All language subtitles for BBC.Lost.Kingdoms.of.South.America.2of4.The.Stone.at.the.Centre.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

High in the Bolivian Andes

stand the awe-inspiring ruins
of a massive temple city.

This is Tiwanaku, which means "the
stone at the centre of the world".

Over 1,000 years ago
in this sacred site,

ritual drinking and feasting

fuelled the most powerful religion
that South America had ever seen.

I'm Jago Cooper

and, as an archaeologist
who specialises in South America,

I've always been fascinated
by the secrets and mysteries

buried deep in these awe-inspiring
and forbidding landscapes.

The history of this continent
has been dominated

by the stories of the Inca
and the Spanish conquistadors.

'But in this series,

'I'll be exploring
an older, forgotten past...'

Wow! We're inside the cave.

'..travelling from
the coast to the clouds

'in search of ancient civilisations

'as significant and impressive
as anywhere else on Earth.'

Here in Bolivia, the monolithic
temple city of Tiwanaku

stands at the breathtaking height
of 13,000 feet above sea level.

But Tiwanaku wasn't just a place,
it was a people,

who created a civilisation
that lasted over 500 years.

For centuries, it was a mystery
how the Tiwanaku people

managed to thrive
in this desolate landscape.

But now, archaeology has revealed

evidence of astonishing
community effort...

..of a deep understanding
of the environment...

MEN CHANT

..and, amazingly, how a crucial role
in Tiwanaku's dominance

was played by beer.

Up here in these remote,
high plains of Bolivia,

I want to find out the truth behind
the stories of the Tiwanaku people.

How did their beliefs give them
the power and ability

to build a city of temples in
this hostile and unforgiving land?

The Altiplano, the high plain,

forms a vast expanse 3,800 metres
up in the Bolivian Andes...

..part of the vast mountain range

that forms a spine
down western South America.

Life's hard up here.

The air's thin,
it's difficult to breathe.

Although daytime temperatures
go above 20 degrees,

at night,
it drops well below freezing.

The rainy season brings floods

and, periodically, the area
suffers catastrophic drought.

To European eyes, this seems like

the last place on Earth
that humans would settle.

Yet between around 600 and 1100 AD,
a civilisation grew

that eventually numbered
a million people.

This was the heartland
of the Tiwanaku,

and their influence
stretched from here

as far as Peru, Chile and Argentina.

So what made life
on one of the world's

highest plateau regions possible?
How did the Tiwanaku

survive the thin air and
temperature extremes up here?

And how on earth did they travel
any distance across this landscape?

This is a country that,

until the arrival of the Europeans
in the 16th century,

they saw no need
for the use of the wheel

and, driving around,
you can see why.

It's a really inhospitable terrain

and it's much better to walk
across it than to try and drive.

But the Altiplano offers
a different form of transport

that people in this region began
exploiting at least 6,000 years ago

and I've come to the remote
community of San Antonio Murce,

where they still depend on it.

There's one thing that makes
this community viable,

and it's the same thing

that makes the communities
in early Tiwanaku viable.

And that's the animal unique
to South America - the llama.

THEY GREET EACH OTHER
IN SPANISH

'This is Marcelo Choqui.
His family have lived here,

'surviving as llama herders,
for generations.

'They are Aymara,

'an indigenous Bolivian group
descended from the Tiwanaku people

'from whom we can learn a lot
about how their ancestors lived.'

CONVERSATION IN SPANISH CONTINUES

'In common with many
South American cultures,

'it's the custom here to share
coca leaves when you first meet.

'But here on the Altiplano,

'coca is also used to cope with the
thin air you get at this altitude.'

'So coca gave the Tiwanaku

'the stamina to work
at this airless height,

'and the llama provided them
with wool for the kind of clothing

'needed to battle
the temperature extremes up here.

'Marcelo's daughter
weaves it into vivid textiles.'

The llama wool is so important
for the communities here,

not only cos it gets
incredibly cold during the winters,

but also because it was the thing
they used for all their clothing.

Here, they're using the same colours
for this particular village

that they've been using
for hundreds of years.

'But, of course, the llama wasn't
just a source of wool and clothing.'

So we're loading up the bags
with some fertiliser,

cos Marcelo's getting ready to start
planting the crops for the year.

We'll take the fertiliser,
pack 'em on the llamas

and take him up to the fields
higher up in the mountains.

They're going to use it to plant
the potatoes in the fields

and he says that's one of the only
crops they can grow up here.

'In this terrain,

'the llama is Marcelo's
four-wheel drive and his tractor.'

The llama is uniquely built
to travel huge distances

up in these high altitudes
over tough terrain.

The problem is,
at these high altitudes,

I'm beginning to get
a bit out of breath.

'Llama herding was vital

'for the earliest inhabitants
of the Altiplano.

