Pumapunku
Pumapunku or Puma Punku is a 6th-century T-shaped and strategically aligned man-made terraced platform mound with a sunken court and monumental structure on top, near Tiwanaku, La Paz, Bolivia. It is part of the Pumapunku complex, at the Tiwanaku Site, an ancient archeological complex in the Andes of western Bolivia that has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Pumapunku complex is a collection of plazas and ramps centered on the Pumapunku platform mound. Long ago the monumental complex on top of the Puma Punku platform mound deteriorated or was destroyed, and now only ruins remain of this feature.
Construction of Puma Punku is believed to have begun after AD 536. Pumapunku was the most important construction in Tiwanaku, other than Akapana, which is believed to be "Pumapunku's twin". Among the place names in Tiwanaku, only the names "Akapana" and "Pumapunku" have historical relevance.
Pumapunku holds several miniature gates that are perfect replicas of once standing full-size gateways. In addition to these miniature gateways, likely, at least five gateways were once integrated into the Pumapunku monumental complex. The foundation platform of Pumapunku supported as many as eight andesite gateways. The fragments of five andesite gateways with similar characteristics to the Gateway of the Sun were found.
Tiwanaku, the location of Pumapunku, is significant in Inca traditions. According to traditions, Tiwanaku is believed to be the site where the world was created.
The Pumapunku complex consists of an unwalled western court, a central unwalled esplanade, a terraced platform mound that is faced with stone, and a walled eastern court.
At its peak, Pumapunku is thought to have been "unimaginably wondrous," adorned with polished metal plaques, brightly colored ceramic and fabric ornamentation, and visited by costumed citizens, elaborately dressed priests, and elites decked in exotic jewelry. Current understanding of this complex is limited due to its age, the lack of a written record, and the current deteriorated state of the structures due to treasure hunting, looting, stone mining for building stone and railroad ballast, and natural weathering.
History
When the Spanish arrived at Tiwanaku, architecture was still standing at Pumapunku. Bernabé Cobo reports that one gateway and one "window" still stood upright on one of the platforms.Description
The Pumapunku is a terraced earthen mound faced with blocks. It is wide along its north–south axis and long along its east–west axis. On the northeast and southeast corners of the Pumapunku, it has wide projections extending north and south from the rectangular mound.The eastern edge of the Pumapunku is occupied by the Plataforma Lítica. This structure consists of a stone terrace in dimension. This terrace is paved with multiple enormous stone blocks. It contains the largest stone slab in the Pumapunku and Tiwanaku Site, measuring long, wide and averages thick. Based on the specific gravity of the red sandstone from which it was carved, this stone slab is estimated to weigh 131 tonnes. The remarkable aspects of the sandstone slabs, including their size and smooth surfaces have drawn comments for several centuries.
The other stonework and facing of the Pumapunku consists of a mixture of andesite and red sandstone. Pumapunku's core consists of clay, while the fill under parts of its edge consists of river sand and cobbles instead of clay. Excavations documented "three major building epochs plus repairs and re-modeling".
The even older Kalasasaya complex a kilometre away shows a long period of settlement in the area. The area between the Pumapunku and the Kalasasaya complex a kilometre away was surveyed around 2007 using ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry, induced electrical conductivity, and magnetic susceptibility. The geophysical data collected from these surveys and excavations indicate the presence of numerous man-made structures in the area between the Pumapunku and Kalasasaya complexes. These structures include the wall foundations of buildings and compounds, water conduits, pool-like features, revetments, terraces, residential compounds, and widespread gravel pavements, all of which are buried and hidden beneath the modern ground surface.
The area was mapped with a drone in 2016. The survey showed the site is seventeen hectares in size, of which only two hectares are unearthed. Two additional platforms exist underground.
