Sacred Centre Today there is little doubt that Tiahuanaco (also called Tiwanaku).was a major ceremonial centre and focal point of a culture that spread across much of the region. The ancient people built a pyramid of crude stones known as the Akapana

That structure dominates the bottom half of this aerial photo.

When first recorded the pyramid was largely covered with earth. After several decades of excavation some of the walls have been uncovered and treasure hunters opened a depression in the top. This was built originally to open towards the east. The dark line across the lower part of the picture is the railway line from a lakeside port to La Paz, the Bolivian capital. The rectangular outline just 'above and to the left ' of the Akapana is a terreplein. known as the Kalasasaya. The lighter patch with an indistinct outline 'above' the Akapana is where an excavated semi-subterranean 'temple' has been discovered. Other features are visible but most of the 'patches' are fields. The upper part of the picture is crossed by the road from the the village of Tiwanaku leading eastwards to La Paz. (taken from 'Pathways to the Gods' by Tony Morrison 1978).

Just out of the picture (above) to the bottom left is the site of the Puma Punku. 
This is another 'temple area' with many finely cut stones some weighing over 100 tonnes. Its position to the south of the Akapana may have been important because it gave a good view to a sacred mountain far to the east. Of course there is no certainty that this was the reason as the ancient builders left no written records. All the legends have been handed down through the generations.

Puma Punku, truly startles the imagination. It seems to be the remains of a great wharf (for Lake Titicaca long ago lapped upon the shores of Tiahuanaco) and a massive, four-part, now collapsed building. One of the construction blocks from which the pier was fashioned weighs an estimated 440 tons (equal to nearly 600 full-size cars) and several other blocks laying about are between 100 and 150 tons. The quarry for these giant blocks was on the western shore of Titicaca, some ten miles away. There is no known technology in all the ancient world that could have transported stones of such massive weight and size. The Andean people of 500 AD, with their simple reed boats, could certainly not have moved them. Even today, with all the modern advances in engineering and mathematics, we could not fashion such a structure.

Carved stone block at Puma Punku. This precision-made 6 mm wide
groove contains equidistant, drilled holes. It seems impossible that this
cuts were made with use of stone or copper tools.

 How were these monstrous stones moved and what was their purpose? Posnansky suggested an answer, based upon his studies of the astronomical alignments of Tiahuanaco, but that answer is considered so controversial, even impossible, that it has been ignored and censured by the scientific community for fifty years.