Author Description

One of the great wonders of the Ancient World, and which should rank alongside the intellectual achievement of the Great Pyramid, is the calendar of Tiwanaku in Bolivia.Virtually unknown until the present time, this calendar divided the year not into 12, but into 20, going by the sun, and at the same time it divided every three years into 40, going by the moon.The calendar is recorded on symbols carved into the "Gate of the Sun", but it is not the Sun Gate which is the calendar, but a row of eleven pillars by which time was recorded as the sun set every evening. The thirty little icons or messengers of time seen on the Sun Gate did not symbolise days, but symbolised the thirty year period at the end of which an extra month was added to the lunar calendars bringing them into phase with the solar calendar. This wonderful calendar was lost when a later Inca king - Pachacuti, "reformer of time", brought in a 12 month calendar so the original calendar of the Andes, like the great city which supported it, became abandoned and forgotten.