Age
Noted by Andean specialist, W. H. Isbell, professor at Binghamton University, a radiocarbon date was obtained by Alexei Vranich from organic material from the deepest and oldest layer of mound-fill forming the Pumapunku. This layer was deposited during the first of three construction epochs, and dates the initial construction of the Pumapunku to AD 536–600. Since the radiocarbon date came from the deepest and oldest layer of mound-fill under the andesite and sandstone stonework, the stonework was probably constructed sometime after AD 536–600. The excavation trenches of Vranich show the clay, sand, and gravel fill of the Pumapunku complex were laid directly on the sterile middle Pleistocene sediments. These excavation trenches also demonstrated the lack of any pre-Andean Middle Horizon cultural deposits within the area of the Tiwanaku Site adjacent to the Pumapunku complex.Engineering
The largest of Pumapunku's stone blocks is long, wide, averages thick, and is estimated to weigh about. The second largest stone block found within the complex is long, wide, and averages thick. Its weight is estimated to be. Both of these stone blocks are part of the Plataforma Lítica, and are red sandstone. Based on detailed petrographic and chemical analyses of samples from individual stones and known quarry sites, archaeologists concluded these and other red sandstone blocks were transported up a steep incline from a quarry near Lake Titicaca roughly away. Smaller andesite blocks for stone facing and carvings came from quarries within the Copacabana Peninsula about away from and across Lake Titicaca from the Pumapunku and the rest of the Tiwanaku Site.Archaeologists dispute whether the transport of these stones was by the large labor force of ancient Tiwanaku. Several conflicting speculative theories attempt to imagine how this labor force transported the stones. Two common possibilities involve the use of llama skin ropes, and the use of ramps and inclined planes.
In assembling the walls of Pumapunku, each stone interlocked with the surrounding stones. The blocks were fit together like a puzzle, forming load-bearing joints. Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair identified a 1 to 1.5 millimeters thick thin coat of whiteish material covering some of the stones as a possible layer of mortar. One common engineering technique involves cutting the top of the lower stone at a certain angle, and placing another stone on top of it which was cut at the same angle. The precision with which these angles create flush joints is indicative of sophisticated knowledge of stone-cutting and a thorough understanding of descriptive geometry. Much of the masonry is characterized by accurately cut rectilinear blocks of such uniformity, they could be interchanged for one another while maintaining a level surface and even joints. Although similar, the blocks do not have the same dimensions. The precise cuts suggest the possibility of pre-fabrication and mass production. Some of the stones are in an unfinished state, showing some of the techniques used to shape them. The architectural historians Jean-Pierre and Stella Nair who conducted the first professional field study on the stones of Tiwanaku/Pumapunku conclude:
to obtain the smooth finishes, the perfectly planar faces and exact interior and exterior right angles on the finely dressed stones, they resorted to techniques unknown to the Incas and to us at this time. The sharp and precise 90° interior angles observed on various decorative motifs most likely were not made with hammerstones. No matter how fine the hammerstone's point, it could never produce the crisp right interior angles seen on Tiahuanaco stonework. Comparable cuts in Inca masonry all have rounded interior angles typical of the pounding technique . The construction tools of the Tiahuanacans, with perhaps the possible exception of hammerstones, remain essentially unknown and have yet to be discovered.
According to Protzen and Nair, no tools have been excavated that were used in the construction of Tiwanaku, or if they have, they have not been identified as tools. According to the art historian Jessica Joyce Christie, the experiments of Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair showed that the Tiwanaku artisans may have used tools other than hammerstones to facilitate the creation of exact geometric cuts and forms and of which archeology has no record.
Nair subsequently experimented with replicating a small section of a carving using a variety of possible stone tools, including blades, flakes and thin chisels made of stones including flint, agate, jasper, obsidian, hydrated obsidian, greywacke, quartzite, and hematite. . She succeeded in carving a half-cross-shaped design about eight inches across, achieving the same high precision shown by the Puma Punku carvings. One element that she was unable to work out how to replicate was the accurately flat surface of the inside of the carving, and the researchers were struck by the ubiquity of such surfaces in the Tiahuanaco carvings. The process took 40 hours, although some of this was time taken in trial and error - the researchers estimated that it would take an experienced person about 25 hours.
Tiwanaku engineers also developed civic infrastructure at this complex, constructing functional irrigation systems, hydraulic mechanisms, and leak-proof sewage lines.