A Visit to Tiahuanacu, Perhaps the Oldest City of the New World, Lost Beneath the Drifting Sand of Centuries in the Bolivian Highlands B BY STEWART E. MCMILLIN Formerly American Consul at La Paz OLIVIA has some of the oldest ruins, the highest navigable lake, and one of the oldest, most revered shrines in the Western Hemisphere. On our pilgrimage to those historic treasures we pushed aboard a crowded car on the Guaqui train in La Paz* one afternoon and climbed behind an electric locomotive some 1,400 feet to the rim of that huge bowl which holds the picturesque capital city; then started westward toward Tiahuanacu, our immediate goal; Lake Titicaca, Copacabana, and the Islands of the Sun and Moon. It was September, and therefore early spring on the Bolivian plateau. Many of the Indians had finished plowing, and the ground lay fallow, as it would do until late November or early December, when barley is sown and potatoes are planted in the shallow brown furrows. Oxen were still trudging across the brown and mauve fields, leaving little furrows surprisingly straight behind rude Indian plows, of a type which has been in use for hundreds of years-one long wooden beam with a crosspiece first hardened in a fire and then fixed rigidly downward at the rear. A part of this vertical section extends upward and is used by the plowman in guiding the implement. The whole is so light that an Indian thinks nothing of carrying one for leagues across country (see Color Plate XVI). THE TRAIN TRAVELER IS WELL FED Our first halt was twenty miles to the west at Viacha, a town of some importance because of railroad junctions and the big government wireless station there. *See, also, "Kaleidoscopic La Paz, City of the Clouds," by Harriet Chalmers Adams, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for February, 1909. Plump little chola girls, with touches of lavender in the red of their cheeks, hurried aboard to sell us the fragrant coffee buns, which are almost a pastry confection for flavor and lightness and are famous all over Bolivia (see Color Plate X). Barefooted, ragged little bootblacks pushed here and there, crying "Lustre, señor? Lustre?" Outside our car windows a tattered beggar, with upturned empty hat, made the rounds of the train, promising blessings from Heaven if any one of us would but contribute a diezicito (ten little pennies) toward his support. Alongside the cars squatted a row of Indian and chola women selling beer, fruit, and empanadas, the latter a sort of small meat pie folded over on the edges and containing within its plump form meat, or meat and potatoes, with a bountiful seasoning of red peppers ground fine. Young men still bearing on their coat. lapels rosettes of red, yellow, and green, the Bolivian colors, in commemoration of the centennial fiestas just over, were greeting others in typical Latin-American fashion, the abrazo, as they descended from the train-that is, by gripping one. hand, drawing the object of the salutation to him, and patting him on the back with the free hand. The roofs of Viacha are thatched mainly with barley straw, but the railway sheds and more pretentious buildings are roofed with galvanized sheeting. Near the ticket window soiled placards still announced, for the early days of August, "Solemn Coronation of Our Lady of Copacabana.” This coronation takes place every year, in the little town of Copacabana, before preparation for the planting of the crops, and ten thousand or more Indians from A SKETCH MAP OF THE LAKE TITICACA REGION The ruins of the ancient capital city of Tiahuanacu, near the mountain village of Tiahuanaco, are reached by rail from La Paz, Bolivia, the loftiest capital in the world. Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina gather there to ask the blessing of the Virgin Mary upon the fruitfulness of their fields and herds (see illustrations, pages 240 and 247). THROUGH SUMMIT-CLINGING FIELDS Finally our conductor, on the station. platform, pulled a wire leading to a little. bronze bell under the roof, and amid cries of "All aboard!" we were off again. The hills had a striated appearance, for plowing had been done in the strips freest of stones, up to their very summits. Over land, tilled and unturned alike, wandered herds of sheep, llamas, mules, oxen, and pigs in search of sustenance which only a Bolivian Indian could expect them to find. The ground lay dry and red and dusty, so that the very sheep and llamas were tinted by it (see illustration, page 215, and Color Plate III). Presently the land grew manifestly richer and darkened into mauve, while hills took on brown and warm gamboge. Some ducks flew up out of a narrow pool near the tracks. Flocks and herds increased in size and number. Vegetation began to appear about tiny dwellings. Stacks of barley, weighted with rocks and held down by cords of hide, began to in- SHRUBS, MOSS AND LLAMA REFUSE PRO- Alongside the tracks great piles of yareta, one of the three chief Bolivian fuels, came into view. Were it not for taquia, the tola shrub, and yareta, the poor Indian, the wealthier Bolivian, and even the resident foreigner would find it hard to make a fire. Taquia, used most widely of all, is the dried droppings of the llama. The little tola shrub grows everywhere upon the plateau at an altitude of 14,000 feet or more. Yareta grows in low, rounded masses, and resembles great domes of moss frequently six feet across. Its long roots are impregnated with resin and burn fiercely. It is widely distributed in high sections where there is not too much rainfall and the land is not desert. This is a region which newly arrived AN AYMARÁ AND HIS CAMEL OF THE PLATEAU The llama as a beast of burden provides one of the oldest methods of transportation known to South America. It was domesticated so