The Tiwanaku Polity of the Lake Titicaca Basin, 500–1000 CE | Calm Bedtime History

It is the year 780 CE. On the Altiplano, three thousand eight hundred metres above the sea, frost whitens the raised fields before dawn. The city of Tiwanaku—perhaps called Taypikala by those who built it—stretches across six hundred and fifty hectares of plain. Smoke rises from clay hearths in the urban core, and somewhere a llama bell clinks as a caravan prepares its descent toward the Pacific coast.