Tiwanaku

Tiwanaku lies on the altiplano near Lake Titicaca, where farming is possible thanks to raised field beds with channels between them: the water stores the day's warmth and shields the crops from night frosts. At the city's centre are the stepped platform of Akapana, a semi-subterranean court, and the Gateway of the Sun, cut from a single block. Tiwanaku's influence can be traced in pottery and textiles from southern Peru to northern Chile, carried in part by llama caravans. Around the eleventh century the centre declines; later the Incas would hold these ruins to be the place where the world was created.