Pumapunku – The mysterious temple of the Tiwanaku Empire

 

The Claim
The Tiwanaku empire built a temple using a level of technology unknown to man until several hundred years later.

 

The Tiwanaku empire was a fascinating culture, building some of the most incredible ancient sites across the Andes, but this is also one of the cultures that creates the most questions for both historians and architects alike, and Pumapunku raises some pretty big questions.

 

Part of the Tiwanaku temple complex, Pumapunku was built in or just after the year 536 CE by the Tiwanaku empire, who were a people that inhabited an area of Western Bolivia and parts of south Peru and Northern Chile.

 

The site is made up of a large rectangle earthen mound lined with stone blocks. The temple measures 167.36 metres long by 116.7 metres wide, with 2 projections that extend 27.6 metres out from the main body.

 

 

Now normally things like this can be thought of as “just another ancient site”, but the thing that separates this from the others is that no one knows how it was built. Some of the stone blocks are quite large with the biggest weighing in at just over 130 tons.

 

The strange thing about this site is the stone work seems to have been done with a level of technology that didn’t exists for hundreds of years until after it was built. The stones fit together so perfectly that you cant even slip a piece of paper between them, and some of the stones can interchange with one another while maintaining a perfectly flat top level to the wall.

 

Many people have studies the sites over the years, and one thing that pops up continuously is that claim of how the stone appears to have been cut using a method of prefabrication and mass production, as well as the builders requiring a very advanced understanding of stone cutting and an in-depth knowledge of descriptive geometry.

 

 

Simply put the level of technology required to build such a site simply didn’t exist before Puma punku was built, and wasn’t seen again for hundreds of years after. Not even the Egyptians managed to work stone to the precision of the Tiwanaku empire, and the site baffles researchers and architects to this day.

 

After the fall of the Tiwanaku empire the site came into the posses ion of the Incas, who considered Puma punku to be their holiest site. After the fall of the Incas the site was abandoned and fell into ruin. Today the site has heavily deteriorates from a combination of weathering and treasure hunters digging up the area and taking home souvenirs, but tours are still available to the public.