'It fed and clothed them
and llama trains,

'sometimes a mile long,
would traverse the mountain passes

'carrying goods and supplies
between communities.

'Yet, even today,
I'm struck by how precarious

'Marcelo and his family's
existence seems to be.'

It only takes one frost
and he can lose half his crop

and it gives you the sense
of how harsh this environment is

and how vulnerable they are,

cos they're only growing
enough food for themselves.

'So a llama herd could support
the subsistence lifestyle

'that persisted
until around 1000 BC.

'But to become
a dominant civilisation,

'the Tiwanaku would've needed
a far greater food supply.'

To see how they did it, I'm heading
to an area of the Altiplano

where the Tiwanaku first began
to emerge around 3,000 years ago,

on the shores of an ancient lake.

With a surface area
of over 22,000 square miles,

lake Titicaca is the highest
navigable lake in the world.

The region around the lake is
known as the Titicaca Basin

and archaeologists think that
it was here, almost 3,000 years ago,

that the Tiwanaku first started out
as groups of subsistence farmers.

It's more like an inland sea
than a lake, really,

and, for thousands of years,
it's played two crucial roles

for the people
living along its shores.

The first is that the lake
has an ambient temperature

which doesn't move around a lot,
and that really helps create

a microclimate of stability
along these lake shores.

And the second is that
the sedimentation of the lake

has created this really rich
agricultural soil

that you can see being used today.

You can just see how rich they are.

But compare this with the soils
from higher up in the valley,

you can see
it just runs through the hands.

So this is where the Tiwanaku
started their subsistence life.

But this high up, crops grown any
distance from the local microclimate

would've been vulnerable to frost
or drought, limiting expansion.

For the civilisation to grow,

they had to find a way to cultivate
land outside the lake's protection.

And a little further inland,

we can find the relics
that explain how they did it.

The early Tiwanaku didn't adapt to
their landscape, they transformed it

and, here at this site,
you can see how.

This is a vast stretch
of the Altiplano

leading up from lake Titicaca

and these are the visible remains
of ancient, ingenious engineering.

These raised beds were
an agricultural innovation

that transformed the agricultural
production in the region.

They're really clever, because the
water acted as a buffer to protect

the crops in the raised beds against
the harsh frosts you get here.

Meltwater coming down from the snow
and glaciers on the mountains

irrigated the fields.

The water in these trenches retained
the heat of the daytime sun,

creating a mini-microclimate,
just like the lake,

which protected the crops.

But it's the investment

in maintaining these raised beds
every year that is key.

They would straighten up
these edges,

which allows the water
to be absorbed.

They would dig out the channels

with the nutrient-rich soil
they'd put on top of the bed

and then they'd turn it all over

to allow a huge increase
in agricultural production.

Modern experiments have shown
that using this method

could've given the Tiwanaku
25% more crops,

extending their growing season
by two valuable weeks.

They didn't have any draft animals
or ploughs,

so all of this would've been done
with hand tools.

The sheer amount of labour

going into building and maintaining
these raised fields is mind-boggling

and this is just a fraction
of the landscape

that was exploited in this way.

This kind of farming was
incredibly labour intensive,

and could only have worked

if the small Tiwanaku communities
around the lake

managed to come together
in a collective effort.

Something must have
motivated them to do this

rather than simply look after
their individual interests.

The key to understanding what
that was lies back at the lake.

Scattered around lake Titicaca's
shores, archaeologists have

discovered the remains
of numerous Tiwanaku temples

and these hold the key.

Archaeological research suggests
that the Tiwanaku religion

was devoted to group worship
of gods of nature

that controlled the environment
and granted good harvests.

I've come to see one
of the oldest temple sites,

where the Tiwanaku were holding
religious festivals 3,000 years ago.

This is the sunken court of Chirpa.

You can really get
a sense of the atmosphere

that can be created
during the festivals.

People would be standing up here,
around the court,

all looking down,
focused on the festival inside.

In an echo of the ancient practices
of their Tiwanaku ancestors,

the local Aymara still use this site
to perform ritual llama sacrifices,

offering the blood to the stones
as part their annual festivals.

The festivals here not only
served to bring together

the Tiwanaku communities to appease
the gods with ritual offerings,

but they also bound them
together socially.

As they celebrated and prayed,
they must've formed an ideology

that suggested,
not just worshipping together,

but working together
was the key to success.

Coming to a site like this,

you can really see the foundations
of what Tiwanaku was all about,

but what I want to find out
is how the Tiwanaku

went from a small site like
this one at a community scale

to the monumental architecture
of Tiwanaku at the regional scale.

A present-day Aymara festival can
demonstrate how ritual gatherings

helped Tiwanaku civilisation evolve
into a more centralised state.

