Ancient Americas: the South American Stonehenge

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2022

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the largest archaeological sites in South America, located near Lake Titicaca in Western Bolivia - Tiwanaku is a brilliantly mysterious place. Believed to have been founded around 200BC, Tiwanaku is filled with monumental structures, mighty monoliths and incredible ceramics - but who built it? And why?

In the final episode of our Ancient Americas series, Tristan is joined by Dr Alexei Vranich to help shine a light on this spectacular site. With 20 tonne stones carried from miles away, across mountains and lakes - Tiwanaku is a site shrouded in mystery. Together Tristan and Alexei discuss this South American Stonehenge and try to understand how some simple reed rafts helped build this magnificent site.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast
0:16.1	well August is coming to an end and so too is our small series all about the ancient
0:21.6	Americas. You can rest assured we'll be doing more episodes in the future but this is
0:25.6	it for the small mini series at least for August time but we're finishing on a banger, on
0:31.6	a really good one. We're going to Bolivia to a site that has been labelled the South American
0:37.7	Stonehenge. A site very high up near Lake Titicaca called Tuanaku. Now to explain all about Tuanaku,
0:46.0	this place with these huge ancient stone buildings and what we think this site was in its prime,
0:52.3	join me to explain all of that. I was delighted to get on the podcast Dr Alexi of Rannich. Alexi
0:58.8	he is an archaeologist he's a wonderful speaker he dialed in from Poland for this chat today all
1:04.4	about Tuanaku. He's done a lot of research around this site particularly focusing on how these
1:12.0	people were able to transport huge stones to the site of Tuanaku from very far away. How far? Well
1:19.8	Alexi explains in this podcast episode and I really do hope you enjoy. So without further ado
1:25.4	to wrap up our ancient Americas mini series to talk all about Tuanaku, here's Alexi.
1:41.0	Alexi good to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for inviting me on. You're more than welcome
1:46.0	to an Arku. This is looking for us to this podcast episode immensely. At its height this was one of
1:53.5	the great cities in the ancient Andes. At its height it was something special that's for sure. Now what
2:00.1	it was that's a hard one to determine. Archaeologist Will Argu, pack and forth. What is it a densely
2:06.6	populated city? Was it a city that became large during festivals and then smaller at other times?
2:14.2	We'll continue debating that for a while but one thing for certain is that the monuments are
2:18.7	spectacular. I'd had a tremendous influence at its height. It definitely had an impact on later
2:25.4	cultures too. So we're talking about a very important place that's for sure. Life and legacy,
2:30.6	we'll get onto that legacy absolutely a bit later on but let's set the scene. Where about are we
	...

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