How the sophisticated civilization of Tiwanaku disappeared – 03/11/2024 – Science
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The Tiwanaku (or Tiahuanaco) empire is known as the “mother culture” of South America. Its splendor and influence reached Peru, Chile, Argentina and Bolivia.
Its history is one of the richest and most vibrant in the world. It was one of the most complex and sophisticated civilizations in history, which dominated a vast expanse of South America for several centuries.
The spiritual and political center was located in the city-state of Tiwanaku, about 74 km west of La Paz, near Lake Titicaca.
At an altitude of almost 4,000 meters above sea level, the city displayed all its grandeur between 400 AD and 900 AD — before gradually disappearing.
“The remains of its monuments attest to the cultural and political importance of a civilization that is clearly different from other pre-Hispanic cultures in America”, says UNESCO about the archaeological site.
The monumental set of buildings and pyramids was built with huge stones carved with millimeter precision. It is still unclear how they managed to erect these structures or even bring the necessary stones, as this civilization did not know the wheel.
“It was a brilliant city, which was 4 to 6 square kilometers. A part of this area was filled with stone pyramids, palaces and residences for the elite. In addition, villas were built for the rest of the population that extended to the lake This is about 20 kilometers, a very large space”, explains Charles Stanish, anthropologist at the University of South Florida, to BBC Mundo.
The Akapana pyramid is, for example, the largest and oldest pre-Hispanic construction in South America. It had great spiritual significance and archaeologists believe it was built around 2,500 years ago.
The city was designed to attract people from everywhere and experts are convinced that it had different neighborhoods and a population made up of various ethnicities.
“Probably different languages were heard in the city. Large ceremonies and festivals were organized to attract people and strengthen trade. Their textiles are absolutely stunning, their pottery is beautiful,” says Stanish.
Amazing technologies
The economy was built on trade and agriculture. The metropolis had a complex underground drainage system that controlled the flow of rainwater.
Its almost 50 thousand agricultural fields, known as sukakolloshad surprising irrigation technology for the time that allowed them to easily adapt to the difficult climatic conditions of the region.
They also built artificial terraces that enabled a sustainable form of farming and helped with the cultural evolution of the empire.
“These innovations were adopted by later civilizations and extended to Cusco”, explains UNESCO.
The people of Tiwanaku established colonies in an area the size of California where craft shops were opened, for example.
Thus, they established their political and economic power: controlling small enclaves and trading with the locals.
“They obtained objects from the rainforest and traded them with people in the south, on the slopes of the Andes, from the Peruvian city of Moquegua to San Pedro de Atacama, in Chile”, adds Stanish.
Imperialists
“They behaved like classic imperialism, they brought raw materials and manufactured certain products, especially ceramics and fabrics. They had hallucinogenic compounds that were very popular at the time, they worked with stone and metal, they had a whole range of activities. And they survived for hundreds of years”, explains the anthropologist.
“It was a hierarchical society. This is very clear. They had royalty and an elite connected with the priesthood who used symbols and power structures traditional to the Andes. It is almost certain that the people of Tiwanaku spoke an ancestral form of the Aymara language, which we call jaqi”, he says.
But despite Tiwanaku’s grandeur and influence, its economic and political strength, the civilization mysteriously disappeared without leaving many clues as to what led to its collapse.
“We have many mysteries to solve, such as their disappearance and the technology they used to transport stones weighing more than 140 tons that were removed from quarries more than 50 kilometers from the city,” Bolivian archaeologist Luis Miguel Callisaya told the BBC.
Part of the culture and technologies of these people were absorbed by the Incas. And in fact, before the carbon dating technique was developed, the Tiwanaku were considered to be part of the Inca civilization.
But, in the 60s and 70s, artifacts and traces began to appear that demonstrated that, in fact, the civilization was much earlier than the Incas.
The Incas did not inhabit the Andean highlands until the 13th century. “There is now absolutely no doubt that there was a large gap of time between the collapse of the Tiwanaku and the beginning of the Inca State,” says Stanish.
There are many hypotheses to explain the collapse and disappearance of this civilization. Unfortunately, Tiwanaku has been looted over the centuries and much of its precious heritage has been lost.
Several historical documents show that the archaeological site became a quarry from which materials were extracted to build modern buildings. Evidence of this, according to UNESCO, is still visible in the center of a nearby city and even in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia.
Offerings to the gods
Only about 10% of the city has been excavated, meaning there is still a lot of work to be done. Therefore, it is difficult to know exactly what happened.
The most widespread thesis is that of an environmental crisis that generated a prolonged drought.
For Callisaya, one of the archaeological pieces of evidence that points in this direction is the discovery of 19 bones of young people that “we consider to have been part of an offering to send a message asking the gods for rain”, he explains.
Stanish says civilization didn’t disappear overnight. “The process took place over at least 200 years,” he says.
It was also not a biological collapse, that is, the population did not die in a short period of time. It is likely that the inhabitants dispersed little by little.
“We know that it was not a disease that decimated the population. There is talk that the reason is a drought that affected agricultural systems and also that there were invaders who came from the south. This was the narrative recorded by many Spanish historians”, explains the archaeologist .
Convergence of factors
For him, there was not just one cause, but the convergence of several. Among them would probably also be a peasant revolt due to strong dissatisfaction with the rulers and the elite.
“It looks a lot like what happened to the Mayans, where people just dispersed. Whatever political and economic system was holding Tiwanaku together has collapsed,” he says.
In this way, agriculture and the wealth it produced, which for centuries was what held Tiwanaku’s political system together, gradually fell into disuse, and major changes occurred in relation to the health, demographics and subsistence strategies of the people, which would have resulted in a diaspora.
“The first stage was a colonizing diaspora and limited to places of intermediate altitude. The second stage was a much more extensive diaspora, driven by the violent disintegration of the colonies around 1000 AD, together with the collapse of the city of Tiwanaku or its radical reorientation by a military elite”, states Bruce D. Owen in the study “Distant Colonies and Explosive Collapse: The Two Stages of the Tiwanaku Diaspora in the Osmore Drainage”. ).
Some went to sparsely populated areas and established small, scattered, easy-to-defend villages. Others went to places where there were already larger or more established populations and were integrated as a lower status minority.
“This explosive collapse suggests that Tiwanaku was made up of several groups whose different interests could not be contained,” adds Owen.
When civilizations collapse, there are usually several reasons: population growth, disease, invasions or wars. They all add up and swallow entire civilizations.
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