long ago that no wild members of the family remain. The ancient Incas extended their influence and developed their culture by raising and training thousands of these animals to carry burdens of from 50 to 100 pounds in weight for the construction of their difficult, stupendous engineering and agricultural works (see, also, Color Plate III). travelers consider almost devoid of life; yet the plateau fairly teems with it. Hundreds of little mud huts are everywhere, but they are most inconspicuous, as are also the dusty animals and Indians themselves. Of a sudden one notes a bright spot of color, a man's red poncho, perhaps, or the orange skirts of a woman, and, looking more closely, one finds that Indians are at work all about (see Color Plates VIII, IX, XII, XIII, and XIV). High above every village, however small or squalid, tower big churches with mounting spires, typifying one of the great interests of Indian life. great domed earthen ovens, some 7 feet high by 6 in diameter, where most of the family cooking was done. At intervals we caught the yellow gleam of a little field of barley stubble not yet turned. There were trails everywhere, but few roads. Presently, however, just before sunset, a road took form along the tracks leading toward Tiahuanaco. On the outskirts of the town an Indian with an alpaca wool rope attached to a black jar with a slender neck was drawing water from a shallow well. For a moment his gaunt face showed coppery against the In front of the tracks we observed gray smoke of his hut, as we drew Photograph by Gerstmann A SMILING MEMBER OF A TACITURN RACE The Aymarás are the agricultural laborers of the Peru-Bolivia Plateau and have a hard struggle against cold and hunger. They are usually of a solemn or melancholy disposition, but this native of the Island of the Sun (see, also, illustration, page 243) has a somewhat easier existence than his brothers, with the result that mirth is not a stranger to him. abreast; then we pulled into Tiahuanaco village with the hillsides lilac under a lowering sun. THE RIDDLE OF TIAHUANACU The village of Tiahuanaco is situated near the ruins of the ancient city of Tiahuanacu, which, according to most chroniclers and Indian historians, did not bear that name during the Spanish Conquest, nor even while the Incas were masters of the district. It is generally agreed that Tiahuanacu is a Quichua denomina tion bestowed only a few hundred years ago.* Its meaning, too, is disputed. The greater number of Spanish historians, following the lead of Garcilaso de la Vega, born of an Inca princess, have agreed on its Quichua derivation; that Tia or Tiay comes from the verb sentarse, to be seated, and that the words translatable as sientate huanacu were addressed by an Inca at this spot on receiving from Cuzco jaded postboy or courier, whose fleetness he compared with that of the huanacu (guanaco), and commanded him to be seated in his presence and to take his rest. a But there are other meanings attributed to the word, merely from a different division of the syllables. On what may have been the true history of Tiahuanacu ruins one speculates fruitlessly, for its carvings and its characters have never been read with certainty. To attribute the structures to Aymará or Quichua peoples, races of yesterday, is incorrect. The Aymará tongue is the Sanskrit of America, and even older than Tiahuanacu; but the Aymará race itself, conquered by the language and taking name from it, is far younger (see, also, text, page 246). Geographically considered, it seems well established that the ancient city, now *See, also, "Some Wonderful Sights in the Andean Highlands. The Oldest City in America," by Harriet Chalmers Adams, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for September, 1908. situated on a spacious plain some 131⁄2 miles from Lake Titicaca, once stood on the shores of a southern bay of the lake, for north of the ruins exist traces of a harbor mole, Lake Titicaca apparently having receded in the course of the centuries. THE PRODUCT OF TWO CIVILIZATIONS Tiahuanacu has been judged the product of two distinct and successive civilizations, the latter supposedly reconstructing, to some extent, ruins left by an earlier people. Some investigators attribute the reconstruction work to the Aymarás, whose descendants now dwell in the region, but the latter have no traditions or legends about such builders, much less of the primitive preceding civilization. Dr. Belisario Díaz Romero, formerly director of the National Museum of Bolivia, thinks we must seek for the origin of the primitive Tiahuanacotan in an ancient Andean race of Mon goloid source, the predecessors or contemporaries of the Photograph from Stewart E. McMillin PIPES OF ARCADY IN A BOLIVIAN SETTING Panpipes were played in the Andes long before the arrival of the Conquistadores, and even to-day couriers of the modern Children of the Sun use them to announce their arrival and departure. The Aymarás pipe on this large-sized version during certain of their ceremonial dances (see, also, illustration, page 245, and Color Plate XIV). predecessors of the founders of the Mayan civilization in Central America. The resemblance of the present Aymará Indian inhabitants to the Asiatic Mongols is startling. We constantly commented on it. LIKE THE MONGOL, THE QUICHUA IS The Aymará-Quichua peoples are identified by many students of anthropology with the Tatar-Mongols in all the South American groups in Peru, Chile, Argentina, and ancient Colombia, and are of a type chiefly brachycephalic. In height they are about 5 feet 2 inches, though much taller Indians are frequently found among the purely Aymará branch. The head is large, the face broad, and cheeks wide; the nose is large and salient, but never sharp; the eyes are small and |