Pumapunku, also called Puma Punku (Aymara and Quechua for "Gate of the Puma"), is a man-made platform with steps and a flat area built around the 6th century. It is located near Tiwanaku, La Paz, Bolivia, and is part of the Pumapunku complex, a large ancient site in the Andes of western Bolivia. This site is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Pumapunku complex includes open spaces, sloping paths, and the Pumapunku platform mound. Over time, the large structures on top of the platform have been damaged or destroyed, leaving only ruins.

Construction of Pumapunku is believed to have started after the year 536 AD. It was one of the most important structures in Tiwanaku, along with Akapana, which is considered its twin. Among the names used in Tiwanaku, only "Akapana" and "Pumapunku" have historical importance.

Pumapunku has small gate replicas that once matched larger gateways. At least five gateways, along with smaller ones, were likely part of the original design. The platform supported up to eight andesite gateways, and pieces of five similar gateways, like the Gateway of the Sun, have been found.

Tiwanaku, where Pumapunku is located, is important in Inca traditions. According to these traditions, Tiwanaku is believed to be the place where the world was created.

The Pumapunku complex includes an open western area, a central open space, a stone-covered platform mound, and a walled eastern area.

At its height, Pumapunku was thought to be very impressive, decorated with shiny metal plates, colorful ceramics, and fabrics. People in costumes, priests, and leaders with jewelry may have visited. Today, understanding the site is limited because of its age, lack of written records, and damage from treasure hunting, looting, stone mining, and weathering.

History

When the Spanish arrived at Tiwanaku, architecture was still standing at Pumapunku. Bernabé Cobo notes that one gateway and one "window" still stood upright on one of the platforms.

Description

The Pumapunku is a large, flat-topped hill made of earth and covered with large stone blocks. It is 167.4 metres (549 feet) wide from north to south and 116.7 metres (383 feet) long from east to west. On the northeast and southeast corners of the Pumapunku, there are 20-metre (66-foot) wide extensions that stretch 27.6 metres (91 feet) north and south from the main mound.

The eastern side of the Pumapunku includes the Plataforma Lítica. This structure is a stone terrace measuring 6.8 by 38.7 metres (22 by 127 feet). The terrace is covered with many large stone blocks. It holds the largest stone slab found at the Pumapunku and Tiwanaku Site. This slab is 7.8 metres (26 feet) long, 5.2 metres (17 feet) wide, and averages 1.1 metres (3 feet 7 inches) thick. Based on the weight of the red sandstone used, this slab is estimated to weigh 131 tonnes (144 short tons). The size and smooth surfaces of the sandstone slabs have been noted by people for many years.

The other stones and outer layer of the Pumapunku are made from a mix of andesite and red sandstone. The inner part of the Pumapunku is made of clay, while the area under parts of its edges contains river sand and small rocks instead of clay. Excavations found evidence of "three major building periods plus repairs and re-modeling."

The older Kalasasaya complex, located one kilometre away, shows a long history of human settlement in the area. In 2007, surveys of the area between the Pumapunku and Kalasasaya used ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry, induced electrical conductivity, and magnetic susceptibility. The data from these surveys and excavations suggest many man-made structures are buried in the area. These include building wall foundations, water channels, pool-like features, revetments, terraces, residential areas, and gravel-covered paths.

In 2016, a drone mapped the area. The survey showed the site covers seventeen hectares, with only two hectares uncovered. Two additional platforms are buried underground.

Age

According to W. H. Isbell, an expert in the Andes region and a professor at Binghamton University, a radiocarbon date was obtained by Alexei Vranich from organic material found in the deepest and oldest layer of mound-fill that forms the Pumapunku. This layer was deposited during the first of three construction periods and places the initial building of the Pumapunku between AD 536–600 (1510 ±25 B.P. C14, calibrated date). Because the radiocarbon date came from the deepest and oldest layer of mound-fill beneath the andesite and sandstone stonework, the stonework was likely built sometime after AD 536–600. Excavation trenches by Vranich show that the clay, sand, and gravel fill of the Pumapunku complex was placed directly on the sterile middle Pleistocene sediments. These trenches also showed there were no cultural deposits from the pre-Andean Middle Horizon period within the Tiwanaku Site area near the Pumapunku complex.

