Oldest Structure at Puma Punku- Bolivia

I am very interested in the Puma Punku site and have read this entire thread but not found what I was hoping to find, which is, just the plain facts without everyone's interpretations! The problem is, if anyone does a Google search for Puma Punku there are hundreds of ancient alien related links claiming all sorts of things about the site. I have found it very hard to find just plain information about the site from an unbiased source.

Wikipedia mentions that the date obtained from the radio-carbon dating of the lowermost layer of the site but what other radio-carbon dating has been done? Have the blocks themselves been radio-carbon dated? What about any other layers or other dating methods?

There has been a lot of talk of diorite but I can't find an official source that mentions that the blocks there are diorite? Wikipedia states that the blocks are red sandstone and makes no mention of diorite however pictures of the site show more than one type of rock. Please can someone sensible tell me what types of rocks are at the site and what are they made of. Also the grey looking rocks with the most intricate carvings, what are they made of? Are they all sandstone or are some of them diorite or some similar rock?

If there are blocks that are not sandstone but much harder rock then how far in metres (or in a form I could convert to metres) are they from the nearest source of that stone?

What is the current, generally accepted among the scientific community, view on who built the structures at the site? Did these people have writing and basic mathematics?

I should add that these questions are aimed at the more qualified to answer them and not random people on the internet who have watched some ancient aliens movie. If you believe ancient aliens built the pyramids then please do not answer unless you either have a PHD or are an archaeologist as I already have enough of the ancient alien theories.
 
seeing is believing, believing is seeing

I cannot discount the facts, but clearly the evidence must speak for itself, sometimes the wrong questions to ask are often the right answers, although many have wondered in amazement of this site and all the questions they asked themselves, one must ask "If this was carved, show the tools", the tools necessary to do this job are lying around somewhere, find that and you'll find the right questions to ask!
Also, dating stone sites are difficult, there must be contemporaneous and datable material to go with these stones. Its like finding a 2000 year old coin in the penny jar, i think, anyway have fun with that.
 
Pseduo-archaeology Alert: The following is a set of assertions regarding a real archaeological site, however the OP has chosen to rely on significance-junkies and mystery-mongers for his/her fantastic assertions. It is irrational to suggest that the culture of the site during the period it was occupied could not have fashioned it with the technology they possessed and this has been demonstrated vis-a-vis experimental archaeological techniques. I'll post more on it at a later time. -SkinWalker (an actual archaeologist and moderator)

I recently found some information on this very important structure and would like everyone opinion on it... i find it intriguing that such a structure has not come into the main stream since it seems near impossible that humans made it...

please only serious replies, and DO NOT send this to pseudoscience, because it is real and i have sources at the end of this post
the info is as follows:



Puma Punku is now understood to be at least 14,000 years old...which would make it the oldest essentially, right out of the stone age. "Cave men" were able to build the most sophisticated stone work the world has ever seen. 200-450 ton stones, made from Diorit, which is a material that can only be cut with diamonds. Even more impressive is the exact cuts they made in the stones, 1 cm deep, not one millimeter off from edge to edge. They also cut stone in such a perfect way so that they would be assembled like Legos, interlocking for premium strength. There are no trees around, so the crap they feed us about stones being rolled does not fit here. Some now speculate if they used some kind of metal to hold the stones together when in place. Not that the interlocking system wouldn't be enough...:shrug:

sources:


http://weeklyworldnews.com/alien-alert/6766/puma-punku/

http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_6.htm

http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/42pumapunku.html
Pseduo-archaeology Alert: The following is a set of assertions regarding a real archaeological site, however the OP has chosen to rely on significance-junkies and mystery-mongers for his/her fantastic assertions. It is irrational to suggest that the culture of the site during the period it was occupied could not have fashioned it with the technology they possessed and this has been demonstrated vis-a-vis experimental archaeological techniques. I'll post more on it at a later time. -SkinWalker (an actual archaeologist and moderator)

I recently found some information on this very important structure and would like everyone opinion on it... i find it intriguing that such a structure has not come into the main stream since it seems near impossible that humans made it...

please only serious replies, and DO NOT send this to pseudoscience, because it is real and i have sources at the end of this post
the info is as follows:



Puma Punku is now understood to be at least 14,000 years old...which would make it the oldest essentially, right out of the stone age. "Cave men" were able to build the most sophisticated stone work the world has ever seen. 200-450 ton stones, made from Diorit, which is a material that can only be cut with diamonds. Even more impressive is the exact cuts they made in the stones, 1 cm deep, not one millimeter off from edge to edge. They also cut stone in such a perfect way so that they would be assembled like Legos, interlocking for premium strength. There are no trees around, so the crap they feed us about stones being rolled does not fit here. Some now speculate if they used some kind of metal to hold the stones together when in place. Not that the interlocking system wouldn't be enough...:shrug:

sources:


http://weeklyworldnews.com/alien-alert/6766/puma-punku/

http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_6.htm

http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/42pumapunku.html
Here's a challenge!
I would like anyone out there who thinks this could have been made by local native people to go to their local Home Depot and get ANY modern tool they want...be it chisels...hammers....drills...diamond tipped or not.....and grab a rock....ANY rock...not even as hard as Diorit....and try and make a nice smooth groove (of any size) and of any shape that is actually anywhere near as precise as those found on the H blocks at Puma Punku and then STILL believe local people could have done it themselves!
The level of technology, engineering and advance mathematics shown there just doesn't lend itself to a culture who had no written language!
 
Here's a challenge!
I would like anyone out there who thinks this could have been made by local native people to go to their local Home Depot and get ANY modern tool they want...be it chisels...hammers....drills...diamond tipped or not.....and grab a rock....ANY rock...not even as hard as Diorit....and try and make a nice smooth groove (of any size) and of any shape that is actually anywhere near as precise as those found on the H blocks at Puma Punku and then STILL believe local people could have done it themselves!
The level of technology, engineering and advance mathematics shown there just doesn't lend itself to a culture who had no written language!


Very nice...may be someday we will know what happened back when...
 
Here's a challenge!
I would like anyone out there who thinks this could have been made by local native people to go to their local Home Depot and get ANY modern tool they want...be it chisels...hammers....drills...diamond tipped or not.....and grab a rock....ANY rock...not even as hard as Diorit....and try and make a nice smooth groove (of any size) and of any shape that is actually anywhere near as precise as those found on the H blocks at Puma Punku and then STILL believe local people could have done it themselves!
The level of technology, engineering and advance mathematics shown there just doesn't lend itself to a culture who had no written language!

I'm consistently appalled at the gall modern, ignorant people have when the make statements like this that assume that people 1500 - 2000 years ago were somehow less intelligent that people of today. This simply isn't the case. In fact, they clearly had more knowledge than many people of the modern world. We take the powerful computers in our pockets that allow us to access information on a whim, watch a cat video, then send a text to our BFF for granted. But the people of Bolivia 1500 years or more ago were intelligent folk. They had time on their hands. That sorted shit out.

The stones of Puma Punku are primarily (if not completely) red sandstone and andesite. These are relatively low on the rock toughness scale (1.5 and 1.1 respectively). The people of this culture were also working metal and had access to hard minerals. If you couldn't carve a soft stone like andesite or sandstone with a hard piece of metal or quartzite implement, you're one overall-incapable human being. The reason people today don't bother with it or do it is that they don't have the patience. They'd rather be watching some strange reality television show or chatting on Twitter and Facebook about some pseudo-famous person's new hair color.
 
Puma Punku marks the extent of the Inca rule in the current Bolivian state, it is a religious building structure.
 
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