Puma Punku

[Lucas_Jackson]

I’m trying to find information on the settlement of Puma Punku. Specifically, scientific theories about how they quarried, transported and engineered the stones. Also about the civilization and people themselves.

Any medium is welcome (books, documentaries, etc).

Can anyone recommend a reference source that does not mention extraterrestrials? All of my googling brings up Ancient Aliens.

[Ruken]

I’m assuming you’ve started with the primary academic literature cited in the Wikipedia article?

[Atamasama]

Sorry, I saw “Puma Punku” and immediately thought of Ancient Aliens (my wife used to have it on our TV to help her sleep). That’s the only time I’ve ever heard of it.

My autocorrect wanted to change it to “Puma Spunky” which I suspect would be a whole other subject.

Wikipedia has a reasonable article on the subject:

Pumapunku

The engineering was most likely accomplished with a large workforce using a quarry around 6 miles away (smaller stones may have been transported from a farther location). Basically it took a lot of work. Aliens not needed.

[GMANCANADA]

Puma Punka - The mystery that was created by Ancient Aliens TV shows, that wasn’t really a mystery at all.

A good Skeptoid on this:

The Non-Mystery of Puma Punku

[Lucas_Jackson]

@GMANCANADA

Puma Punka - The mystery that was created by Ancient Aliens TV shows, that wasn’t really a mystery at all.

I realize that it’s not a mystery in the sense that it took a large work force a lot of time. Still, have you seen the size of those stone slabs? And they are measurably flat. I’m just curious as to what kind of tools they used and the methods they employed to achieve that kind of precision.

As a person who who works with steel power tools on a daily basis (Skil saw for example), it’s hard enough to get a perfect cut through a 4x8 sheet of plywood, let alone across 15 feet of extremely hard stone without steel or power tools. So no more mystery than the pyramids but I’d still like to learn more about it.

I’d also like to learn more about the people themselves. There are many great scientific documentaries (online and from Netflix) on the Aztecs, Mayans, etc. Even on the lesser known South American cultures. It’s just frustrating as hell that for some reason the kooks took over Puma Punku. I was just hoping someone here could recomend a source they were familiar with.

[Lucas_Jackson]

@Ruken

I’m assuming you’ve started with the primary academic literature cited in the Wikipedia article?

I’m looking for more a layperson friendly resource rather than academic literature, however the ‘Tiwanaku: Ancestors of the Inca’ book looked promising. But it’s $40 to buy and my library doesn’t have it.

[bob_2]

@Lucas_Jackson

I’m looking for more a layperson friendly resource rather than academic literature, however the ‘Tiwanaku: Ancestors of the Inca’ book looked promising. But it’s $40 to buy and my library doesn’t have it.

They also have it ‘used’ for $8.40.

[TSBG]

@Lucas_Jackson

I’m looking for more a layperson friendly resource rather than academic literature, however the ‘Tiwanaku: Ancestors of the Inca’ book looked promising. But it’s $40 to buy and my library doesn’t have it.

Have you asked about inter-library loan?

[XT]

@Lucas_Jackson

I’m trying to find information on the settlement of Puma Punku. Specifically, scientific theories about how they quarried, transported and engineered the stones. Also about the civilization and people themselves.

Any medium is welcome (books, documentaries, etc).

Can anyone recommend a reference source that does not mention extraterrestrials? All of my googling brings up Ancient Aliens.

