{"it":{"id":"BOL-ISL","kind":"site","sub":"South America","name":"Isla del Sol & Khoa Reef (Lake Titicaca)","place":"Bolivia","lat":-16.021,"lon":-69.176,"date":"see measurements","mat":"andesite offering boxes; island bedrock","facts":[{"a":"Inca stone box depth","v":"5.50-5.80","u":"m below lake level","r":49}],"nfacts":12,"tags":["Andes"],"sum":"Seven radiocarbon dates from the Khoa Reef in Lake Titicaca place a phase of Tiwanaku offerings between about 794 and 964 CE (single source).","why":"Underwater digs off Bolivia's Island of the Sun found offerings that the Tiwanaku state sank in Lake Titicaca.","src":[425],"nsrc":7,"yt":"The Tiwanaku sank offerings in Lake Titicaca. What else is on the lake bed?","rel":["TIW-AKA","TIW-PUM"],"hook":"Divers off Bolivia's Island of the Sun found Tiwanaku offerings sunk in Lake Titicaca. Why there?"},"S":{"49":["Delaere & Capriles, Antiquity","https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.121"],"425":["Wikipedia: Isla del Sol","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_del_Sol"]},"rec":{"id":"BOL-ISL","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"site point","a":"elevation (DEM SRTM 30 m)","v":"4005","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"NASA SRTM via OpenTopoData","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"NASA SRTM via OpenTopoData","pg":"","url":"https://api.opentopodata.org/v1/srtm30m","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"point inland on island; lake ~3810","id":"M3053"},{"f":"site point","a":"elevation (DEM ASTER 30 m)","v":"4005","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"NASA/METI ASTER GDEM via OpenTopoData","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"NASA/METI ASTER GDEM via OpenTopoData","pg":"","url":"https://api.opentopodata.org/v1/aster30m","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"point inland on island; lake ~3810","id":"M3054"},{"f":"Khoa reef","a":"lab dates (AMS, n=8)","v":"4 charcoal + 4 bone collagen; Bayesian offering phase 794-964 CE","u":"cal CE","o":"","unc":"","by":"Delaere et al., PNAS 116:8233","yr":"2019","m":"derived","c":"Delaere et al., PNAS 116:8233","pg":"","url":"https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1820749116","b":"S","bb":"","t":"LAB_RESULT","n":"","id":"M3164"},{"f":"Khoa reef","a":"ceramic fragments","v":"472 (feline incense burners, >=8 vessels)","u":"count","o":"","unc":"","by":"Delaere et al., PNAS 116:8233","yr":"2019","m":"as stated","c":"Delaere et al., PNAS 116:8233","pg":"","url":"https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1820749116","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3165"},{"f":"Khoa reef","a":"artifacts found","v":"19 metal ornaments (9 llama-puma plaques, gold medallion), Spondylus, >=3 juvenile llamas","u":"text","o":"","unc":"","by":"Delaere et al., PNAS 116:8233","yr":"2019","m":"as stated","c":"Delaere et al., PNAS 116:8233","pg":"","url":"https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1820749116","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3166"},{"f":"Khoa reef","a":"excavation history","v":"1977 Japanese divers; 1988; 1989-92 Reinhard/NatGeo (385 offerings); 2013 Delaere","u":"text","o":"","unc":"","by":"Delaere et al., PNAS 116:8233","yr":"2019","m":"as stated","c":"Delaere et al., PNAS 116:8233","pg":"","url":"https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1820749116","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3167"},{"f":"Khoa reef","a":"anomalous camelid date","v":"355-148 BC","u":"cal BC","o":"","unc":"","by":"ULB faunal study (citing Delaere 2019)","yr":"2023","m":"derived","c":"ULB faunal study (citing Delaere 2019)","pg":"","url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/364583","b":"S","bb":"","t":"LAB_RESULT","n":"possible earlier use","id":"M3168"},{"f":"K'akaya reef","a":"Inca stone box depth","v":"5.50-5.80","u":"m below lake level","o":"","unc":"","by":"Delaere & Capriles, Antiquity","yr":"2020","m":"as stated","c":"Delaere & Capriles, Antiquity","pg":"","url":"https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.121","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3169"},{"f":"K'akaya reef","a":"surveyed sediment plateau","v":"60 x 10","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Delaere & Capriles, Antiquity","yr":"2020","m":"as stated","c":"Delaere & Capriles, Antiquity","pg":"","url":"https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.121","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3170"},{"f":"Khoa reef","a":"finds","v":"thousands of artifacts from underwater surveys","u":"text","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Lake Titicaca","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Lake