MUSIC PLAYS

I've come to experience a festival

that attracts thousands
from the surrounding valleys

to a tiny village called Cala.

MUSIC CONTINUES

Cala only has
a population of 250 people,

but today, it's going
to swell to 4,000 people

ready to drink, dance
and party Bolivian-style.

I'm here in Bolivia
near the start of spring,

just when the local communities
start planting crops.

Here we see how festivals and
working communities can be linked.

Anthropologist Carlos Candora
is an expert

in the religious traditions
and rituals of the Altiplano.

From up here,
you get a great view of people

flocking into this festival.
There's people arriving in buses,

there's llama trains
coming over the hills,

there's people walking through
these desert landscapes. This place

acts like a magnet, bringing people
together from all over the region.

Nowadays, the dominant faith
in Bolivia is Catholicism

and the official focus
of this festival is the church,

where there are prayers,
ritual offerings and blessings.

But whilst the church is part of it,
there's much more to it.

Here in the solemnity of the church,

people are making their offerings
and preparing for the year.

And outside, people are going pretty
crazy and drinking a lot of beer.

People have come together
to worship, yes,

but, as the Tiwanaku did,
they're gathering en masse,

coming together as a community
to party, forming the bonds

that will see them through the
tough agricultural season to come.

The bigger the party, the better
the growing season will be.

Over eight centuries, the Tiwanaku
gatherings got bigger and bigger

and the collective labour force
grew in the process,

getting closer and closer to
mastering their harsh environment.

And around 200 BC, they began
building a temple complex to hold

the biggest religious festivals
that South America had ever seen.

Situated 10 miles from the shores
of lake Titicaca, in Aymara,

Tiwanaku means
"stone at the centre".

And this extraordinary place

became the focal point
of the entire civilisation.

The oldest part of it is this -

the sunken temple lined with the
carved heads of Tiwanaku ancestors.

Tiwanaku began with the construction
of this early sunken court.

Like the many sunken courts
throughout the Titicaca basin,

it was a community-focused ritual
space, but over the next 800 years,

Tiwanaku just grew bigger
and bigger and bigger.

Adjoining the Sunken Temple
is the Kalasasaya,

a raised ceremonial space
measuring over 15,000 square metres

that the Tiwanaku
began building in 500 AD.

A monolithic statue guards
the entrance way

and in one corner of it
stands this - The Sun Gate -

shaped from a single slab of stone.

The character carved on it
is known as the Staff God,

a controller of natural forces,

of the sun, the rain
and seasonal chance.

1,500 years ago, this was the place
where tens of thousands of people

gathered to pay homage
to the gods of nature.

And, just like
their modern counterparts,

Tiwanaku communities
from across the region

came together to reaffirm
their social bonds

and mobilise themselves
into massive work parties

in readiness
for the new agricultural year.

Dominating the site is a large mound

once encased in massive masonry
blocks, long since eroded or looted.

It's only from up here that you get
a sense of the scale of the place.

Only a fraction of this site
has actually been excavated

and archaeologists estimate
that the footprint is

well over five square kilometres.

The question that puzzled
archaeologists for decades is

how was Tiwanaku built?

Attempts were made in the 1960s

to rebuild some of the temple
structures, a process that revealed

how phenomenally skilled at
stone working the Tiwanaku were.

And quite apart from their skill,

how did a culture that had
no horse or oxen for dragging,

that didn't use the wheel
or the pulley,

move stones that weighed
10, 20 or even 50 tonnes?

Stones that were quarried
miles away.

To find out, I have to go back

to where the stones came from -
lake Titicaca -

where there is a clue to the
mystery of Tiwanaku's construction.

Many of the monolithic stones
at Tiwanaku

are of a very specific type
of volcanic rock

that archaeologists have identified
as having been quarried

on a peninsula
25 miles away across the lake.

And on the lake shore lie dozens
of seemingly abandoned stones

that could only have come
from the peninsula quarry.

'The local Aymara call them
the "piedras cansadas" -

'the tired stones.'

There's one over there.

'And they seem
to have been left here,

'halfway between
the quarry and Tiwanaku.'

Talk about seeing archaeology
abandoned in the landscape.

There's a stone
in the middle of a ploughed field.

There's another one just up there

and they're forming a line
to the edge of the lake.

This is a truly impressive
piece of stone.

It's a green andesite
which is completely different

to the softer sandstones you get
in this part of the Titicaca Basin.

If you look at the edges,
you can see how it's been worked,

faced off
into a nice rectangular block.

You can see where
the rock's been cut,

cut marks facing it down
with these vertical sides.

There's a notch in here.

There's some more cut marks
showing a notch down there.

And some more over here.

Seeing how they've started to shape
this stone into a initial form

gives us an idea of
what it's going to be used for.