Engineering

The largest stone block at Pumapunku is 7.81 meters (25.6 feet) long, 5.17 meters (17.0 feet) wide, and averages 1.07 meters (3 feet 6 inches) thick. It is estimated to weigh about 131 tonnes (144 short tons). The second largest block is 7.90 meters (25.9 feet) long, 2.50 meters (8 feet 2 inches) wide, and averages 1.86 meters (6 feet 1 inch) thick. It is estimated to weigh 85.21 tonnes (93.93 short tons). Both blocks are part of the Plataforma Lítica and are made of red sandstone. Based on rock analysis and chemical testing of stone samples and known quarry locations, archaeologists determined that these and other red sandstone blocks were moved up a steep slope from a quarry near Lake Titicaca, about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away. Smaller andesite blocks, used for facing and carvings, came from quarries on the Copacabana Peninsula, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) away across Lake Titicaca from Pumapunku and the rest of the Tiwanaku Site.

Archaeologists debate whether the movement of these stones was done by the large labor force of the ancient Tiwanaku people. Several theories suggest different methods, such as using ropes made from llama skin and using ramps and inclined planes.

When building the walls of Pumapunku, each stone fit tightly with the stones around it. The blocks were arranged like puzzle pieces, creating strong, load-bearing joints. Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair found a thin layer of white material, about 1 to 1.5 millimeters thick, on some stones, which may have been used as mortar. One common technique involved cutting the top of a lower stone at a specific angle and placing another stone on top that had the same angle cut. The exactness of these angles, which created flat joints, shows advanced knowledge of stone-cutting and an understanding of shapes and angles. Much of the masonry includes blocks with very precise, uniform rectangular shapes that could be swapped with others while keeping the surface level and joints even. Although the blocks are similar, they are not all the same size. The precise cuts suggest the possibility of making many identical blocks in advance. Some stones are unfinished, showing the methods used to shape them.

Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair, who conducted the first professional study of the Tiwanaku/Pumapunku stones, concluded:

[…] to create the smooth surfaces, perfectly flat faces, and exact right angles on the finely shaped stones, the builders used techniques not known to the Incas or to us today. […] The sharp, precise 90° interior angles seen on some decorative designs were likely not made with hammerstones. Even the finest hammerstone could not produce the exact right angles found in Tiwanaku stonework. Similar cuts in Inca masonry have rounded interior angles, typical of the pounding method used by Inca builders. The tools used by the Tiwanaku people, except possibly hammerstones, remain unknown and have not been found.

According to Protzen and Nair, no tools used in the construction of Tiwanaku have been discovered, or if they have, they have not been identified as tools. Art historian Jessica Joyce Christie noted that experiments by Protzen and Nair showed that Tiwanaku builders may have used tools other than hammerstones to make exact geometric cuts and shapes, which archaeology has not yet recorded.

Stella Nair later tested different stone tools, including blades, flakes, and thin chisels made from materials like flint, agate, jasper, obsidian, hydrated obsidian, greywacke, quartzite, and hematite, to replicate a small carving. (Bronze tools were not effective for hard andesite.) She successfully carved a half-cross design about 8 inches wide, matching the precision of Pumapunku carvings. However, she could not replicate the perfectly flat surfaces found inside many Tiwanaku carvings. The process took 40 hours, though some time was spent trying different methods. Researchers estimated that an experienced person could complete the task in about 25 hours.

Tiwanaku engineers also built civic infrastructure at the site, including working irrigation systems, water control mechanisms, and leak-proof sewage lines.

Architecture

Pumapunku was a large platform made of earth with three levels of stone walls. The shape of the platform is not square but T-shaped. To hold up the heavy structures, Tiwanaku builders were careful in making strong foundations. They often placed stones directly on bedrock or dug exact trenches and filled them with layers of sedimentary stones to support large blocks. Modern engineers say the base of Pumapunku was built using a method called layering and depositing. This involved alternating layers of sand from the inside and materials from the outside. These layers overlap at the edges, and the places where they meet are smoothed to make the base strong.

