Indeed, while gold, silver and gemstones were valued commodities in Tiwanaku, real wealth was counted in textiles. No pre-Columbian Andean society –either before or after Tiwanaku–seems to ...

Located in Bolivia, near Lake Titicaca, the ancient city of Tiwanaku was built almost 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) above sea level, making it one of the highest urban centers ever constructed.

Typical Tiwanaku-period offerings at Khoa Reef in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, including stone carvings and sacrificial animal bones. Image courtesy of Teddy Seguin Hundreds of years before the Inca ...

They radiocarbon-dated the bundle to between 905 and 1170 CE, which is when the Tiwanaku Empire (a predecessor of the Inca and rival of the nearby Wari) was crumbling into smaller regional states.