One of the massive stone lintels

or part of the major structures of
the big temples we get at Tiwanaku.

So how were these colossal stones
transported here

from a quarry
25 miles across the lake?

The obvious conclusion is
that they were shipped across

and unloaded here
en route to Tiwanaku.

But this is a virtually
treeless landscape,

so they couldn't have
been brought here by boat.

Not wooden ones, anyway.

The lake offers a different resource
that can be used for boat building.

Totora reeds.

'I'm meeting
with Professor Alexei Vranich,

'an archaeologist who is one of the
world's leading experts on Tiwanaku.

'He's brought me to see a
traditional boat building technique

'using totora reeds
harvested from the lake.'

THEY GREET EACH OTHER
IN SPANISH

So he's making these two right now.

Well, actually, this is
just going to be one boat.

So he has the two parts of it. Yeah.

And then, the heart is going
to be in the middle. Yeah.

'It's a centuries-old skill
and it's boats like these

'that Alexei believes the Tiwanaku
used to transport their stones.'

We knew that the Andean people
were very practical,

knew their environment and knew
how to use the natural resources.

And there's this long tradition
of building these boats.

Now they're small, but we read about

and even saw old drawings
of much larger boats.

Now, this is one man
making one boat.

Imagine if the entire community,
they said,

"OK, everyone has to make one boat,"
and you tie together 50 boats.

That's a huge raft that literally
one person with a rope

could drag all along the coast line.

So, literally, they're doing
industrial-sized moving of stones,

but using pretty much
a home technology.

'The reeds themselves
aren't just hollow tubes.

'Inside is a fibrous membrane
that makes them extremely strong.

'The bindings are retightened

'several times throughout
the construction process

'and the end result
is virtually unsinkable.'

'To give me an idea of just how
sturdy the totora reed boats are,

'I get to test drive one
on the lake.'

'Clearly for the Tiwanaku,

'boats like this let them use
Lake Titicaca like a super highway,

'a method of transporting themselves
across great distances

'with far greater ease than
struggling across the mountains.'

I'm 16� stone and, standing on this
thing, it feels solid as a rock.

You can just imagine how
these things were being used

to transport people, families,
goods around Lake Titicaca,

connecting the Tiwanaku community
together.

But could a reed boat like this,
even a much bigger one,

really have been capable
of carrying a ten-tonne stone

of the type
being used at Tiwanaku?

In 2002, Alexei devised an
experiment to prove this theory.

He commissioned
a lake-side community

to build a 15 metre-long
totora reed boat.

He then sourced a nine-tonne block
of green andesite

at the volcanic rock quarry.

With the help of another
local community near the quarry,

they loaded the stone onto
the reed boat and then sailed it

50 miles around the coast line
of the lake to the Tiwanaku side,

bringing it up to the township
of Santa Rosa,

where dozens of townsfolk
came to meet them.

We pulled up,
it was pretty much around here,

and once we had all the people
laying around over here,

we said,
"We've gotta pull this off."

'50 people -
men, women and children -

'rolled the stone off the boat

'and moved it 60 metres
in less than an hour,

'with no organisation
from Alexei's team,

'where it still lies today.'

This is the stone over here that
we brought over from the other side.

Looking pretty sizeable. It's, er,
it's about nine tonnes. Yeah?

'This extraordinary experiment
certainly gives me an insight

'into how the stones might've
been moved across the lake.

'But how were they taken
across land to Tiwanaku?'

On the bottom, they're worn
and they have little striations,

so they were dragged, so that
you grab yourselves some ropes

and you start dragging and dragging.
We thought, "How about rollers?"

So we built the rollers,
we put it there,

we dragged the rock,
smashed all the rollers.

So we said, "That's the great part
of experimental archaeology,"

is that you know right away
ideas that don't work,

so they would've dragged this
and dragged it.

'But how were people organised and
motivated into moving these stones?'

When we were trying to move
this stone, we came up here

and, just like
close-minded Westerners,

like, "We're going to pay you this
money, you do this, you do this,"

we couldn't get
anything done at all.

But as soon as one community knew

that the other one was moving
the stone, it became competitive.

Once it got competitive
between communities,

things went very quickly.

So I could imagine, at Tiwanaku,
also being this friendly competition

between different groups, going,
"I'm going to build here,

"I'm going to bring this,
we're going to have a festival,"

and then, that dynamic continuing
for literally centuries.

I love this idea of
the festival about moving it,

it takes it beyond
any sense of practicality,

and it's much more
about the social relationships.

And, for me, it means that, when
that community went to Tiwanaku

and they saw the stone that they'd
taken through their community,

it's a statement of their
involvement in the site. Mm-hm.

It's not a monument that someone
else creates, like a palace.

"That's so-and-so's palace."
My thought would be like

this is part of our...
this is part of our identity.

