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Puno | Lake Titicaca | History
For geologists, Titicaca is a result of plate tectonics, for the traveller, it is an area of astonishing beauty, but for the people of the Andes it is much more - it is the hub of creation, the place where everything began.
It is said that when the universe was created there was just the lake and that from its waters Wiracocha, the creator god, commanded the Sun and the Moon to rise and give light to the world. |
They say also that the Moon was brighter than the Sun, and so as they rose. On seeing such carnage, the universe became sad, the sun and the moon were obscured as the sky darkened and the universe began to weep.
These tears caused a great flood named Unu Pachacuti, which means "The Water Which Transformed The World". Just one man and one woman survived the flood floating together on a small boat. This ancient story goes on to say that around this New World Adam and Eve many drowned pumas floated, swollen and grey, belly-up in the water. In Aymara, a language unrelated to and much older than Quechua, titi means wild cat or puma and caca means "Eternal City". This century, a number of sub-aquatic expeditions to Wiñay Marca, among them that of the French explorer Jacques Cousteau in 1961, have explored the remains of a city lying just five metres below the lakes surface.
And deeper than it is today, is the more recent discovery of ruins more than thirty metres underwater near the islands of the Sun and the Moon in Bolivia.
One possible explanation might be that a geological fault caused by volcanic activity somehow caused the sinking of this ancient town. However, many archaeologists are now starting to consider the possibility that Andean civilization may be much older than previously thought, or even to concede that it may have been preceded by an earlier culture, or cultures, about which we know nothing.
Titicaca, Cradle of Civilization
Many of the local legends that still persist today tell how the Inca nobility spoke a different language from the rest of the population.
A people’s mythology expresses its history and, as we have seen, the most important part of any given culture´s sacred history is its myth of origin - its creation legend. Through myth a society explains its origins, both to itself and to neighbouring groups, thereby defining itself.
The Inca creation legend is well known. It tells how the Sun God rose from Lake Titicaca and subsequently created the first Inca, Manco Capac and his sister, Mama Ocllo. These two set about populating the earth with the Sun's chosen people, before beginning the long march north in search of their promised land, finally establishing their dynasty in the fertile valley now known as Cuzco.
Here history and myth would seem to lend each other credence. It appears that members of the great Tiahuanaco culture, which rose to prominence around the first millennium after Christ, migrated North in search of better lands, perhaps spurred on by drought. In the Cuzco valley they subdued the people already living there and formed a city-state.
The Inca imperial expansion, led by the Inca who called himself Pachacutec, or "The Earth-Changer" did not begin until around 1438. Both warrior and statesman, Pachacutec founded cities, rebuilt Cuzco and established social and religious laws.
Archaeologists have established beyond doubt that all of Cuzco's imperial buildings were constructed either during or after the reign of Pachacutec. It is clear, for example, that Ollantaytambo was still under construction at the time of the Spanish conquest. For many scholars of Andean history even the most cursory investigation of Ollantaytambo's unfinished temple site reveals the indisputable influence of the architecture of the much earlier Tiahuanacan civilization. |
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