Good morning, we are continuing an exploration of the Ancient World by looking at Tiwanaku in South America. The Timeline YouTube has Tiwanaku called South America Stonehenge, so was this a clickbait title? The run time for this documentary is 47:50.
Alexei Vranichi, a University of Pennsylvania researcher, is on an expedition to discover how the people who built Tiwanaku transported their stones across Lake Titicaca. He enlists the help of Paul Harmon who was a sailor and adventurer. How do these two men solve the mystery of how the stones traveled across Lake Titicaca? How does one transport stones to their present site? What does this experience tell us about the Tiwanaku people? Where did these giant blocks come from? The Tiwanaku Valley is a desolate valley in Bolivia. However, it is home to a mighty civilization and this civilization had something known as “South America’s Stonehenge.” Investigations began decades ago and what was discovered shocked archeologists. Initial theories about Tiwanaku being an uninhabited ceremonial site were debunked. Tiwanaku was one of the largest cities in ancient South America. The people controlled the basin around Lake Titicaca. They had a highly developed culture based on archeological evidence. So how did the Tiwanaku people transport such large stones to the present site? Alexei Vranichi and Paul Harmon are going to experiment. The trouble is they will only use techniques that were available to the Tiwanakup people. They want to debunk the theories that aliens or other lost tribes build the great city of Tiwanaku. The first step is to go across Lake Titicaca and build a boat. The Tiwanaku people would have used reeds to build boats. Harmon and Vranichi will work with the local people to build large boats. These large boats will be used to transport large stones across Lake Titicaca. The reeds will have to dry for three weeks and after they are dried they are gathered into bundles. The bundles are joined together in long cigar-shaped bundles. Alexei and Paul check on the status of the boat. They are impressed with how the boat is coming together. The process of boat building was rather interesting. It leaves you wondering if the boat will actually float. When the boat is finished, the book will be 15 feet long and will be 12 tons dry. When it gets to the water, it will weigh 15 tons. Paul tries out a smaller boat and learns how reed boats work. He talks about learning how to handle the boat and talks about how he cannot even roll the boat. As a side experiment, he talks about how Tiwanaku invented kayaking. Paul does manage to flip the boat, but he cannot roll it back to an upright position. Alexei tours the local communities in Bolivia and talks about how the people still have their cultures. He then explores where they are getting stones. However, there will be complications as where the location where the stone should come from in Peru. This will require some permissions. However, they will get their stone from Bolivia. This requires additional permission from the local government as well as the local shamans. The area where the stone is coming from is considered sacred. Will these guys get permission to get some stones? They are looking for a stone ten feet tall and two feet thick. Will they be able to find the correctly sized stone? Will it be in a convenient location? Once a stone is found, the boys will have to plan how to load the stone up. The experts and local knowledge are coming to disagreements. The locals have faith that the boat will not sink under the weight of the boat. However, the boys who are working on the experiment are unsure. So will this historical experiment work? Tune into the rest of this episode to find out! It is too bad that this documentary was not put into chapters for easy viewing and easy mining for lectures. There was an old-school feel to this documentary as well. This was a well-done and well-thought-out historical experiment. The commentary of the historians was interesting and engaging. Over all this would be an excellent documentary to show to both a history class and a science class.
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