'So Alexei's experiment
seems to demonstrate

'that the collective labour
that was so important for farming

'was also used to build
ever larger temples.'

'It's a kind of virtuous circle.

'Coming together,
communities could built temples.

'And as the social bonds increased
the size of the communities,

'they could build bigger ones.'

Tiwanaku was clearly
a massive festival site,

but recent studies carried out
by Alexei and his team

have revealed that
it also had another use.

The grand Kalasasaya Temple
wasn't just an auditorium,

but was also built to
measure the movement of the sun...

..that it worked
as a giant calendar.

The buildings,
actually the entire site,

is designed along astronomical lines.

Sun, moon, stars.

In this case, for the Kalasasaya,
the sun is very important.

Now if we turn this way,

we're standing right now on the
platform, where I would imagine

one or two or three
important people would stand.

The sun would travel across and right
along there, that's the horizon.

Now the pillar in the middle,

that's where the sun's going to
land for the Equinox sunset.

On each side is the solstice and in
the middle are several others that we

argue about a lot, but there's a
good chance that the Tiwanaku

had their own ritual calendar and
they had to keep dates based on ideas

of their cosmos and certain offerings
being done at different times.

So, we have this idea that, not only
is it a calendar of agriculture,

it's a calendar
of festivals as well.

For sure, they had something
going here, saying now it's time

for this festival,
now it's time for this offering.

The Kalasasaya worked
as an astronomical state clock,

that regulated
the Tiwanaku's worship

and agricultural operations
on a regional scale.

The Kalasasaya defined their culture
of collective effort

and the rituals carried out there
were designed to be intense,

theatrical events.

If we were standing, 500AD,
at one of these solstice festivals,

what would it look like,
what would we be seeing?

We see such a pale representation of
what it used to be.

Remember that these people would have
been wearing bright clothes.

These stones would have been
covered in perhaps paint -

greens, reds, blues,
really gaudy colours,

that to us, make no sense,

but realise that a lot of these
people probably would have been

taking ritual intoxicants

and when you take that,
those colours move.

So these statues that you see,

would actually be moving in their
minds and talking to them.

You would have had bright metals,
with the sun coming off it.

The Tiwanaku made their metal,

so they could do
different types of reflections.

So reflections, gaudy colours,
people in very bright clothing,

and then add intoxicants to that.

So thinking about what
these people are taking...

..they're drinking, they're smoking,
there's tobacco,

there's drugs from the Amazon...

What sort of drugs are they taking?

They're taking
a couple of hallucinogens.

When we go take a look
at some of the monoliths,

you'll see the plants
actually carved in there,

where they have these hallucinogens,

and it would have been ground up
either as snuff,

perhaps you could drink them.

They also had hallucinogenic
enema tubes,

in case you're in a big
hurry to get the party started.

And what a party it must have been.

Evidence of the celebrations

that went on here over 1,000
years ago are regularly discovered,

in particular, these beer-drinking
vessels called keros.

This sort of thing is typical
of the site

and gives us a real sense of the

scale of the site, cos this
excavation is about

a kilometre from the centre.

And the significance
of beer and intoxicants

to Tiwanaku's rituals
and ceremonies

can be found
carved into its monolithic figures.

I like this monolithic statue,

looking out into the sacred
space of the Kalasasaya.

He's got a beer cup in one hand

and a snuff pipe for taking
intoxicant drugs in the other,

and you can just imagine the
hundreds of thousands of people

lining this plaza to witness the
theatrical, colourful rituals

and offerings to the gods.

Centre stage at these
spectacular ceremonies

stood an elite caste of priests.

Wearing iconic robes
and headdresses,

they performed the rituals
and read the movement of the sun.

The priests interpreted the cosmos
for the Tiwanaku people,

telling them when and how
they could appease it

and bend it to their will.

How much power they wielded
is unknown,

but what at first might
seem like a utopian farmer state,

is beginning to reveal
a darker side.

In 2005, in a grave site
sitting in a direct line

with the setting
of the winter solstice sun,

archaeologists unearthed
something at Tiwanaku

that had never been found
here before.

When was the last time you
were in here?

2006.

'This is one of the artefact storage
facilities here at Tiwanaku

'and I'm the first person, not with
the original excavation team,

'to explore its contents.'

What we're looking for are these
guys over here.

Let's take a look.

And...oh, we've got
a nice skull here.

That's a young one
and the molars are coming in.

There's the wisdom teeth.

He's been smacked
on the back of the head.

He got smacked
on the back of the head.

'This is the first evidence
of human sacrifice

'having been practiced here
at Tiwanaku,

'that has ever been uncovered.'

Human sacrifice is not something

I've previously associated
with Tiwanaku.

Why do you think sacrifices would
have been occurring at Tiwanaku?