Use of cramps

Important features at Pumapunku include I-shaped architectural cramps made from a special type of bronze that includes copper, arsenic, and nickel. These I-shaped cramps were also used on a section of a canal found at the base of the terraced platform mound Akapana at Tiwanaku. These cramps help hold together the stones that form the walls and bottom of canals designed to drain sunken courts. In the south canal of Pumapunku, the I-shaped cramps were cast directly into place. In contrast, the cramps used at the Akapana canal were shaped by hammering copper-arsenic-nickel bronze ingots without using heat. The special bronze alloy is also found in metal objects from the region between Tiwanaku and San Pedro de Atacama during the late Middle Horizon, around 600–900. In Peru, T-shaped sockets can also be found at the Qorikancha and Ollantaytambo. The cramp technique is also seen in buildings from Ancient Egypt (for example, at the temple of Khnum) and Ancient Greece (such as at the Erechtheion). According to Stübel and Uhle, the cramp sockets at Olympia and the Erechtheum in Athens are the same shape as those at Tiwanaku. They describe this as "a strikingly consistent choice of technical means" ("auffallend übereinstimmenden Wahl der technischen Mittel") and believe it is due to "similar patterns in human ways of thinking" ("Gesetzmässigkeit der menschlichen Denkentwickelung").

Possible connection to Ollantaytambo

Architectural historian Jean-Pierre Protzen from the University of California, Berkeley explains that some people have argued in the past that the important buildings at Ollantaytambo, such as the Wall of the Six Monoliths, were created by the earlier Tiwanaku culture and later used by the Incas.

This idea suggests that the Wall of the Six Monoliths and other structures from which stones were reused were built before the Incas and belonged to the Tiwanaku culture. Evidence for this argument includes a step pattern carved on the fourth monolith and T-shaped holes cut into several blocks, which are believed to be features of Tiwanaku-style architecture. Another version of this idea is that Tiwanaku-style elements were brought to Ollantaytambo by stonemasons from Lake Titicaca. However, a question arises: why would these stonemasons remember Tiwanaku-style designs if such buildings had not been built for many years? If anything resembles Tiwanaku, it is the T-shaped holes and the carefully layered masonry made from altered andesite. Many T-shaped holes are found at Tiwanaku, especially at the site of Puma Punku.

According to Protzen, however, only T-shaped holes are found at Ollantaytambo, while Tiwanaku has a wide variety of hole shapes, including L, T, double-T, ‡, U, Y, and Z. Similarities between Ollantaytambo and Tiwanaku were also noted by scholars Heinrich Ubbelohde-Doering, Alphons Stübel, and Max Uhle.

Gateways of Pumapunku

At least five gateways (and several small gateways that are not visible) were once placed or planned to be placed in the Pumapunku complex. The base of Pumapunku supported up to eight andesite gateways. Pieces of five andesite gateways, similar to the Gateway of the Sun, were discovered.

Miniature gateways at Pumapunku are exact copies of larger gateways that once stood there. When making smaller versions of large structures, the Tiahuanacans used a specific method. There are also copies of larger buildings. For example, a carved block called the "Escritorio del Inca" is a precise, smaller version of a full-sized structure. Some of these "model stones," such as "little Pumapunku," are not single stones but appear to fit with other stones and fragments. According to Protzen and Nair, the fact that many "model stones" were made in multiple copies shows they were produced in large numbers.

Doubly curved lintels

At Pumapunku and other areas of Tiwanaku, such as Kantatayita, lintels with complex curves and intricate surfaces were discovered. Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair note that the "steep parabolic curve" of these curved lintels, such as the one from Kantatayita, would be very challenging for modern stonemasons to recreate. They state that this design would challenge even the most skilled stonemasons today.