Titicaca","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lake_Titicaca&oldid=1381116398","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3619"},{"f":"Reinhard 1987-92","a":"finds","v":"Inca and Tiwanaku offerings off Island of the Sun","u":"text","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Lake Titicaca","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Lake Titicaca","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lake_Titicaca&oldid=1381116398","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"no submerged-structure dimensions -> gap","id":"M3620"},{"f":"Island of the Moon temple","a":"date","v":"c.650-1000 AD","u":"text","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Lake Titicaca","yr":"2026","m":"derived","c":"Wikipedia Lake Titicaca","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lake_Titicaca&oldid=1381116398","b":"S","bb":"","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M3621"}],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[{"a":"key_structure_dims","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"largest_block","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"block_mass","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"slope_face_angle","r":"no published face/slope angle in sources reached (often n/a for non-pyramidal sites)"},{"a":"wall_batter","r":"no published batter survey in free sources"},{"a":"orientation","r":"no published azimuth reached"},{"a":"corner_precision","r":"no published precision survey in free sources"},{"a":"rock_type","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"geochem_petro","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"quarry_source","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"mortar","r":"dry-stone construction or no binder analysis in free sources"},{"a":"tool_marks","r":"no tool-mark study in free sources reached"},{"a":"volume_labor","r":"no volume/labour estimate in sources opened"},{"a":"magnetic_radiation","r":"no published magnetic/radiation survey found (searched site name + magnetometry/radiation; Wikipedia, Google Scholar snippets)"}],"dat":[],"aa":[{"id":"AA045","a":"submerged pre-flood temple","who":"2000 Atahuallpa expedition press [not opened]","main":"Tiwanaku/Inca underwater offerings","ms":"https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1820749116","st":"unresolved","n":"offerings AMS 794-964 CE (+1 date 355-148 BC); no submerged temple structure documented","nl":8}],"ac":[{"v":"submerged pre-flood temple in Titicaca","who":"2000 Atahuallpa expedition press [not opened]","url":"","b":"I","ce":"offerings dated 794-964 CE; lake level fluctuations"}],"me":[{"v":"Tiwanaku/Inca offering site","ev":"Delaere 2019","s":"https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1820749116"}],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"see measurements","dm":"","lab":"NO","weak":"","unesco":"","dens":"STUB"},"co":{"lat":"-16.02056","lon":"-69.17639","src":"Wikidata/enwiki (Q600282)","agree":"disagree (island-scale feature; points differ)","b":"S","note":"Wikidata vs OSM delta 0.0254 deg (~2.82 km)","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/9561385296"},"src":[{"id":null,"t":"NASA SRTM via OpenTopoData","u":"https://api.opentopodata.org/v1/srtm30m"},{"id":null,"t":"NASA/METI ASTER GDEM via OpenTopoData","u":"https://api.opentopodata.org/v1/aster30m"},{"id":null,"t":"Delaere et al., PNAS 116:8233","u":"https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1820749116"},{"id":null,"t":"ULB faunal study (citing Delaere 2019)","u":"http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/364583"},{"id":null,"t":"Delaere & Capriles, Antiquity","u":"https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.121"},{"id":null,"t":"Wikipedia Lake Titicaca","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lake_Titicaca&oldid=1381116398"},{"id":null,"t":"Wikipedia: Isla del Sol","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_del_Sol"},{"id":"VBOL-ISL-8","t":"Europe PMC record: Delaere et al. (2019), PNAS 116(17)","u":"https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/search?query=DOI:10.1073/pnas.1820749116&resultType=core&format=json"},{"id":"VBOL-ISL-9","t":"Delaere, Capriles & Stanish (2019), Underwater ritual offerings in the Island of the Sun and the formation of the Tiwanaku state, PNAS","u":"https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1820749116"},{"id":null,"t":"Delaere, C., Capriles, J. M. and Stanish, C. (2019), “Underwater ritual offerings in the Island of the Sun and the formation of the Tiwanaku state”, PNAS 116(17): 8233–8238 (full text, open access)","u":"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6486741/"},{"id":null,"t":"BBC News, “Ancient temple found under Lake Titicaca” (23 August 2000), news report of expedition claims, labelled secondary","u":"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/892616.stm"}],"sum":"The incense burner is shaped like a crouching cat. Made whole, a burner of this kind weighed about 1,300 grams, more than a bag of sugar, and it was made to hold burning incense. It was a precious object in its day, made by skilled potters for a powerful state. And someone took it out onto a lake, at nearly 3,810 metres above the sea, and dropped it over the side into the dark water, where no living eye would see it again.