These sacrifices...

..this is the only one we've
found so far.

20 years from now,
we might find 100 more,

but this was on the solstice

and the other indicators
of the other artefacts here

are associated with the start of the
agricultural season,

the start with the rainy season.

It could have been a period of
like...it's very important that we

get some rain to grow some potatoes
and to grow some other things.

So, this year's solstice celebrations

is going to contain
a couple of special guests!

This sacrifice suggests

that the Tiwanaku had become
increasingly dependent

on good harvests to maintain their
civilisation's momentum.

And 200 years after the Kalasasaya
temple was complete,

construction began on what was then

the largest structure
in the Andes -

the Akapana Pyramid.

The Akapana is
a completely man-made hill,

but 1,000 years of erosion
and looting

has reduced it to a shapeless mound.

Recent attempts have been made to
reconstruct a section

of the stepped sides that once went
all the way to its 17 metre summit.

You can imagine
that it would be quite

an exclusive spot for a privileged
elite to stand here

overlooking the rituals
and ceremonies

up here in the Kalasasaya.

But if this was Ancient Egypt,
it'd be a Pharaoh stood up here,

but crucially,
Tiwanaku doesn't have any Pharaohs,

or kings.

There is absolutely no
evidence of a king at Tiwanaku,

no monuments dedicated to a single
autocratic ruler.

Instead, archaeologists believe
that the Akapana is a monument to

the mountains, the snow from which
melted each spring

and irrigated Tiwanaku's huge
agricultural systems.

What ruled the Tiwanaku
was their ideology of nature worship

and their cult of collectivism.

Here at their temple city,
the stone at the centre,

they had come together and mastered
their harsh environment.

To get a picture of Tiwanaku
civilisation at its height,

I've come to La Paz.

Nestled in the mountains
on the eastern edge of the Altiplano

and sitting at 3,600 metres,

La Paz is the world's
highest capital city.

Its museum houses a collection
of Tiwanaku artefacts

that give us a glimpse of what it
would have been like

to witness one of their festivals.

THEY EXCHANGE GREETINGS

I'm being shown around
by archaeologist, Marcos Michel,

and one thing
immediately catches my eye -

a Tiwanaku skull.

It is a skull
that has been deliberately deformed,

so that the back of it is elongated.

It was a practice carried out

to identify this person
as one of the Tiwanaku.

These sorts of things were
done as a form of beauty...

And, of course,
there are the beer cups.

Highly decorated vessels like these,

were used for ceremonial beer
drinking that, as we've seen,

were at the heart
of Tiwanaku's festivals.

But a rarer object on display here
is this fantastic textile.

The Tiwanaku left no
written history,

but that's not to say that they
weren't recording stories.

If you look at this tapestry,

there are certain symbols which are
repeated over and over again.

And there's a narrative here,

explaining to people who understand
those symbols, what's going on.

To my mind, it's something
like the Bayeux Tapestry,

an idea that you can understand
a storyline.

But unlike the Bayeux Tapestry,

sadly no-one yet knows how to fully
interpret these symbols

or their meaning.

One thing we do know, though,
is that by 700 AD,

the Tiwanaku began spreading
far beyond the communities

living around Lake Titicaca.

Leading their llama trains
down off the Altiplano,

they moved into
warmer climate zones

as far afield as Chile and Peru,

hundreds of miles
away from their heartland.

Yet surprisingly, this expansion
doesn't seem to have been one

of conquest or empire building.

To discover how and why
they came to influence

such a vast area of South America,

I'm going to travel
to the far eastern frontier

of Tiwanaku territory,

250 miles away
from the Titicaca Basin

and 1,500 metres lower.

Lying at 2,250 metres
above sea level,

this is the modern day
city of Cochabamba

and the Tiwanaku began arriving in
these valleys, when it was

nothing more than a collection of
farming communities around 750 AD.

Imagine what it would have
been like to see the Tiwanaku

coming down out of the mountains,
with their colourful textiles,

elongated heads and mile-long
llama trains.

Blessed with an
eternal spring climate,

the Cochabamba Valley is a
fantastically rich

agricultural region.

On the Altiplano,

the Tiwanaku struggled
to grow anything other

than high altitude
grains and potatoes in any quantity,

but down here they could produce
an abundance of one crop,

which we've seen was vital to the
functioning of their civilisation.

The Tiwanaku came to this valley

because of its fantastic capacity
to grow this - maize.

And they wanted maize to make beer.
Lots and lots of beer.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

'This is a brewery that makes
Chicha,

'a strong maize beer that's been
made in this region for centuries.'

Beer drinking was an integral part
of Tiwanaku's festivals.

As those festivals became bigger
and more spectacular,

they needed beer
in ever greater quantities.

