Underwater Mystery?

1. Underwater Mystery? Lost City Beneath Lake Titicaca?

2. 12500 feet above sea level Max depth 982 feet. Borders Peru and Bolivia

3. Legends of lost temples, cities and treasure begin within years of Spanish conquest. • Tiwanaku culture had cities on the shores of the lake. • Many islands in the lake may have held religious significance.

6. Tiwanaku people fully capable of reaching the islands. • Some may have had temples. • Inca legend relates that the island of the moon is where Viracocha ordered the creation of the moon. Temples are present there predating the Inca.

9. Early accounts and later research • 1621 Story published about the Temple of the Sun on the Island of the Sun having been thrown in to the water by the Inca to prevent the Spanish from getting their hands on it. • Eventually the story changed into a gold chain and later still into a treasure.

10. Because the lake changes its depth from time to time piers, causeways and walls appear and disappear leading to stories of sunken cities. • 1966 Ramon Avellaneda carried out underwater surveys. He reported semi- circular structures near shore. These ruins were of Tiwanaku period.

11. Based on the 1966 research Jacque Cousteau organized an expedition in 1968. This revealed that the structures were piers and enclosures to protect boats from the wind. • Carols Ponce investigated in 1973. confirmed presence of low walls and a few potsherds.

12. Illegal expedition by Japanese divers in 1977 located carved stone boxes and figurines including puma heads. They did not reveal to Bolivian authorities where they had found the objects. • 1980 a team of American/Bolivian filmmakers made claims of roads, tunnels, temples and a city underwater at the island of Koa.

13. Various international teams examined various reported sites in 1981, 1985 and 1988. • In 1988 a legitimate Japanese expedition mapped several underwater features and recovered several stone boxes, figurines, pottery and shaped stones.

14. 1990 expedition American/Bolivian Navy mapped the waters around various islands. • In addition to boxes, figurines, intact Tiwanaku incense burners and a gold Inca female figure were recovered. • 1991 additional gold and silver items were recovered near Koa.

15. Gold pendant has figure of “Gateway God” of Tiwanaku. Two small gold statues of males (non-Inca) recovered. • 2000 Reports were made of lost city and walls. The same that were earlier found to be natural. • 2004 International expedition discovers more objects.

20. 2009 UTube film reports that Google Earth reveals entire lake filled with a city.

21. No evidence of a city, but plenty of evidence that natural ridges and causeways between some islands were intermittently exposed or submerged. • Rituals were likely performed on these ridges leading to items being deposited or tossed into the waters in Pre Inca periods and even during Inca reign.