In past travels, I often have made a point of visiting the ruins of ancient civilizations, including Angkor Wat (Khmer – Cambodia), Machu Picchu (Inca – Peru), Teotihuacan (Maya – Mexico), Tikal (Maya – Guatemala), and my personal favorite, Monte Alban (Zapoteca – Mexico). In Bolivia, we again sought to learn of civilizations that thrived in earlier times by visiting Tiwanaku, a pre-Incan site near La Paz, and Isla del Sol, an island in Lake Titicaca scattered with Incan ruins.

Constructed around AD 700, Tiwanaku is thought to have been a ceremonial, religious, and political center for the Tiwanaku people, who dominated western Bolivia prior to the rise of the Incan empire.  Due to financial constraints, only 10% of the vast ruins have been excavated, despite their cultural and historical importance.  The Incan ruins on Isla del Sol are notably less impressive than is Tiwanaku, though their setting against deep blue Lake Titicaca and the Cordillera Real mountain range is incomparable.

As Matt and I explored the ruins at Tiwanaku, we found ourselves drawn to half-buried pillars and mysterious carvings: the most fascinating aspect of the site was its unknown quality.  The seductiveness of ruins derives from the questions that arise from viewing fragments of the past: what happened to these people and to the lives they had constructed?  Why did their world disappear?  And then, there comes the corollary to these questions: how does what I am seeing apply to my own world?  Our curiosity originates from witnessing the remains of a failed civilization and acknowledging that in their time, they too believed their world to be the one true existence.

In part out of a spirit of self-preservation, we are compelled to understand what remains of a people once they are gone.  The Tiwanaku people built their ceremonial center with an eye towards permanence and workmanship: great slabs of up to 25 tons each were hauled over 60 miles and then intricately carved.  The center was developed over the course of lifetimes, drawing on the labor of thousands of people.  As a result of their toil, the site remains, honoring their gods long after they have ceased to exist.

Today, we rarely build with an eye towards longevity.  We seek speed and mobility in our communications and our lifestyles.  I wonder what traces would remain of our civilization in thousands of years, if we were to cease to exist.  For me, literature and art are appealing for the permanence that they suggest – the act of recording and documenting leaves a small footprint of our existence in the great transient history of the world.