The search for maize
to make more beer,

was one of the main driving forces

of Tiwanaku expansion
into the Cochabamba Valley.

Yeah, it's a bit hoochie,
but it's quite tasty.

'So, exactly how did this happen?'

How did the Tiwanaku gain
control of this region's resources?

30 years ago, it was
though that a Tiwanaku army

swept down off the mountains
like an imperial power,

to take over and colonise this
resource-rich, warmer climate.

It's only now that
archaeologists are beginning

to present
a completely different picture

of how the Tiwanaku expanded.

In 1985, a new suburban
building project

began on the outskirts
of Cochabamba.

As the diggers moved in and began
churning up what was thought

to be a small mound,
they started uncovering bones.

When the builders pulled out a human
skull, everything stopped

and the archaeologists
were called in.

This may seem like the last place
you'd ever expect to find

the remains of an ancient
civilisation, but sometimes

the most extraordinary discoveries

turn up in the most unlikely
of places.

DOGS BARK

This is the archaeological site
of Pinjami...

..the remains
of a long-forgotten settlement,

offering a glimpse of life here
1,300 years ago.

And I'm going to be shown around

by lead archaeologist,
Dr Karen Anderson.

Karen, how are you doing?
Good to meet you.

So this is the site of Pinjami?
Yes.

So what does the site
reveal about Tiwanaku expansion?

We don't see any evidence of coercion
in the way it was adopted.

People look like they were adopting
their rituals, their ideology,

their way of life
and also their food.

I mean, they're producing more maize,
they had more llamas than before,

so they were getting
tied into the Tiwanaku state.

So the site tells us that the
people who were living here

wanted the Tiwanaku influence, they
accepted that on their own terms.

Right, right.

This site is not, as it first
appears to be,

a series of old walls.

In fact, it's a mound
that has been built up

over several centuries
of continual occupation.

Archaeologists have
dug down into the mound

to reveal layers of evidence,
generation building upon generation.

Well, the earliest date that we have

which is down here is probably
in the 700-750 AD range

and the latest date, which is
right before the end of Tiwanaku

is about 1100 AD.

So, we've got 400 years
of occupation,

or the story of Tiwanaku
through 400 years. Right.

And it's the items excavated
in that time period,

corresponding to the Tiwanaku
arrival in the Cochabamba Valley,

that paints a picture of how they
made a lasting impact.

People weren't just
building houses here,

they were burying their dead.

The excavated skulls show the
distinct Tiwanaku style

of cranial modification.

The practice was being adopted by
the local population.

Cranial deformation is
a really clear ethnic marker.

Once your head is a certain way,
you can't disguise it very well.

Talk me through this process
of cranial modification.

It's a real commitment to change the
shape of your skull. Right.

It would start
very early with babies,

when their skulls are soft.

This one is flattened
in the front and back.

You would have boards like this
and then wrapped around.

This one you would have it,
probably, wrapped around.

So, it tends to make a more pointy
cone-head look.

However, what they have found here
in really significant quantities,

is the distinctive Tiwanaku
beer-drinking keros.

But tellingly, this wasn't imported
from Tiwanaku, it was made locally.

This one is clearly on the outside
done in the Tiwanaku style,

it has the Tiwanaku iconography.

On the inside, this is
more of a local style.

So, it's a local vessel form
with a Tiwanaku

style on the outside,

so we're seeing a real
mixing of cultures here,

with Tiwanaku coming in and local
people adopting it. Right, right.

Although archaeologists don't know
what this iconography means,

we know it's distinct to Tiwanaku.

So, it seems that the keros played
a key role in bringing

the locals into Tiwanaku society.

Just as smaller Tiwanaku communities
were brought together

at Lake Titicaca,

now other communities
effectively joined the party.

The Tiwanaku empire spread,
not at the head of an army,

but through the ritualised
sharing of beer.

This is a Chicheria -

a family pub
that serves the Chicha beer

that was so much a part
of Tiwanaku identity

and economy over 1,000 years ago.

A real theme
I'm getting from Tiwanaku society,

is this idea of sharing
labour, of communal projects.

And a part of that is building
reciprocal relationships

and Chicha seems to have played
a really important role in that.

It was a way
to bring people together,

to express reciprocity,

to express communal understanding.

So you're meeting with people,
you're doing politics with people,

there's consensus building
with people,

and you're also
symbolising by how you serve

and with what icons are on it,

some of your allegiances
and your ideology,

so it's a way of sharing
an allegiance

and also promoting it
at the same time.

I see, in, like, some bizarre way,

the parallels of English drinking
tea, y'know high tea,

and the
paraphernalia associated with tea,

but it's a wider thing about
a cultural context,

and you're saying
by having this Chicha,

they also have this wider cultural
context of shared values. Yes.

