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by Helmut Zettl from LostCivilizations Website
But there is evidence that such was not always the case.
Just 12 miles southward of the southernmost tip of Lake Titicaca lie the remains of Tiahuanaco, the site of a technologically advanced culture considered by many archaeologists (romantic not orthodox) to be the oldest ruins in the world.
Although some misguided scholars have attributed the buildings of Tiahuanaco to the Incas, it has now been established that the city was already in ruins when the first Incas came upon the scene.
In 1540 the Spanish chronicler, Pedro Cieza de Leon, visited the area and his description of the statues and monoliths compares very closely to what we see today. The site is at an altitude of 13,300 feet, which places it some 800 feet above the present level of Lake Titicaca.
Most archaeologists agree that in the distant past Tiahuanaco
was a
flourishing port at the edge of the lake, which means that the
water has receded almost 12 miles and has dropped about 800 feet
since then. All concur that the lake is shrinking, due mainly to
evaporation, since no rivers flow from it.
The stone works at the ruins consist of such structures as the Gate of the Sun, a portal carved from a single block of stone weighing 15 tons.
The stone steps of the Kalasasaya, each of which is a rectangular block of stone about 30 feet wide; the so-called "idols," which are giant about 23 feet tall representatives of unusual looking beings with typical Tiahuanaco head and trace; and the enormous monolithic stone blocks, many of which appear to have been cast rather than carved, are some of these unusual features.
There is also a reddish "rust" or oxidation covering many of the stones. Many of these enormous stone blocks probably have not been moved since they fell thousands of years ago.
Archaeologists however speculate that the stones were dressed, but never erected that the construction for which they were intended was interrupted.
It is
equally valid, however, to assume that the buildings were completed
and then toppled by some natural catastrophe, such as the eruption
of the Andes mountain chain or a world-wide deluge.
The Indians of that legion have frequently recounted this tradition, but until recently there has been no proof of such structures.
In 1968 Jacques Cousteau, the French underwater explorer, took his crew and equipment there to explore the lake and search for evidence of underwater construction.
Although severely hampered in their activities by the extreme altitude, the divers spent many days searching the lake bottom, in the vicinity of the islands of the Sun and Moon, but found nothing man-made. Cousteau concluded the legends were a myth.
Recently in November 1980, however, the well known Bolivian author and scholar of pre-Columbian cultures, Hugo Boero Rojo, announced the finding of archaeological ruins beneath Lake Titicaca about 15 to 20 meters below the surface off the coast of Puerto Acosta, a Bolivian port village near the Peruvian frontier on the northeast edge of the lake.
Based upon information
furnished by
Elias Mamani a native of the region who is over 100 years old,
Boero Rojo and two Puerto Ricans cinematographers, Ivan and
Alex Irrizarry, were able to locate the ruins after extensive
exploration of the lake bottom in the area, while filming a
documentary on the nearby Indians.
Boero Rojo described these monumental ruins as being "of probable Tiahuanaco origin".
What happened to the advanced ancient culture, however, has not yet been determined. Boero Rojo's discovery nevertheless may prove to create more problems than it solves. If, over the past 3 or 4000 years Lake Titicaca has slowly receded, as appears to be the case-as all scientists agree, then how can we explain the existence of stone temples, stairways, and roads still under water'?. The only answer is that they were built before the lake materialized.
Along with Noah's flood were,
It is evident there was a world-wide deluge 19,000 years ago.
If a flourishing advanced civilization existed on the
Peruvian altiplano many thousands of years ago and was reached by the
flood waters, many problems would be solved, such as the existence
of
Tiahuanaco's ruins under 6 feet of earth at an elevation
of 13,300 feet. The presence of stone structures still under the
lake's waters and the existence of marine life at an impossible
altitude would also make sense.
As you look down the mountains you see more and more terraces of more recent origin. We are told that only the Inca (specifically the Sapai Inca, i.e. the ruler) could use the lower portions and the fertile valleys; the "peons" had to climb to the very peaks to cultivate the soil for their own subsistence. This seems highly unlikely in what we know to have been a pure communistic-theocratic society.
Then it struck me. If there really had been a world-wide deluge covering most of the earth's surface—leaving only mountain tops protruding in the sunlight—then the few remaining survivors of the deluge would naturally plant their seeds on mountain tops. They had no problem getting produce down, because they lived at the top. Also, they used boats to move from one peak to another. As the flood waters receded the terracing began to creep down the mountain sides, as can be seen today, with the ones near the bottom being the freshest.
The Tiahuanacans could have been victims of world-wide flood, their civilization all but wiped out when their homes and structures were covered with sea water.
Because of the basin-like geography of the area the flood waters that became Lake Titicaca could not run off and have only gradually evaporated over the centuries.
Professor Schindler-Bellamy as a disciple of Posnansky
and
Horbiger
(who created the world famous Glacial-Cosmogony theory in the
1930's) has worked dozens of years in the Tiahuanaco area and
has written books on the subject.
This has been described as a "calendar" almost as long as the monolithic gateway has been known to exist; thus the Sun Gate has also been called the Calendar Gate.
This calendar sculpture, though it undoubtedly depicts a "solar year," cannot however be made to fit into the solar year as we divide it at present. After many futile attempts had been made, by employing a Procrustean chopping off of toes or heels to make the calendar work, the sculpture-which indeed has a highly decorative aspect-was eventually declared generally to be nothing but an intricate piece of art. (See Arturo Posnansky and F. Buck.)
When we do so we gain an immense insight into the world of the people of that era, into the manner of thinking of their intellectuals, and generally into the way their craftsmen and laborers lived and worked. To describe these things in detail would make a long story; it took Dr. Allen and Professor Schindler-Bellamy and their helpers many years of hard work to puzzle out the Tiahuanaco system of notation and its symbology, and to make the necessary calculations (before the age of computers).
