So, we're just here at Pukara, a site with a museum located about 40 minutes north of Juliaca and an hour north of Puno, on the way to Cusco, on the path of Viracocha. Interestingly, the artifacts here and the site itself is a vast complex, about 4 square kilometers. The birds chatting with me now, and so many of the pieces remind me of Tiahuanaco, even Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey, suggesting that the influence must be much older than what they say, 200 to 500 BC. Absolutely amazing place. If you take the road between Cusco and Puno, you've got to stop here and take a look. So, we're gonna have a look in the museum. I know there are some amazing pieces there. I think they're gonna blow me away even more. And then we're going to go up to the main site itself. Even the church has blocks probably made from the site. You can see these huge blocks just lying outside it. This is just outside the front of the main museum. So, we're here at the site of Pukara, at the lithic museum, where there's many amazing statues. You see the mountain that is behind the main site, which we're gonna go and look at in a moment. But I'll show you a few examples of what's on display here, because we see this amazing spiral rock carving, and there's this basically got a hole cut all the way through it, and it's absolutely amazing what's on display. Utterly amazing. Let's have a look in just a couple of the rooms. So, we're just inside one of the rooms here at Pukara, and you can see some fine examples of some of the stelae and statues. This one, for example, has like some kind of serpent coming up here. We find very similar ones in Tiahuanaco. This one has a double spiral with I kind of a loop on top. Just everywhere you look, you see these 3D reliefs, much like we find at Göbekli Tepe. And even here, we have a kind of lizard climbing up the side of this particular rock. This is like a rock-hard piece of basalt. It's really interesting, sort of fish-type design on this one. But this one here, it's really intriguing to me because we have the classic double spiral serpent, and then we have the corner cut off for the top here, which is what we find on many of the statues around Pukara, Chavín, and other such sites. But this double spiral fascinates me immensely because this is a symbol we see not only at Tiahuanaco but also all over the world, in Britain, New Zealand, many many other cultures. It's just like, almost, I mean, when you see these kinds of carvings, these lizards climbing up Pumas or whatever they are, climbing up the stone, it's almost exactly the same. You can almost imagine you're in the museum in Şanlıurfa, looking at artifacts and statues from Göbekli Tepe. We even have some statues touching the navel, suggesting it's a tradition here as well, like the navel, the center, much like we find at Cusco, at the Coricancha, very Tiahuanaco-looking statues as well. So, this is a very strange one, to spoil outside here. It's like it kind of almost like a sacrificial or ceremonial seat with arms coming down, but a kind of cobra's head or serpent's head on top of it. Let's get close in so you just, you see it a bit better now. This, in the shades, we can't see too much detail, but it's got little goggles on. And then down here, we are areas where libations were probably made. And on the back here, at the back of the serpent's head, we find these quills or streaks of lightning or hair coming down the back. Absolutely fascinating as to what that might be. It's another room here at the lithic museum. Yeah, world explorer JJ Ainsworth, just various statues and lithic bowls, and he's one of the kind of severed heads that was holding it in the belly, which we find here a lot. We have an amazing selection of statues again, very Tiahuanaco types. That's shoes on the right here, on the left here, we have creatures climbing up the side again. And then with was like a coiled serpent going all the way around the side of it. And the back, this is actually called Stella Sookay. Doesn't give you much more information on it. It says some kind of creature here. We have some kind of, probably a llama, kind of psychedelic patterns all around it. And this is some kind of humor. Well, Jaguar, you can see very badly worn, very interesting nonetheless, very badly damaged head here, probably a Tiahuanaco type head with a turban on. Humor and four more figures. So, everywhere you look, it just reminds me of like, it's mixed between being in the Tiahuanaco Museum and the Şanlıurfa Museum in southeast Turkey. The style is remarkably similar, absolutely stunning. Many times, there's gotta be some of the larger pieces. So, we're now in the gardens of the lithic museum here at Pukara, which is about 40 minutes north of Juliaca. So, let's just have a look at this one close-up because we've got this strange fish-like serpent creature going all the way up to the top. And then we have hoop symbol there, carved. Already sits in the shade, unfortunately. Let's do what we can, get close-ups all the way down, and we'll show you a photo of it as well that I've got, which is a Steve from when it was in the Sun. At the back of it, it's very clean-cut. Nothing carved on the back of it, unless it was worn out by weathering. We have one of my hands on this, whatever this is, kind of see hands carved on it. No body, so I'm very confused by this currently. Seen a detail because in the shade, it's to show you some kind of, you see a lot, someone's put a plastic cup in there, that's why it looks at me, anxiety. Quite blown away by this. I mean, Pukara is a site we've driven by on many of our tours in ancient Peru because it's on the way between Cusco and Puno. Never really thought much of it, but the more I've been looking into it, the more I've realized this is a predecessor to Tiahuanaco, whether or not, could be much, much, much older than people realize. So, just to visit, just the museum here is amazing. Now, we're gonna go and look at the site as well. Try and get some shots from the air, if they give us permission, and take you from there. Because the style here is so reminiscent of ancient southeast Turkey and Mesopotamia, but also to Tiahuanaco. So, did the influence from Tiahuanaco come from the northern part of the lake, much further north, and the top part of the lake that we find here? Absolutely amazing. I'm actually stunned by just what we're seeing here. But let's