| Researcher claims vast network of prehistoric
civilization discovered near Lake Titicaca |
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| Inca legend says cities were built by giants,
destroyed in flood |
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Using earth orbiting satellites,
acclaimed researcher David Flynn has studied the high plateau
of Bolivia and found previously undiscovered unnatural
patterns stretching outward from Lake Titicaca for
hundreds of square miles. The geoglyphic works range
from arrow straight parallel lines, enormous over lapping
perfect circles and rectangles to 'labyrinth like' systems of
walls and mounds extending over every feature of the
terrain.
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One hundred and twenty
miles south of the lake, spirals, linear arrays and crisscrossing
paths are scored into the earth covering an entire desert. Closer
to the lake, branching walls and rectangular cells can be seen
running vertically down hills. Many of these walls extend
for hundreds of feet or more and maintain an average
width of 15 feet. The estimated combined mass of the geoglyphic
formations surrounding Lake Titicaca is staggering,
exceeding many of the greatest known constructions of the
ancient world. |
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Many researchers believe
that the ruins of Tiahuanaco, situated only 12 miles south of Lake
Titicaca and near the center of the
geoglyphic landscape, is the oldest city ever discovered
on earth. Consistent with these theories, the Inca living in the
region during the Spanish conquest explained that Tiahuanaco had
existed for thousands of years before their civilization
began. |
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According to Inca
legend, Lake Titicaca was revered as the location where the
god Viracocha created a race of giants and later, the first
humans. The Inca maintained that the giants built
Tiahuanaco and also many other cities and structures in the area.
However, due to their great evil, Viracocha destroyed the
giants in a world flood. This legend is still
believed by the local Indian inhabitants to this
day. |
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The geoglyphs covering
this area also exhibit extreme age. In areas where ice age
sediment surrounding hills and mountains has been eroded by rain
and wind, patterns carved into the bedrock underneath the
sediment has been exposed, suggesting their creation
sometime before the last glacial melt near the end of the
Pleistocene era, c. 13,000 years
ago. |
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Early researchers
speculated that Inca and pre-Inca farming techniques produced the
anomalous patterns on the ground around Lake Titicaca, especially
in the horizontal terracing found surrounding the lake itself.
However, the altitude of the Bolivian high plain presents several
problems with a farming related explanation for the majority of the
geoglyphs in the region. |
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At an average of 12,500
feet above sea level, most of the shapes and patterns are located
in areas that have not been conducive for growing crops
for the last 10,000 years. Their creation would have
required an immense workforce laboring for hundreds of years in
such thin air that altitude sickness was a real danger...
literally, a super human effort. Additionally, recent
high-resolution satellite images suggest that most of the features
are characteristic of religious and ritualistic forms of pre-Incan
art. They may even represent a sophisticated yet unknown form
of communication. |
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The Nazca lines in Peru are perhaps one of the closest analogues to
the geoglyphs at Titicaca. Both the Nazca lines and the
Titicaca geoglyphs seem to embody a system of thought unlike any in
modern times. Their exact purpose and method of
construction remains unclear. However, many of the geoglyphs
of Lake Titicaca were created by whole scale excavation of entire
mountainsides at altitudes of over 14,000 feet above sea level
where as the Nazca lines were etched superficially into the desert
at low altitude near the Pacific
coast.
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| Because of the
unprecedented effort and resources nessesary for the creation
of the patterns around Titicaca, they must have conveyed
incredible significance in the minds
of their builders. In our time they exist
as one of the greatest remnants of any ancient civilization… a
civilization that up until now, has been overlooked. In this light
these newly discovered geoglyphs most certainly warrant
further serious scientific study. |