Pumapunku, Bolivia

Part of the Tiwanaku complex, Pumapunku doesn’t jump out at you. It’s just scattered rocks, until you look more closely.

The stones that form the platform are immense, and — as seems to be the theme — quarried and transported from a site improbably far away. Evidence of elaborate and precise machining of the stone is everywhere. This platform is called the temple, which is archeologist-speak for we have no idea what the hell this thing was.

Here Yousef Awyan points out intricate and precise stonework similar to what he sees in Egypt.

Evidence of machining includes perfectly circular drilled holes. in the background, Pumapunku’s distinct “H” blocks.

An interesting feature of these blocks came to light last January. Brien Foerster (pictured) had along a British engineer in his 80s (amazing guy who had stopped flying his own helicopter just a couple years before) who had brought a Tesla meter (magnetometer). Lo and behold, new mysteries! Knowing this, many on this tour had brought compasses. in this case, moving the compass inside the “H” recess causes it to point south instead of north!

One person brought dowsing rods, which reacted wildly. One would hold steady while the other spun like crazy. Changing position would cause the spinning one to reverse direction, or stop while the other started spinning.

Throughout the site, excavated stones are piled up more or less randomly, further demonstrating that the archeologists remain clueless about their positioning or function.

And there is much more of the Tiwanaku complex to be discovered. Here Antonio Portugal shows the results of ground-penetrating radar, which reveals promising excavation possibilities that may never happen for political reasons.

In closing, a couple more images from Tiwanaku:

Amazing stonework — function unknown — from many thousand years ago.