Sculptures

There are at least two large stone structures, called monoliths, connected to the Pumapunku platform mound. One of these monoliths is known as the Pumapunku monolith (or Pumapunku stela). It was found west of the Pumapunku area and first recorded in photographs in 1876. Evidence suggests that, similar to the Akapana sculptures called Chachapumas, these figures may have once stood at the entrance to Pumapunku. Chachapumas were typically placed on andesite pedestals on both sides of an entrance. These sculptures show fierce traits of predatory animals, often shown crouching or kneeling while holding a human head in one hand and an axe in the other. Some scholars believe the Chachapumas may have required people to offer sacrifices when entering large structures. Some researchers think markings on stones at Pumapunku indicate that the Gate of the Sun was part of Pumapunku. According to Alan Kolata, the terraced platform shown on the Gate of the Sun is a stylized representation of Pumapunku. The back side of the Gate of the Sun has patterns that match those found on stone slabs and gates at Pumapunku. Because of this, some people believe the Gate of the Sun was once the main entrance to Pumapunku.

Roofs

The roofs of the entrance to Pumapunku were probably made of Totora-reed stones. These stones were found at the west entrance of Pumapunku. Early visitors who saw buildings at Tiwanaku described stones that looked like straw. They wrote that the roof of a hall appeared to be made of straw, even though it was actually made of stone. The people who lived there covered their homes with straw, so the builders carved the stone to look like straw-covered roofs. Large Totora-reed stones are displayed in the museum at Tiwanaku.

Cultural and spiritual significance

According to some theories, the Pumapunku complex and nearby large buildings such as Akapana, Kalasasaya, Putuni, and Kerikala were used for religious and ceremonial purposes by the Tiwanaku people. This area may have been considered the center of the Andean world, drawing visitors from distant places to admire its beauty. These structures changed the way the area looked; Pumapunku was connected to the Illimani mountain. The spiritual meaning and sense of awe might have been made stronger through the use of plants that affect the mind. Tests on hair samples found traces of mind-altering substances in many mummies from the Tiwanaku culture in Northern Chile, including babies as young as one year old, showing how important these substances were to the Tiwanaku people.

Peak and decline

The Tiwanaku civilization and its use of enclosures and platform mounds were at their highest point between AD 700 and 1000. During this time, the city and its surrounding area could have as many as 10,000 to 20,000 people living there. A large system of structures and support systems was built, including a complex water system covering more than 30 square miles (about 80 kilometers) to help grow potatoes, quinoa, corn, and other crops. During its strongest years, the Tiwanaku culture controlled the Lake Titicaca area and parts of Bolivia and Chile.

The culture ended suddenly around AD 1000, and scientists are not sure why. One possible reason is a sudden and long drought. Without enough water to grow enough food for so many people, the Tiwanaku people likely moved to nearby mountain areas and then disappeared. Puma Punku was left unfinished by its builders.

Atlantis and aliens enthusiasts

Pumapunku is often discussed in unscientific theories about lost lands and alien involvement. Many websites and sources mention these ideas, which are promoted by people who believe in aliens or the mythical city of Atlantis. Archaeologist Jeb J. Card explains that Pumapunku is frequently featured in books and TV shows about alternative archaeology, especially those that suggest aliens influenced ancient civilizations. He notes that supporters of Atlantis and aliens often highlight the finely cut stones and the location of Pumapunku in the high Altiplano as unexplained mysteries.

Archaeologist Alexei Vranich challenges the claim by some alien theorists that early local structures similar to Pumapunku, such as those at Pukara and Chiripa, prove that Pumapunku was built without local influence. Vranich argues that these discoveries actually support the idea that Pumapunku was created by people who lived in the Titicaca basin, not by aliens. He explains that buildings at Chiripa, which resemble Pumapunku, were used for storing food, as basket marks and food remains were found there. Vranich also states that many non-experts and pseudo-archaeologists wrongly claim that the precise geometry of Tiwanaku architecture was made by aliens or a lost advanced civilization.

In the 2019 issue of Public Archaeology, Franco D. Rossi of Johns Hopkins University criticized ancient alien theorists for calling the Aymara people "stone age people" who could not have built Pumapunku.