have a look at the rest of the artifacts because some of them are very impressive. He's just some of the pieces that were found at the site. This guy's quite interesting because he has a kind of serpent in his head, which is a symbol we find in different parts of the world. This looks like it's some kind of hammer or axe head. If it is, it's absolutely huge. So, this just in one of the rooms of the museum. So, we see the axe head, we're gonna lay some kind of our figure. So, we're just leaving the museum now and heading up to the main site, which is up in that direction, with the great mountain behind it. So, we're just walking up the main path to the site at Pukara. Already seen megalithic blocks lying around, just as we walked up the steps. Just to this site, we can see it's where we parked. When you see the tower beneath with these large blocks of what looks like red sandstone. Well, just left of the site, the ruins of the site, has not much left here really, at first glance. But let's get, gonna take a look here. This looks like the official entrance. And you see, it goes way up the hill there. Actually, this looks like the official entrance, with the steps into the site. And I will go down, looks like there's another mound down there in the distance. You can see all the complex, you know, remember this was around 500 BC, or possibly much older. We have the huge mountain there. And this stone here looks interesting because it's got, looks like it had some kind of a stone post, which would have been like the entrance, and probably on this side too. So, it looks like this is the main Callasaya complex, it's called a sunken temple, much like we find at Tiahuanaco and Chiripa. Yes, and you can see the classic monoliths, square blocks around the edge. This is absolutely beautiful. Look at this, JJ's just pointed out the entrance on the other side there has like Chincana edges, someone we're finding a lot of sites. This is absolutely beautiful. One amazing site, which you have to add this to the itinerary. This is be stunning. The Callasaya temple here at Pukara is orientated east-west, go with facing west now, but the others, the other way, it faces over actually right down these steps into that gap in the hills over there. It's like a bucket, which is something JJ has been researching. And so, the Callasaya temple, the main complex here, is a perfect east-west, north-south alignment to the cardinal points, matching the Chullpas we find at Sillustani, Tiahuanaco, and other places. Precisely the way they're always oriented to the east. But you can see this whole area, right down to where the water flows, just down in the distance, and this valley has been cultivated, has been used. Absolutely wonderful. Nicely blown away by the site, really. They keep it nice and steady for you, so you can see what I'm saying. And this is, this is just worth, come down from. If we go around the edge here, you see these extremely large blocks, some six feet tall. And we see a little niche, which would be in the southern segment here. Maybe some offerings or statues were placed there. These huge, almost Göbekli Tepe-like pillars, thin, sliced, perfectly cut, all the way around the edge. And this is the western edge. And we have more stelae up top there as well. But if we continue round, we can see, actually, this is, have a look at this, because this is, you see that Chincana edges, which JJ pointed out to me, on the left and right here. We suggest that this was a symbol used even by this culture. This could have been the culture that originated that symbol, and later it was adopted at Tiahuanaco and placed on top of the Akapana pyramid. If we just continue around here now, it's a little bit different to the Callasaya temple at Tiahuanaco, because that has monolith in the middle, which may have done too. And we have a northern kind of niche again, with the Callasaya, so it, with the Chincana. And then we have the huge blocks here. This one's taller than me, it's probably eight feet tall, just over, on the eastern, northeastern edge. This is absolutely huge, this is at least eight feet tall. So, we're looking at a serious megalithic construction here. JJ's just pointed out this hole in the ground here. What is this? So, this is something, it's whether this was an entrance to a tunnel, whether it was, with some, something was placed, where there was a statue there, I was up right here, really not sure. Look at all these megalithic blocks everywhere you look, scattered around. You can see how weathered they are. So, it's really good they've taken them, kept them safe in the museum, all the statues with the intricate carvings and other such things. Amazingly, that, what looks like T-shaped blocks here. Now, that is weird. We are seeing here evidence of quite advanced megalithic technology. We can see the niches and some of the stones here, for instance. So, they were using like some kind of the Keystone cuts, where they were using metal, with unknown, but it's highly likely, because we know they were using that at Tiahuanaco and other sites around Lake Titicaca. There's a second, second temple, second Callasaya temple, with huge monoliths. Absolutely incredible. This one isn't as well preserved, but no doubt equally as important. This looks more like the old images I've seen of Tiahuanaco when it was first discovered. Very, very interesting. There's so much going on here. Obviously, if we keep walking, we see more megalithic blocks. God, so, this is a seriously megalithic culture, the Pukara culture. Obviously, the big influence in this whole area. Three different types of stone in one little pile here. Red sandstone, it looks like black kind of basalt, and this could be andesite. So, again, like we see at Tiahuanaco, different types of stone, probably for different energetic quality. The Pukara culture is said to date from between 500 and 200 BC onwards, but the weathering here, again, much like we find at Puma Punku, with all the, like, the destruction of the site, that suggests it's much older. It's hard to imagine that this was the influence to Tiahuanaco, perhaps it was the other way around. And the evidence put together by Arthur Posnansky, another archaeoastronomer, who pushed the date much further back. Not maybe not to 17,000 years ago, but most certainly, it's a potentially four or ten thousand years ago. This could be contemporary with their site.