 The history of the Americas has long confounded the imagination. Here we find some of the oldest civilizations of the world in a place that was long forgotten and only rediscovered by the European culture fairly recently. It's fair to say that when history unfolded in the age of exploration, the indigenous people who existed here were seen as primitive by the rest of the civilized world. The indigenous people of these sorts of regions are survivors and they continue to survive with survival instincts and became reliant on their safe surroundings, surroundings and dwellings that these people had settled for many generations earlier because it was safe compared to what they had already been through. Trauma is a very real human condition and one we can only begin to understand from this perspective and one which shouldn't be overlooked. A cataclysm brings death and destruction. The fallout from that had a cataclysmic effect on the minds of the survivors who witnessed the apocalypse and survived. Straddling the border between Peru and Bolivia in the Andes Mountains is one of the largest lakes and the world's highest navigable body of water. Said to be the birthplace of the Incas, it's home to numerous ruins. Its waters are famously still and brightly reflective. Around it is Titicaca National Reserve, sheltering rare aquatic wildlife such as giant frogs among other exotic species. The Incas were one of these survivor tribes. They became a great civilization on the west coast of South America and are credited with constructing some of the greatest monuments of the Americas from antiquity as well as leaving some of yet undiscifrable markings on the landscape. However, even before the great Incan civilization, there existed an even older and more mysterious culture. Their origins are unknown and what they left behind is one of the biggest mysteries in the world today. The culture of the Tiwanaku State are among the oldest cultures known to man. They accomplished some of the most intricately cut stone ever known in all the buildings of the ancient world and it has been theorized that these people were doing this before the last great cataclysmic event that brought humanity to its knees. The only thing we know about the old empire of Tiwanaku State comes from the archaeological field of discovery these days and from the findings in several of these digs. Something mysterious has been thrown up about the understanding of who these people were, what they represented, and what their beliefs were all about. In April this year, a huge piece of the jigsaw was unveiled when divers conducted the very first systematic archaeological dive and excavation conducted in the waters of the Koa Reef close to the island of the sun in Bolivia's Lake Titicaca. Researchers found submerged evidence of ritual offerings made to supernatural deities, meaning religion existed in this part of the world a lot earlier than we thought. People often associate the island of the sun with the Incas because it was an important pilgrimage location for them and because they left behind numerous ceremonial buildings and offerings on and around this island. One researcher who took part in the exploration says, our research shows that the Tiwanaku people who developed in Lake Titicaca were the first people to offer items of value to religious deities in the area. The team used sonar and underwater 3D photogrammetry to scan and map the reef during a 19-day research visit to Lake Titicaca. Dredging the sediments in the lake, they found puma-shaped incense burners with fragments of charcoal present on the excavated deposits and a number of gold, shell, and stone ornaments. The puma is known to have been an important religious symbol to the Tiwanaku and a ray-faced motif depicted on two gold medallions suggests the offerings were supposed to explicitly address the main mythological figure in their religious iconography according to the researchers. Interestingly, the researchers say these offering pieces dated to some time between the 8th and 10th centuries didn't find their way to the lake by accident but looked like they were designed to be submerged. It could be more probable, however, that this was a place of worship before the last ice age when the waters of the lake were much more shallow than that of today. Evidence of this points to the existence of a depiction of a mastodon in the bed of the lake. Mastodons of course died out 11,000 years ago at the end of the ice age and they must have existed when these marks were made. So does this point to the true age of the site? The true age of the cultures of the world are unknown but long before one old group of survivors gave way to another, the Tiwanaku would pray, slay and lay their offerings at a place that is now covered with water and one of the world's highest peaks. According to the researchers, the presence of anchors near the offerings suggests that officiating authorities may have deposited the offerings during rituals held from boats. More than a mere cult in an extreme location, the ceremonies at Koa reflect a complex interaction of being situated at the center of the lake while being carried out by a small elite group. They also emphasize the display of powerful forces as the dissemination of rituals focused on the representation of a ray-faced deity and smoke-gusting pumas, the sacrifice of juvenile llamas, and the conspicuous disposal of wealth. What do you guys think about this anyway? Comments below and as always, thank you for watching.