The enormous amount of information the calendar has been made to contain and to impart to anyone ready and able to read it, is communicated in a way that is, once the system of notation has been grasped, singularly lucid and intelligible, "counting by units of pictorial or abstract form".
But they are too well dove-tailed and geared into the greater system (and in some cases supported by peculiar repetitions and cross-references) to be discarded in disgust; one has to accept them as correct. Whoever rejects them, however, also accepts the onus of offering a better explanation, and Professor Schindler-Bellamy has the "advantage of doubt," at any rate.
These groupings (290, 24, 12, 2) are clearly and unmistakably shown in the sculpture. The explanation of 290 versus 3651/4 days cannot be discussed here. At the time Tiahuanaco flourished the present moon was not yet the companion of our earth but was still an independent exterior planet.
Because of its closeness it moved around the earth more quickly than our planet rotated. Therefore it rose in the west and set in the east (like Mars' satellite Phobos), and so caused a great number of solar eclipses, 37 in one "twelfth," or 447 in one "solar year " of course it caused an equal number of satellite eclipses.
These groupings (37, 447) are shown in the sculpture, with many corroborating cross-references. Different symbols show when these solar eclipses, which were of some duration, occurred: at sunrise, at noon, at sunset.
Tiahuanacan scientists certainly knew, for instance, that the earth was a globe which rotated on its axis (not that the sun moved over a flat earth), because they calculated exactly the times of eclipses not visible at Tiahuanaco but visible in the opposite hemisphere (one wonders whether they were actually able to travel around the world, and speculate in what sort of vessel ! ).
They could calculate squares (and hence, square roots). They knew trigonometry and the measuring of angles (30, 60, 90 degrees) and their functions. They could calculate and indicate fractions, but do not seem to have known the decimal system nor did they apparently ever employ the duodecimal system though they were aware of it (for a still unknown reason, however, the number 11 and its multiples occur often).
They were able to draw absolutely straight lines and exact right angles, but no mathematical instruments have yet been found.
It is difficult to see how all the calculations, planning, and design work involved in producing the great city of Tiahuanaco could have been done without some form of writing, and without a system of notation different from the "unit" system of the calendar sculpture. If they had such a system they must have used it only on perishable materials (one is tempted to think all these Nazca markings had been constructed by Atlanteans who fled to the altiplano before or after the destruction of their island continent 12,000 years ago).
Only a few "older" monuments, as can be inferred from the "calendrical inscriptions" they bear, have been found, but the difference in time cannot have been very great. The different, much lower cultures discovered at considerable distances from Tiahuanaco proper, addressed as "Decadent Tiahuacan" or as "Coastal Tiahuanaco," are only very indirectly related to the culture revealed by the Calendar Gate.
Some of their painted symbols are somehow somewhat related to the calendar symbols, but they make no sense whatever; they are, if anything, purely ornamental Tiahuanaco apparently remained for only a very short period at its acme of perfection (evidenced by the Calendar Gate) and perished suddenly, perhaps through the cataclysmic happenings connected with the breakdown of the former "moon".
We have at present no means of determining when Tiahuanaco rose to supreme height, or when its culture was obliterated, and naturally, the calendar itself can tell us nothing about that. It will certainly not have been in the historical past but well back in the prehistoric. It must indeed have occurred before the planet Luna was captured as the earth's present moon, about 12,000 years ago.
When the satellite approached within a few thousand miles gravitational forces broke it up; according to the Roche formula each planetoid or asteroid disintegrates when approaching the critical distance of 50 to 60,000 kms. The fragments shattered down on earth; the oceans, released from the satellite's gravity, flowed back toward the continents, exposing tropical lands and submerging polar territories. This is the simple explanation of the Horbiger theory, and it seems to me the most logical one.
It is evident, for example, in the discovery of frozen mammoths in the Siberian tundra. Possibly gravity - and therefore physical weight - was also changed on earth, and with it, biological growth. This would explain the widespread construction of huge megalithic monuments as well as the presence of giants - man and animal - in fossil strata, tombs, and myths.
According to Horbiger four moons fell on earth, producing four Ice Ages; our present moon, the fifth one, will similarly be drawn into the critical configuration of one-fifth of its present distance (380,000 kms.) and will cause the fifth cataclysm (remember the Aztec calendar's prediction of doomsday by earthquake!). The theory of a falling moon has recently been substantiated by Dr. John O'Keefe, a scientist at the Coddard Laboratory for Astronomy in Maryland.
Dr. O'Keefe claims that the
fragments of a moon's collision formed a ring around our planet that
could have kept the sun's rays from penetrating to earth, thus
causing world-wide decline of temperatures. After a while the
fragments showered down on earth, breaking into smithereens known as tectites. These tectites O'Keefe believes were
fragments of the fallen moon, thus proving Horbiger 's "World-lce-Cosmology."
Such world wide cataclysms appear in myth, in the Egyptian Papyrus Ipuwer ("The sun set where it rose") or the tomb of Senmut (showing Orion-Sirius painted in reverse position), or in the Finnish Kalevala ("the earth turned round like a potter's wheel"), or the Popol Vuh (describing fire showering down from heaven), all of which indicate that our planet more than once has suffered world wide catastrophe.
REFERENCES
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Legends have persisted
over the centuries that there are stone structures beneath the
waters of Lake Titicaca, much the same kind as can be found on the
lake's shore. 
As Boero Rojo
stated, the discovery of Aymara structures under the waters of Lake
Titicaca could pose entirely new thesis on the disappearance of an
entire civilization, which, for some unknown reason, became
submerged.