-dimensional jigsaw of a wall was not the only discovery made by Avallaneda´s team. In the days that followed, they found a paved road that ran parallel to the Lake’s coast, several hundred yards (metres) from the shore. They discovered a whole complex of structures that did not seem to conform to any architectural style yet found in either Peru or Bolivia, or so the archaeologists said. In this ‘complex’, there were some thirty walls running in parallel with each other. They were spaced about five metres/yards apart and were about the same height as a human. At one end, the parallel walls all joined the straight edge of a stone base, which was approximately 5/8 of a mile (1 km) long and resembled a half-moon when viewed from above. The base had been constructed from stone blocks that had been formed into cubes, each of their sides being about 2ft 4in (70cm) across. There are photographs and film that provided irrefutable proof of the existence of this strange construction.xi This ‘complex’ raised more questions than it answered. What function did this construction serve? Had it been a harbour when the level of the Lake was much lower than it is today? If so, how did the curious construction of thirty parallel walls provide any shelter against the fierce storms that are known to brew up on the altiplano? It is quite curious that virtually none of these finds seem to be in the public domain today, especially in our current information-rich age. It is not just that no photographs or film have been posted on the internet; that in itself is baffling. It is that the work of Avallaneda´s team has not informed any of the most recent underwater expeditions. I have not found any records of what Avallaneda is reputed to have discovered, but a man who was perhaps the world’s most famous underwater explorer at the time did see his material. What was more, Avellenada´s pictures and film inspired him to launch his own underwater exploration of Titikaka. Enter Jaques-Yves Cousteau There were severe limits as to how much of the Lake’s three divers could explore. This much was patently obvious when Avallaneda met with the underwater explorer Jaques-Ives Cousteau. The Frenchman was resolved to find out more about the Lake´s depths, so he assembled a formidable team of seventeen people including divers, sub-aquatic camera operators, biologists and an underwater archaeologist, named Frédéric Dumas. Above all, Cousteau wanted to explore the Lake’s bed, most of which was at a depth far greater than any diver could descend to safely. He took with him two ‘sea fleas’, which were mini-submarines, each capable of carrying one person and of descending to a depth of 1,640 feet (500 metres).xii Despite extensive reconnaissance of Titikaka’s depths and shallows, Cousteau’s exploration of the Lake did not live up to expectations. Although they could dive to great depths, the ‘sea-fleas’ faced their own problems beneath the Lake, because they had been designed for use in the sea. When submerged in the Lake, they needed additional buoyancy tanks attached to their outsides. The biggest challenge to Cousteau’s expedition was, however, the Lake itself. In the shallows, the frogmen had to contend with forests of tortora reeds. In the depths, there was the ubiquitous layer of mud to contend with, but here it was covered by an almost impenetrable growth of algae. Although Titikaka’s waters are usually limpid, any disturbance of the mire covering the Lake’s bed would send plumes of mud and dislodged algae directly into the fields of vision of the mini-submarines’ pilots, rendering their task virtually useless. A submerged Stone, which appears to have been part of the masonry of an interlocking wall. This was filmed by the Cousteau team, presumably at great depth. Note the cloudy nature of the waters, which was probably a result of turbulence generated by Cousteau’s sea fleas. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of the material reproduced. Heads of cobras in South America Having said all this, Cousteau’s expedition did make some fascinating discoveries. While Frédéric Dumas was exploring the Lake’s shoreline, he came across a group of megaliths lying in the shallows amongst the tortora. He surmised that these immense stones must have been worked, and he noticed that many of the rocks seemed to form a wall, or causeway,… truncated (32,965 more characters in archive)