Offerings of an ancient pre-Inca religion were found on Lake Titicaca

Archaeologists have found in Lake Titicaca a series of artifacts and remains that would be offerings of an ancient religion before the Incas.

According to the BBC, the discovery was made near Isla del Sol by a team led by Christopher Delaere, a researcher at the Maritime Archeology Center at Oxford University and the University of New York. 39, Free University of Brussels.

With the aid of sonars and underwater equipment, they were able to recover the remains of a depth of more than five meters in the Khoa reef, near the northwest coast of 39, Isla del Sol.

The archeologist of Bolivian José Capriles, professor of anthropology at the Pennsylvania State University, USA, stressed that this discovery was valuable not only because of the multiplicity of exceptionally well preserved offers.

"This discovery is extraordinary because these pieces were all badociated and contextualized, which allows us to access the ritual behavior of the society that produced these offerings and their ceremonial importance," he said.

Capriles pointed out that the Incas arrived in this region in the 15th century, where they left ceremonial buildings and offerings.

"Our research shows that the inhabitants of the Tiwanaku state, who developed in Lake Titicaca between 500 and 1100 AD, were the first to make valuable offerings to religious deities," he said. he declares.

Offerings

Archaeologists have found on the reef a large number of gold coins, cougar-shaped ceramic incense burners, a sacred animal, as well as miniatures of shells and lapidaries ( precious stones).

The discovery allows us to deduce that the costly offerings were made by Tiwanaku elite members during private rituals.

"They emphasize a gold medallion with the iconographic representation of the central figure with appendages radiating from his face, suggesting that it could be related to the sun," Capriles said.

"There are also shells and figurines made at Spondylus, a valve that currently only inhabits the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean north of Ecuador, several hundred kilometers from Lake Titicaca. ", he added.

Instead, we also found remnants of lamas that were sacrificed during rituals.

According to studies, the state of Tiwanaku collapsed as a result of prolonged droughts that damaged the agricultural production system and caused the loss of credibility in the ruling clbades, firm Capriles.