Well, if you don’t want any mention of extra-terrestrials then my favorite YouTube debunking Ancient Aliens concerning Puma Punku is out. I did find this with a quick Google search from Skeptoid Skeptoid, so I’ll quote a bit from it:

Tiwanaku is in Bolivia, up in the Titicaca Basin, about 10 kilometers away from the great Lake Titicaca. The Titicaca Basin is high; 3,800 meters (12,500 feet) above sea level. Half is in Peru and half is in Bolivia, and right on the border sits Lake Titicaca. It’s in a vast region of the Andes Mountains called the Altiplano, or “high plain”, the largest such plain outside of the Himalayas. The Tiwanaku Culture predated the Inca, and their history is known largely from archaeology, since they had no written language that we know of. The earliest evidence of habitation dates from around 400 BC, but it wasn’t until about 500 AD that the Tiwanaku Culture truly developed. At its peak, 400,000 people lived in and around the Tiwanaku site, centering around Pumapunku and other important structures. Trade and farming flourished. Farming was done on raised fields with irrigation systems in between them. Decades of drought struck around 1000 AD, and the city of Tiwanaku was abandoned, and its people and culture dissolved into the surrounding mountains. Five centuries later, the Inca Culture developed.

So within the context of Tiwanaku, Pumapunku does not leap out as extraordinary. However it does differ from the other structures at Tiwanaku, in that many of the blocks are shaped into highly complex geometries. There is a row of H-shaped blocks, for example, that have approximately 80 faces on them; and all match each other with great precision. Pumapunku’s stones suggest prefabrication, which is not found at the other Tiwanaku sites. In addition, some of the stones were held together with copper fasteners, some of which were cold hammered into shape, and others that were poured into place molten.

Due to the complexity and regularity of many of Pumapunku’s stone forms, a number of authors have suggested that they’re not stones at all, but rather concrete that was cast into forms. We don’t have any record that such technology was known to pre-Incan cultures, but that doesn’t prove it wasn’t. What can be proven, and proven quite easily, is that there is no concrete at Pumapunku or anywhere else in Tiwanaku. Contrary to the suppositions of paranormalists, modern geologists are, in fact, quite able to discern rock from concrete. Petrographic and chemical analyses are relatively trivial to carry out, and even allowed us to determine exactly where the rocks were quarried. Pumapunku’s large blocks are a common red sandstone that was quarried about 10 kilometers away. Many of the smaller stones, including the most ornamental and some of the facing stones, are of igneous andesite and came from a quarry on the shore of Lake Titicaca, about 90 kilometers away. These smaller stones may have been brought across the lake by reed boat, then dragged overland the remaining 10 kilometers.

Much is often made of the vast size and weight of the Pumapunku stones, with paranormal websites routinely listing them as up to 440 tons. Pumapunku does indeed contain the largest single stone found at any of the Tiwanaku sites, and it’s part of its Plataforma Lítica, or stone platform. The accepted estimate of this piece of red sandstone’s weight is 131 metric tons, equal to 144 US tons. The second largest block is only 85 metric tons, and the rest go down sharply from there. The vast majority of the building material at Pumapunku consists of relatively small and easily handled stones, although many of the most famous are megalithic. The absurd numbers like 440 tons come from much earlier estimates, and have long since been corrected.

Curiously, if you do an Internet search for Pumapunku, you’ll find it almost universally, and quite casually, referred to as a “port”. At least, this is what it’s called on the paranormal web pages, which make up the overwhelming bulk of Pumapunku information on the Internet. In fact, it’s not a port, and it never was a port. To anyone doing even the most basic research or visiting the area, it’s a fairly bizarre assertion, considering that Pumapunku was in the middle of a vast farming nation of 400,000 people. Nor are Tiwanaku’s structures in locations where they could serve as a port. Pumapunku is just one of several stepped platform constructions that have been excavated at Tiwanaku. The others include Akapana, Akapana East, Kalasasaya, Putuni, and the Semi-Subterranean Temple. If you look at them from above, they’re simply squarish enclosures scattered about the area. If you imagine water filling the region — let’s pretend just high enough to cover the ground but not the enclosures themselves — then each of these “ports” would be an island unto itself, amid a sea of knee-deep water too shallow to be navigable. (That is, except for the Semi-Subterranean Temple, which being recessed into the ground, would have been underwater.)