Yeah, and in some ways
that's similar,

because that was something the
Tiwanaku brought,

was this whole, kind of, drinking
tradition and paraphernalia

and fancy cups that just had to
feel the right way

and have the right shape and
have the right icons on them,

so it is sharing a larger
shared value system

and it was...everybody liked it,

especially the maize chicha,

so it's like,
"We're sharing something good."

By 1000 AD the practices
and ideology of the Tiwanaku

had been embraced by millions across
the Andes and beyond.

Yet Tiwanaku wasn't
a kingdom or an empire -

if anything, it was like a huge
extended family,

with an enveloping cult of
collectivism at its core

and it worked.

By drawing communities together,

they had generated an abundance
and a culture of generosity,

embodied by the Chicha rituals.

Their ceremonies were all dedicated
to worshipping

and making offerings to the
environment

that provided that abundance.

Yet that environment would
eventually turn on them.

I'm going there to Huayna Potosi,

one of the many
snow-capped mountains

that dominate the landscape
of Lake Titicaca.

I want to climb up to 5,000 metres,
over half the height of Everest,

to find out why the environment
the Tiwanaku so relied upon

and revered, turned against them.

The Tiwanaku were utterly dependent
on agricultural success

to build and maintain
their temple city

and bind
their vast territory together.

They needed the sun and the rain
to work in harmony,

they needed the snows
to melt in the spring

and irrigate
their vast field networks.

All of their ritual ceremonies
and offerings

were focused on ensuring
that happened

and for at least 500 years, it
seemed to have done exactly that.

Tiwanaku was one of the highest
ancient civilisations in the world

and incredibly exposed to the
climate variability of this region.

Meltwaters from glaciers
like this one,

fed the vast agricultural systems

that made the construction of the
monumental temple complex possible.

But what happened
when the meltwater stopped?

'The glacier I'm walking on
right now is dying.'

Sergio, my guide, told me

that this glacier is receding
by 15 metres every year,

due to modern climate change.

But climate variability has been
going on for millennia.

Ice core samples taken from Andean
glaciers like this one,

reveal that there was
a drought from 1100 AD onwards,

one that carried on for centuries.

Year after year,
less and less meltwater

seeped down to Tiwanaku's fields.

Yields dropped,
instances of crop failure increased

and no matter what offerings they
made or what rituals were performed,

the Tiwanaku's power to appease
the environment had left them.

The ceremonial centre of Tiwanaku
had failed its people.

The intensive agricultural systems
that supported it,

that fuelled this culture
of generosity and feasting,

were impossible to maintain.
It became an anachronism,

a monument to a time of plenty
that was long gone.

By 1100 AD, the great temple
city of Tiwanaku had been abandoned.

Statues of gods and ancestors had
been defaced and decapitated

and the rest was left
to fall into ruin.

But the story of the stone at the
centre doesn't end there.

The Tiwanaku people didn't
simply vanish

after the collapse of their state,

they returned to their
centuries old existence

of living in scattered
village communities.

Another 400 years would
pass before the first Europeans

set foot on the Altiplano

and by then Tiwanaku was a ruin.

When the Spanish Conquistadors
first laid eyes on Tiwanaku,

they were amazed by its scale
and antiquity,

yet it didn't stop them
looting the site in search of gold

and ripping out the finely worked
stones to serve their Christian god.

VOICES CLAMOUR

This is the Church in the
modern-day town of Tiwanaku.

It was built between 1580 and 1612.

Nearly every piece of stone
in the building,

was looted from the ancient site
of Tiwanaku.

Even these two statues outside,

which are meant to represent
St Peter and St Paul,

are Tiwanaku statues.

Bolivia became
independent from Spain in 1825

and gradually regained
control of its own destiny.

Today, nearly 1,000 years
after it was abandoned,

the indigenous Aymara of Bolivia

are reclaiming
the ruins of Tiwanaku as their own.

THEY CHANT

It's dawn on the 21st September,

the southern hemisphere's
Spring Equinox,

and here the local Aymara leaders

are preparing an offering to welcome
back the new agricultural year.

1,000 years ago,

Tiwanaku's extraordinary ideology
of sharing and collective labour,

a set of beliefs that enveloped
millions across the Andes,

was embodied here by highly
atmospheric rituals and ceremonies.

They wanted to imagine what Tiwanaku
was like 1,000 years ago.

This gives us
a real sense of atmosphere.

Rituals still being carried out
here, in the hearts of Tiwanaku.

The official religion of Bolivia
might be the Catholicism introduced

by the Spanish Conquistadors,
but the Aymara living here

at 4,000 metres above sea level

on their beautiful,
yet forbidding, Altiplano,

have always retained Tiwanaku's
reverence for this environment.

Tiwanaku was a place
that celebrated life

and today, it's enjoying a rebirth.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd