Tiwanaku...Seems a lot like Easter Island

Okay, so Tihuanaco (or Tiwanaku) isn't Easter Island, but when we first saw these statues we were immediately struck by how similar they were to the Easter Island monoliths we saw. On closer examination, though, they are quite different, especially with the kind of carving the statues had on them.




Both male and female statues have braids on the back so it is very difficult for archaeologists to decipher the gender of these statues.



Tihuanaco is a pre-columbian site situated about 44 miles west of La Paz. It is one of the most significant pre-cursors to the Incan empire, and unlike the Incans, they didn't use any kind of sacrifices. Their civilisation was highly dependent and devoted to agriculture so many of their significant images are from nature.



The Sun Gate is one of the most important sites recovered from the buried city. It graces so many posters promoting Bolivia, yet we were so surprised to see that it was quite small in size.



So much of this culture still remains a mystery... especially when it came to this temple of heads. We were told by the guide that the heads were meant to represent the various chieftains in the area. But we have also heard the hypothesis that this is proof that the Tiwanakans knew of other civilisations because some people interpret the heads to signify different cultures including the Chinese! (Kevin and I looked as hard as we could at the supposed "Chinese" face and were not convinced!)



And then our guide suggested that the Tiwanakans were assisted in building these sites by aliens, just because of these kind of images found in the temple walls! (And at this point we decided to call it a day with our guide)