But even that imaginary scenario presumes that the lake could ever reach Tiwanaku. It can’t. The Altiplano is a vast sloping plain, and the point at which Lake Titicaca spills off the edge into its sole outlet, the Río Desaguadero, is about 30 meters below the elevation of Tiwanaku. Has this always been the case? At least since the last ice age, yes. Because the sediment at the lake’s bottom has been accumulating for some 25,000 years, it’s one of the best places to get data about Earth’s climate history, and so it’s been extensively studied. The paleohydrology of Lake Titicaca is thoroughly known. Currently, the water is at its overflow level. This level has fluctuated about 5 meters in the past century. During the past 4,000 years, it has dropped as much as 20 meters during drought periods. The maximum it’s ever been is about 7 meters above overflow level, which would still locate the shore many kilometers away from Tiwanaku’s suburbs and farms.

Finally, one other feature at Pumapunku is said to have the archaeologists baffled: Carved figures, said to represent an elephant relative called a Cuvieronius, and a hoofed mammal called a toxodon. These both went extinct in the region around 15,000 years ago, and so some paranormalists have dated Pumapunku to 15,000 years, apparently based on this alone. When you hear that an elephant is carved there, it certainly does give you pause, because an elephant is hard to mistake. However, when you look at a picture of what’s claimed to be the elephant, this becomes less surprising. Tiwanaku art was highly stylized, much like what we’re accustomed to seeing from the Mayans or the Aztecs. It’s actually the heads of two crested Andean Condors facing each other neck to neck, and their necks and crests constitute what some have compared to the tusks and ears of an elephant’s face. The image of the toxodon is known only from rough sketches of a sculpture discovered in 1934, and so it’s a drawing of indirect evidence of an artist’s interpretation of an unknown subject. It looks to me like a generic quadruped. Pig, dog, rat, toxodon, name it.

So once again, we have an accomplishment by ancient craftsmen whom some paranormalists have attempted to discredit by attributing their work to aliens. This is not only irrational, it’s a non-sequitur conclusion to draw from the observations. Most people don’t know how to intricately cut stones because those are skills we haven’t needed for a long time — we’ve had easier ways to make better structures for a long time. But this argument from ignorance — that just because we don’t know how to do it, nobody else could have figured it out either — is an insufficient explanation. Simply say that you don’t know, instead of invoking aliens. This is not only the truth, it accurately represents the findings of science so far; and perhaps most importantly, it leaves the credit for this wonderful contribution to humanity where it belongs: with the Tiwanaku themselves.

Not sure what, exactly you are looking for, but the Wiki as noted earlier has some good stuff on it. Often when I’m trying to find interesting data on something the woo community is all hyped up on (such as this one), I’ll Google ‘debunk’ and whatever it is (so, ‘debunking Puma Punku’ gives you some good information on why the woo stuff is total horseshit, and often completely made up horseshit at that…they rely on the ignorance of their audience, which is the stock in trade of the Ancient Aliens show). There are some good documentaries on YouTube if you can weed out the woo stuff. Again, using the term debunk often helps a lot.

[Lucas_Jackson]

@TSBG

Have you asked about inter-library loan?

Good idea, thanks.

[Lucas_Jackson]

@XT

There are some good documentaries on YouTube if you can weed out the woo stuff. Again, using the term debunk often helps a lot.

Good to know. Thanks, I’ll try it.

[Ale]

@Lucas_Jackson

I realize that it’s not a mystery in the sense that it took a large work force a lot of time. Still, have you seen the size of those stone slabs? And they are measurably flat. I’m just curious as to what kind of tools they used and the methods they employed to achieve that kind of precision.

As a person who who works with steel power tools on a daily basis (Skil saw for example), it’s hard enough to get a perfect cut through a 4x8 sheet of plywood, let alone across 15 feet of extremely hard stone without steel or power tools. So no more mystery than the pyramids but I’d still like to learn more about it.