\n\nThe lake is Titicaca, the vast high-altitude lake shared by Bolivia and Peru, and the place where so many treasures went down is the Khoa Reef, an underwater ridge off the north-western end of the Island of the Sun, Isla del Sol, on the Bolivian side. From the reef the view sweeps across much of the lake's shoreline to the mountains beyond. Over the past half-century divers have pulled from its sediment gold and silver figurines, carved shell, stone boxes, the bones of sacrificed young llamas, and fragment after fragment of those smoking cats.\n\nTo understand why, you have to begin with the island. For the Inca, whose ruins on the island date mostly to the 15th century, Lake Titicaca was the place where their world began, and the Island of the Sun was where the sun god was born. The Spanish chronicler Bernabé Cobo recorded two versions of the story told about a sandstone crag on the island called Titi Qala. In one, the people of the region lived without light for many days, terrified of the dark, until they saw the Sun emerge from the rock. In the other, the Sun had hidden beneath that crag during a great flood. The island was the first land to appear as the waters went down, and the Sun came out from Titi Qala to light the sky again. The Inca built a temple at the rock, and Spanish chroniclers describe a great pilgrimage complex stretching between the shore town of Copacabana and the island.\n\nBut the Inca were late arrivals at a sacred place. Long before them, the Tiwanaku state rose in the Titicaca Basin, roughly between 500 and 1100 CE, and spread its influence over much of the south-central Andes. Its potters made the very same feline incense burners that lie on the Khoa Reef. On the island itself, just above Titi Qala, stood a major Tiwanaku ritual site.\n\nThe reef's modern story began by accident. In September 1977 a group of amateur Japanese divers found it and brought up pieces of the cat-shaped burners and boxes cut from andesite, a volcanic stone, that held small figurines of thorny oyster shell. A Bolivian and Japanese team returned in 1988, and from 1989 to 1992 a National Geographic Society expedition led by Johan Reinhard recovered 385 offerings of bone, ceramic, stone, gold and silver.\n\nThen, in 2013, a team led by the archaeologist C. Delaere spent 19 days on the reef, between late June and late July, and did what nobody had done: excavated the lake sediment itself, systematically, with sonar, 3D photogrammetry and an underwater dredge. Their trenches lay five to seven metres beneath the surface. From three units they logged 1,873 items, among them 1,163 pieces of Tiwanaku pottery, 568 camelid bones and 33 gold artefacts. In one unit all 472 pottery fragments but two came from feline incense burners, at least eight vessels in all. There were metal ornaments, including plaques showing llamas and pumas and a gold medallion. Among the bones were at least one llama about six months old and three under fifteen months, probably killed when the offering was made. The thorny oyster shells had come from the warm coast of Ecuador, nearly 2,000 kilometres away.\n\nWhen was all this sunk? Seven radiocarbon dates, run through a statistical model, place the Tiwanaku offerings between about 794 and 964 CE. That is a fairly narrow window, a few generations at the height of the state's power. Near the offerings lay andesite anchors, four more of which had turned up in the earlier dives, so the excavators conclude that the offerings were made from boats, over the reef, again and again.\n\nTheir explanation looks at power as much as at piety. Delaere and his co-authors, Capriles and Stanish, read the deposits as the remains of state rituals, repeated over time, that helped hold the Tiwanaku polity together by drawing people into shared acts of religion. A state that could command gold, rare shell from a coast two thousand kilometres away, fine pottery and young animals, and then throw them all into a lake in front of witnesses, was announcing something about its reach. The Inca, in this view, later took over a sacred lake landscape the Tiwanaku had already shaped, and they made offerings of their own: in 2020 Delaere and Capriles described an intact Inca stone box from another reef, K'akaya, sunk five and a half metres deep and still holding miniature figures of gold, silver and shell.