Since Puma Punku was discovered, countless researchers have worked hard to uncover the mystery behind this site.
Perched high in the Bolivian Andes, the ancient city of Tiwanaku (Spanish: Tiahuanaco) boasts architectural feats that continue to baffle archaeologists and historians. Majestic stone structures such as the Akapana pyramid and the Puma Punku foundation are evidence of a civilization that was very developed in the past, but the method of building these structures remains to this day. is still a mystery.
As time passed, ancient civilizations left us many brilliant cultural legacies, such as the pyramids, Stonehenge in England, and stone statues on Easter Island. And among them is a site that is considered more magical than the Pyramid – “Puma Punku megalithic site”.
Talking about Puma Punku, many people will certainly find it strange. It is located in the Bolivian Andes Mountains, a wasteland at an altitude of 3,800 meters. This place is most famous for its stones that are carefully processed as if cut by lasers.
The megaliths of Puma Punku are very hard andesite, said to have a hardness of 7 on the Mohs hardness scale. And it seemed impossible to cut andesite with the technology at that time, because even with modern technology, processing andesite is very difficult. What is even more surprising is that on these hard rocks, even with modern machines it is difficult to create regular round holes.
How were the Tiwanaku people able to move and assemble such giant blocks of stone using the seemingly primitive technology of their time? What kind of technology did they use to process andesite?
If you look closely at the rocks here, you can see some very complex stone structures, as if they were created by machines or even laser devices.
According to local legend, more than 17,000 years ago, mysterious giants came into the world to help build the Puma Punku site. These giants have extraordinary strength, they can easily carry rocks in quarries, and thanks to magical power, rocks can float and stack each other into shape.
Although this legend is extremely unbelievable, since Puma Punku was discovered, countless researchers have worked hard to uncover the mystery behind this site. Between 1910 and 1945, Austrian archaeologist Arthur Posnanski, speculated that Puma Punku could be around 11,000 to 15,000 years old through geological age research.
However, this statement has not been widely accepted. Until 1999, in his special research paper, Flamich, a professor of archeology at the University of Pennsylvania, published the results of the discovery of the radioactive fixation point of Puma Punku. Surprisingly, it turns out that Puma Punku was built 1,500 years ago. Accordingly, this timeline has been accepted by mainstream scientists and archaeologists today.
The majestic architecture of the Puma Punku ruins made researchers want to explore the historical and cultural context behind it. After many years of research by archaeologists and experts, scholars discovered that these structures were built with two stone materials: red sandstone and andesite.
The heaviest rock at this site is more than 130 tons, other rocks are also tens of tons to nearly hundreds of tons, this is an extremely impressive number. Not only that, each megalith is meticulously cut without any mistakes. Even with nested shapes and overlapping layers, corners are cut with precision.
The sophistication is also shown in the grooves on the stone and small round holes arranged evenly with a diameter of only 5 mm. In the ruins, you can also see large blocks of stone put together with nails.
What surprised the researchers even more was that these nails turned out to be a unique alloy of copper, arsenic, nickel and bronze. This shows that the builders of Puma Punku were not only good at handling boulders but also mastered advanced metal smelting and processing technology.
According to research by archaeologists, the red sandstone at Puma Punku comes from Lake Titicaca 10 km away, and smaller andesite blocks come from the Copacabana peninsula 90 km away. These huge boulders were transported to the plateau at an altitude of 3,800 meters by rolling logs, ropes, alpacas and enough human resources.
But in 2018, French materials scientist Professor Joseph Davidowitz discovered something surprising while studying rock samples from Puma Punku. He found a number of materials that did not exist in natural rocks, and even found the presence of organic matter in rock samples brought back from Puma Punku. This discovery attracted the attention of the scientific community because if true, these rock samples seem likely to be synthetic materials.
To confirm this hypothesis, the team searched for rock material near Puma Punku and added local organic matter as a binder, eventually succeeding in recreating Puma Punku’s andesite. If this hypothesis is correct, then these ancient structures may have been built in a very different way than we previously thought.
If ancient humans could synthesize stone materials, they would not need to transport whole boulders, nor would they need to cut and carve huge blocks of stone. This discovery could change what we know about the construction techniques of ancient civilizations.
Although the team was successful in recreating Puma Punku’s andesite, the stones they created did not have multi-layered overlapping grooves at the rest, which means they still need more research to Find out how ancient humans created these complex structures.
However, the builders and history of Puma Punku remain a mystery. Knowledge about the complex is currently limited due to a lack of written records. Some archaeologists consider Puma Punku to be part of the Tiwanaku civilization, a religious and ceremonial center that may have been involved in astronomical observations and calendar calculations.
Some scholars believe that Puma Punku is older than the Tiwanaku civilization and is the remnant of a more primitive but more advanced civilization. Others believe that Puma Punku was built by aliens or giants because the techniques for making it were beyond human capabilities at the time.
Whatever the truth behind Puma Punku, it remains one of the most fascinating and mysterious places in the world. Its majestic presence inspires continued research and fires our imaginations, reminding us that history is full of untold stories waiting to be discovered.