I’d also like to learn more about the people themselves. There are many great scientific documentaries (online and from Netflix) on the Aztecs, Mayans, etc. Even on the lesser known South American cultures. It’s just frustrating as hell that for some reason the kooks took over Puma Punku. I was just hoping someone here could recomend a source they were familiar with.

You can make a very flat surface with nothing more than a piece of string to draw straight lines and define planes, and rocks and sand for grinding. For a straight edge or face, just cut bigger and chip/grind down to size, there’s no need for advanced technology to achieve that.
As a matter of fact, some of the flattest things around are made by simply rubbing three blocks together, without any need of measuring tools, as in the Whitworth Three Plate Method.

[Banksiaman]

You might also find this article interesting.

Its open access, which is nice for a change, and by Alexei Vranich who is one of the key scholars working on the site.

As a general tip for archaeological stuff, as well as Wikipedia, its always worth trying Google Scholar. I typed in ‘Puma Punku stone working’ and got the Vranich paper. There are increasingly non-academic papers on offer, and some open access research papers on a host of topics. You can use the citation tracking to see how each reference has been cited, which might also help to make it clear whether its ideas are supported or not by other researchers.

[PastTense]

Also search under the more general heading Tiwanaku, such as this Wikipedia article:

Tiwanaku

[Chefguy]

@Ale

You can make a very flat surface with nothing more than a piece of string to draw straight lines and define planes, and rocks and sand for grinding. For a straight edge or face, just cut bigger and chip/grind down to size, there’s no need for advanced technology to achieve that.
As a matter of fact, some of the flattest things around are made by simply rubbing three blocks together, without any need of measuring tools, as in the Whitworth Three Plate Method.

An example on a small scale is the use of a flattening stone to smooth out one’s whetstones when the surfaces become uneven.

[bubba001]

@Chefguy

An example on a small scale is the use of a flattening stone to smooth out one’s whetstones when the surfaces become uneven.

I used surface plates for years. The best were called Master Pink, they were made of pink granite. Every year, were checked for flatness by a specialist, using a optical flat. The surface was then lapped down to millionths of a inch. One other thing I noticed over the years was that people overestimated the weight of objects.

[MDfive21]

Here’s a talk by Brien Foerster… Ancient Civilisations, Brien Foerster - YouTube with lots of pictures and comparisons to other ancient works.

For more see Randall Carlson, Graham Hancock, Robert Schoch. None of those guys are in the ‘aliens did it’ camp, and base their work on the observable.

[Lucas_Jackson]

@MDfive21

Here’s a talk by Brien Foerster… https://youtu.be/roX__kFKUjo with lots of pictures and comparisons to other ancient works.

For more see Randall Carlson, Graham Hancock, Robert Schoch. None of those guys are in the ‘aliens did it’ camp, and base their work on the observable.

Did you actually watch that video. Be cause it came off a lot like aliens did it. He outright states, several times, that Bronze Age peoples could not have built Puma Punku. He has been on the Ancient Aliens TV shows 15 times.

[Lucas_Jackson]

@bubba001

I used surface plates for years. The best were called Master Pink, they were made of pink granite. Every year, were checked for flatness by a specialist, using a optical flat. The surface was then lapped down to millionths of a inch. One other thing I noticed over the years was that people overestimated the weight of objects.

Couple of things…
The people that built Puma Punku did not have optical flats.

And yes, the original estimated weights of the stones are higher than they are known to be now but 144 tons is nothing to sneeze at. For the three plate method to work, you would need three stones that size. Plus it wouldn’t help with the right angles.

Christopher Dunn measured the flatness at 2 thousandths of an inch out of perfect flat at a meter. That’s pretty flat.

For the record, I do believe it was built by Bronze Age people using patience and time. Much like the pyramids were.

[MrDibble]

@MDfive21

For more see Randall Carlson, Graham Hancock, Robert Schoch. None of those guys are in the ‘aliens did it’ camp,

Naah, they’re all in the “Atlanteans did it” camp, instead. That’s soooo much better :rolleyes: