In the high altitude desert of South America it's not hard to find evidence of the famed Inca civilization.

It's in the countryside, in the cities, and along the most dangerous road in the world.

But if you know where to look, you can find remains of elaborate civilizations that were ancient even before the arrival of the Inca.

Funding for the Desert Speaks was provided by Desert Program Partners.

A group of concerned viewers making a financial commitment to the education about and preservation of our desert areas.

When we think of Andean cultures, most of us think of the Incas.

But an earlier civilization called the Tiwanakus built a great empire in the semi-arid altiplano.

Archaeologist Axel Nielsen has been studying there for years.

The vast altiplano of South America is a semi-arid, windswept plane that encompasses a large chunk of Argentina, Bolivia and Peru.

At over two and half miles high, the capital city of Bolivia is a gateway to the altiplano and its culture.

La Paz has to be one of the oddest cities in the world.

Well, what I love about it is that mixture of modern elements, historic elements and Indian traditional.

Plus located in that bowl that's one of the most stunning views anywhere possible when you come over and see it for the first time from above.

Yeah.

Well, you know, the bowl makes it hard to walk around La Paz.

You're right.

Probably the steepest streets I've seen in my life.

Here look at these.

Tomorrow you will see the real ones but these look like Tiwanaku status sculptures and these, this winged character here, you'll see tomorrow it engraved in the gateway of the sun.

These don't look Tiwanaku.

What are these?

No, those are images of Pachamama, the Mother Earth.

These represent health, safety, family, love and fortune.

I'm the first witch in the witches market.

But I'm a good witch because everything here is for good luck.

This section of La Paz has to be one of the weirdest in the world.

Yeah, the witchcraft market, Sagárnega Street.

You'll see they must have a rich tradition for healing and like doing all kinds of rituals related to construction and bringing prosperity to people.

What's this stuff?

Oh, these are llama fetuses, usually of unborn llamas.

They're called sulyes .

And they bury them in the foundations of buildings, even today in La Paz.

This is a llama fetus.

The basket is an arrangement used in the construction of a new house.

It will safeguard the house against envy and give the inhabitants good health, work, fortune.

All of these are offerings made to the Pachamama.

No person in La Paz would buy that house if it doesn't have the offering at the bottom.

Still today this is very strong.

And this will give a traveler good luck.

Have a good trip.

Going back to the Incas, the most beautiful textiles were those that had bright and contrasting colors.

So nowadays the Indian population have taken these industrial dyes because they adapt perfectly to this notion of beauty.

So they put a bright pink next to a bright green, for instance, a yellow.

And that's makes a beautiful .

And they wear them themselves.

That's another reason.

These are not just made for tourists.

The same things you see in the shops they wear themselves.

The way they reflect this very old notion of beauty.

We won't need to travel far from La Paz to find people who still live pretty much as their ancestors did before the time of the Incas.

The wool of the camellids, this is llamas, alpacas and vicuñas, have been used in the Andean highlands for weaving with looms for at least three thousand years and probably more than that.

Textiles were probably the most precious handicraft in the Andes in pre-Columbian time.

Textiles encoded a lot of information about identity, ethnicity, about the cosmology of the Andean peoples and were usually the most precious gift that for instance a chief would give another chief for sealing an alliance for instance.

Today both men and women weave in the Andes.

But they use different looms and they weave different pieces.

Men, soon after the conquest, men adopted the Spanish loom partially because the Spanish made them, forced them to work in factories and textile workshops.

The men used only the un-dyed wool, this is with the natural colors of the camellids, which is gray, black, white, brown for instance.

Whereas the women use all kinds of colors that they produce from natural plants or mineral dyes.

And they use the field loom which is the very ancient Andean loom that goes back at least three thousand years.

Women weave with these colorful wools to weave blankets and pieces that you see people wearing.

It's hard for me to believe that his landscape could support such a grand city as Tiwanaku.

Tiwanaku's the name of the capital of the largest state that developed in the south Andes before the Incas.

This is between the beginning of the year 1100 A.D. What we see now is mostly the remains of the ceremonial core of the city.

The rest of the city, which extends over four square kilometers, is hard to see because it was mostly constructed with adobe architecture, which doesn't preserve very well in this environment.

.and even the ones to be restored they reuse the blocks of rock that they found when the wall fell.

So I think maybe a good impression of how these buildings would have looked like the other time.

Straight as can be.

And these have to be original here.

Unlike the Inca rule, which was based on direct military control and direct political control of many peoples, the Tiwanaku played a combination of ideological influence, of religious influence of the people, a skillful manipulation of trade and some control of important economic resources they were able to develop in the altiplano.

The economic base of the Tiwanaku state was a combination of agriculture, you've seen the technique of raised field agriculture and llama herding, which they used not only for getting meat to feed the people and wool for making the beautiful Tiwanaku textiles, but also to develop this vast network of caravan trade which was an important part of their influence over the south Andes.

This is the famous Gateway to the Sun.

It's all been carved from one single stone.

One slab.

The carvings you see on the lentil of this gateway includes some of the most important themes of Tiwanaku iconography, like the god with the two staffs and these winged characters that go sideways throughout it.

Tiwanaku culture synthesizes many themes that had been around in previous cultures in the south Andes.

For example, the consumption of hallucinogenic substances to induce altered state of mind probably related to healing or to foresee in the future for instance or communicating with the gods.

Tiwanaku architecture puts a lot of emphasis in gateways.

Lots, yeah.

Yeah, it's got to be a relationship between this and the use of hallucinogenic drugs in the ceremonies.

They probably took a stone working to an excellent level of skill, something that the Incas later adopted themselves.

So we see that many institutions that the Incas used for their own benefit and to organize the empire, were probably in place already in Tiwanaku times.

The variety of expressions on these faces is, covers the whole human race.

Yeah, there's a lot of diversity the style of these cultures they found in this temple.

And this could mean that the Tiwanaku when they expanded, they would capture the idols, the gods of the people they'd conquer and bring them.

And that was a lot of different cultures.

That's right.

And bring them here and hold them hostage in their temples.

So hold the gods hostage.

So the smallest vestibule nowadays is their ceremonial court, a step pyramid of archapana .

.the whole thing was like that.

Yeah.

Seven steps all the way to the top.

The semi-subterranean temple.

The kalisosaya, which is a very large temple where many of these oak statues were placed originally.

And then associated palaces where we find some of the rich environment in which the Tiwanaku priests and elite used to live.

In Tiwanaku legend, the Titicaca Lake and the islands in the Titicaca Lake were given foremost importance.

.ones up here are that volcanic andesite.

That's andesite, yeah.

And they come from different parts of the shore of Lake Titicaca up to 90 kilometers away from here.

The smallest one must weigh a couple of tons.

Yeah and I heard the heaviest one is a hundred tons.

The temples were surrounded by a large moat fed from the Tiwanaku River.

So in a way these temples symbolically were placed as an island in the middle of a lake.

In this way the ceremonial court was made to resemble the Island of the Sun, which was thought to be the place where the sun and the moon for the first time emerged in the time of darkness and flood.

This large depression you see here in the summit of the Pyramid of Arkepana used to be a sunken court.

And to drain the rainwater that accumulated there, they had a very complex drainage system made of fine cut stone inside the mound itself.

This was a very powerful symbol of fertility, be good for Andean people.

The mountains and the mountain spirits are the providers of water, which is the vital element for surviving in this kind of environment.

Like in this stone here, this hole that is just like a megaphone with a shape that resembles the structure of the inner ear, you whisper in this side and you can be heard really loud on distance.

Well, how about if you sing?

(David singing) Many theories have been proposed as to why the city of Tiwanaku was abandoned and we know by the time the Incas got here it was already a ruin.

The base of the Tiwanaku economy was raised field agriculture and this technique depends on certain patterns of rainfall.

Long-term, severe drought as the one that began after 1000 A.D. we had may have collapsed the base of the state.

The Tiwanakus conquered the peoples to the west that lived in the desert and those to the east that lived in the yungas or cloud forests.

They came to rely on products from both places.

To bring the tropical products up to the altiplano, they used footpaths.

Now it's done by a road.

And it's earned its reputation as El Camino mas peligroso en mundo, the most dangerous road in the world.

A thousand years before the Tiwanakus, people came to rely on a special crop for stimulation, for medicine, and for ceremonies.

It doesn't grow in the frigid altiplano or in the dry desert.

The coca leaf is a crop of the yungas or the high jungles of eastern Bolivia.

Archaeologists have demonstrated that it is of enduring importance for the pre-history, or pre-European history, of the people of the Andes.

It's popularity is such today that it's a good thing that it is the only crop in the world that can be harvested four times a year.

To this day, coca is essential to fend off high-altitude sickness.

It's great for digestion and it's a mainstay of the religious life of the people of the high, cold altiplano including Lake Titicaca.

Here before the arrival of the Spanish, hundreds of thousands of people lived along the shore of this great lake.

For today's inhabitants, catching a ferry is an easy shortcut.

You correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this is the highest ferry in the world.

Yeah, you're probably right.

The Straight of Tikena.

This is not a hyper-modern diesel powered thousand person ferry.

That's the ticket.

It cost one and a half Bolivianos, which is about fifteen cents.

It's worth at least twice that.

Actually I think this is the only way you can get across Lake Titicaca in Bolivia.

Otherwise you have to go through Peru.

Yeah.

If you want to get to Copacabana from Bolivia, you have to take this crossing and this ferry.

There's no, Bolivia has no seacoast.

No.

All they have is here in Lake Titicaca.

Wow.

It's a pretty noticeable naval presence here.

So Lake Titicaca goes through this narrow straight here and then off here is.

Yeah, that's what they call the lago menor, the minor lake.

The smaller lake.

It's still a big lake.

And this is.

And the big one is over there.

Even during the 1300s drought there were two lakes.

Is that right?

Yeah.

This was like a land bridge.

So just like Mesa Verde and almost the same time.

Yeah.

And Chaco Canyon in the United States.

It seems to be the western hemisphere kind of phenomenon.

It's very widespread.

And it's always associated with warfare too, both in North America and South America.

So when times get very hard, people can't raise their own crops, they go after.

They start competing, violently for resources.

Land tenure is still communal around Lake Titicaca.

Each family will have the right to work one piece of land for agriculture and usually the pasture land is held in common.

So they all graze their herds together in the same area.

One of the advantages of having this communal land tenure and ability of reallocating individual lots to individual families is that sometimes the level of the lake raises.

In those years those part of the land will be in the water so it's very easy for the community then to allocate new piece of land to these family that would have been damaged otherwise.

It would have been very hard for ancient peoples around Titicaca to survive without the reed boats because they allowed them to take advantage, full advantage, of the rich resources of Lake Titicaca.

There are at least five species of native fish that are consumed by the people.

They could collect the algae and they could also travel between the different settlements that were surrounding the lake.

Have you been in a balsa boat before?

No, this is my first time.

But I told you I've been looking forward to this for years.

You know, I thought they were really small things but this is.

I'm a reed boatman on Lake Titicaca.

And you are the last real one left?

Not really.

There are still several here but most prefer not to hang on to the old traditions.

They prefer the wood boats with motors but in the old days these totora reed boats were used for everything, fishing and transporting goods to Peru.

This is totora.

It's good for making rope, boats, roof thatching and other construction.

And it's food for Caro.

Our ancestors used totora for all that.

And they also ate the white part of the reed.

It's used as a food for us.

Not commonly, but it's another use.

I guess after they harvest the totora, they let it dry for awhile.

Yeah, it'd have to dry.

And then they make these bundles, right?

They make these long bundles tied with a totora rope.

And with a spiral rope.

That's right.

And then they would join like, what, six or eight bundles and tie them together and that would make the boat.

Right?

Then they tape each bundle at the end, it makes a prow that sticks up in the air.

It's really stately.

And I suspect that it's actually aerodynamically probably pretty sophisticated.

Yeah, they use boats just like these to drag all the andesite they used for the tall building at Tiwanaku on top of these.

I think they sailed like 70 kilometers over the lake to bring the stones to the closest place at Tiwanaku.

Elario says that when they went on long distances they had sails.

They had oars and they've got oar spaces here, oar pads, to lay the oars on.

They also built sails out of the same totora.

Totora.

I would love to have seen one of those.

Well, it's time to get out.

Okay.

I'm sad but I'm a little sympathetic.

If you can use a motor boat instead of this, it goes a lot faster.

It's a big lake.

It's not as big as the Great Lakes in the United States but it's still huge, over 3,000 square miles.

So none of this wonderful water from Lake Titicaca coming out of the Cordillera Real in the high mountains, none of it makes it to the Pacific.

No.

It all ends in the altiplano.

Ill ampo is the highest mountain in this part of Cordillera Real, the Royal Range, and it's always covered with snow like we see it now.

Are there glaciers there?

Yes.

So that's gotta be a permanent source of water even in the warm months when the annual snow is pretty well gone, the glaciers are still there.

Yeah, and when you look at the snow and all the clouds around those mountains, you can see why the ancient peoples thought that the mountains were the sources of water.

That's why they worshipped the mountains.

They wanted to improve their agriculture and because they thought the water would come from the mountains.

If the Inca could have been transported to the Aegean and the Mediterranean, he'd of said, "Hey, this looks just like home."

Well, looking at how beautiful this place is you can understand why the Incas and the Tiwanaku before them considered this to be a sacred place.

It's the Inca road that connects all the Inca settlements or temples on the highland of the sun.

And it's a pretty vast network.

Isn't it just on this island?

Yes, yes.

Because there are many temples in different parts of the island.

But this is the most important by far.

Well, boy, they sure chose a place where the view is outstanding.

It goes on forever, the other side of the lake.

Lake Titicaca was one of the most important places for Andean religion and cosmology.

According to widespread origin, the sun Inti and the moon Kilya , emerged for the first time from the waters of Lake Titicaca here at Isla del Sol .

This happened in the primeval time of darkness and flood.

Later the Incas had their own origin myth that somehow associated them with this very popular belief at the time.

Probably the Inca himself in his court would come here to participate in the ceremonies.

Was it to honor the sun, because this was the birthplace of the sun?

Yes, to the sun and probably honoring their own ancestors.

The earlier Incas like Mancokápac.

In fact this temple is also known as the Temple of Mancokápac, the first Inca who emerged from the waters of the lake.

Do you suppose there was a little self-promotion in it, too?

In this way, the Incas sort of claim natural right to rule all the Andean highlands.

And this is probably the reason why the Incas invested so much effort building temples and ceremonial structures and palaces in Isla del Sol .

Although all the island is covered with agricultural terraces, the main activities that the Incas carry here were related to religion and to re-enacting of this origin myth.

All these passageways and rooms we are going through were probably living quarters for priests or perhaps one of the keys to the success of the Incas, they were able to unify all the Andean highlands in such a short time.

This is a century or a little over a century, lies in the fact that they were able to reuse existing cultural beliefs and perceptions to their own benefit.

And a very good example of this is how in their own origin myth they were able to associate themselves with the notion of the order of nature and the origin of all living things.

Today people know these ruins as Chincana , which is a Quechua word that means labyrinth.

I'm already lost.

I have the feeling we've been here before, haven't we?

Well, yeah.

But maybe that's the idea, is confusion.

But I suppose if you spent much time here, you could run through here blindfolded because after awhile it becomes predictable.

If we look at the ways in which the Incas legitimized their right to rule over all the Andean highlands, we can consider the Inca temples in the Island of the Sun as the most important Inca settlement in the entire empire.

That, and a host of other ideas and techniques, they borrowed from the Tiwanakus.

The Tiwanakus with great precision established their city as a site ideal for llama grazing.

And for exploiting the jungles here to the east and Lake Titicaca to the north and the desert rivers and seacoast to the south and west.

They had vanished by the time of the Incas but their contributions endured and were of vital importance to succeeding cultures and for us today.

"Man, the spines are as big as the pads."

You can't call them cuddly but they are collectible.

Fierce looking spiny plants have a suprisingly large fan club.

And some of the most outrageous.. the ugliest... and even the most feminine.

can earn bragging rights.

Next time on the Desert Speaks Well, I don't want to hit anybody in the head.

I hate it when I do that.

Well, that water's about, looks like it's about eight feet deep here.

You can't tell because of the beautiful marine growth here.

But what I love about Bolivia and La Paz in particular is that even if there is chaos, you know, there's some order within this chaos.

This is just a matter of getting into it.

Once you go with the flow, all of a sudden you realize that it's not that bad after all.

Funding for the Desert Speaks was provided by Desert Program Partners.

A group of concerned viewers making a financial commitment to the education about and preservation of our desert areas.