\n\nThat is the mainstream account, and the evidence for it is strong. Yet the lake keeps a few things back. One camelid bone from the first trench gave a date of about 355 to 148 BC, centuries before the Tiwanaku state peaked. A single date cannot show how far back the reef's importance runs, but it hints that people were drawn to this spot long before any empire used it.\n\nThe lake itself has not stood still. Studies of past climate suggest that around 3100 BC the surface of Titicaca lay as much as 85 metres lower than it does now, and that it reached roughly modern levels only by about 2000 BC. The 2019 excavation report notes that the lake level has changed a great deal over time and that a rich archaeological landscape lies beneath the water. In August 2000 the BBC reported that an expedition called Atahuallpa 2000, led by Lorenzo Epis, had found a submerged temple 200 metres long and 50 metres wide near Copacabana, with a terrace, a long road and an 800-metre wall, after more than 200 dives to depths of up to 30 metres. Epis attributed the ruins to the Tiwanaku and dated them to between 1,000 and 1,500 years ago. The full findings were due that November. The temple's size and nature have never been verified.\n\nSo the island holds two memories that sit uncomfortably close together. One is written in the lake mud: a powerful state, for generations, rowing out to a particular reef and giving its finest things to the water. The other is a story the Inca told the Spanish: that the island was the first land to rise after a great flood, and that the light of the world came back from a crag above this shore. The lake was once far lower, and it rose.\n\nWhy this reef, out of all the lake? Why the water and not a temple floor? And if the people in those boats believed the lake had once drowned the world, what did they think was still down there, listening?","qs":["The Tiwanaku sank offerings in Lake Titicaca. What else is on the lake bed?","Why would a state choose water, not a temple, for its rituals?","The offerings were sunk out of reach. Who were they meant for?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Alpaca_y_la_isla_Challeca.jpg/1280px-Alpaca_y_la_isla_Challeca.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alpaca_y_la_isla_Challeca.jpg","title":"Alpaca y la isla Challeca.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"EEJCC","cap":"Llama (Lama glama)Lake Titicaca, Isla del Sol, Bolivia"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Bird_on_the_Uros_islands_%283399304315%29.jpg/1280px-Bird_on_the_Uros_islands_%283399304315%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bird_on_the_Uros_islands_(3399304315).jpg","title":"Bird on the Uros islands (3399304315).jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0","by":"Leonora (Ellie) Enking from West Sussex, England","cap":"Andean coot (Fulica ardesiaca) amongst the totora reeds. \"Totora (Schoenoplectus californicus ssp. tatora) is a subspecies of the giant bulrush sedge. It is fou"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Copacabana%2C_Bolivia_at_sunset.jpg/1280px-Copacabana%2C_Bolivia_at_sunset.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Copacabana,_Bolivia_at_sunset.jpg","title":"Copacabana, Bolivia at sunset.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"EEJCC","cap":"Panoramic view of Copacabana, Bolivia and Lake Titicaca viewed from El Calvario."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Criadero_de_peces_en_el_Lago_Titicaca_cerca_de_Copacabana_Bolivia.jpg/1280px-Criadero_de_peces_en_el_Lago_Titicaca_cerca_de_Copacabana_Bolivia.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Criadero_de_peces_en_el_Lago_Titicaca_cerca_de_Copacabana_Bolivia.jpg","title":"Criadero de peces en el Lago Titicaca cerca de Copacabana Bolivia.jpg","lic":"CC BY 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0","by":"Christopher Walker from Krakow, Poland","cap":"Fish farming on Lake Titicaca."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Intikawan_Amantani.jpg/1280px-Intikawan_Amantani.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Intikawan_Amantani.jpg","title":"Intikawan Amantani.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Unknown","cap":"","alt":"Isla del Sol & Khoa Reef (Lake Titicaca): Intikawan Amantani"}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[],"hs":{},"lh":{"s":"img/h/BOL-ISL.webp","w":1280,"h":960,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Alpaca_y_la_isla_Challeca.jpg/1280px-Alpaca_y_la_isla_Challeca.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}