After leaving the Fish Skin Statue, I finally arrived at the "Sun Gate". It is located at the northwest corner of Karasasa Square.
This gate stands tall, carved from a single block of bluish-gray stone, measuring approximately 12.5 feet wide, 10 feet high, and 18 inches thick, with an estimated total weight of 10 tons. At first glance, it reminds us of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, although on a much smaller scale. Standing on the square of Tiwanaku, it resembles a portal to the underworld, connecting two invisible worlds. This stone sculpture is of exceptionally high quality and is recognized by scholars as "one of the archaeological wonders of the Americas." The most mysterious and intriguing feature of the gate is the so-called "calendar frieze" carved on the eastern face of the lintel.
In the raised center of this frieze is a portrait. Most scholars believe the figure represents Viracocha, but here he is depicted as a wrathful "god-king" who can summon heavenly fire to punish humanity. However, his gentle and loving side is still evident—two streams of tears flow down his cheeks. Yet, his face is tense, and his expression is severe, with a crown that exudes the majesty of a ruler, making it hard to look directly at him. In his hands, he holds two bolts of lightning. The renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell explained the significance: "The divine grace flowing from the Sun Gate into the universe is equivalent to the energy represented by lightning, which has the power to destroy everything but itself remains eternal..."
Standing under the Sun Gate, I examined the frieze on the lintel. This beautifully proportioned artwork features three rows of figures, with eight in each row, totaling 24, arranged on either side of the raised Viracocha statue. These figures are believed to have a calendrical function, yet no expert has provided a reasonable explanation for them. What is certain is that these figures possess a strange, cold, cartoonish quality, resembling a group of robots marching with precise, stiff movements towards the Viracocha standing in the center of the lintel. Some of these figures wear bird masks, while others have hooked beaks, each holding a tool similar to the lightning in the hands of the great god Viracocha.
At the bottom of the lintel's frieze, there is a pattern of "meander" designs: a series of geometric shapes representing stepped pyramids, endlessly arranged on the lintel, some upright and some inverted, which are said to have calendrical functions. In the third column on the right (and a somewhat blurred third column on the left), I can see that what is carved is the head, ears, tusks, and trunk of an elephant. This discovery is astonishing because elephants do not exist in the Americas. However, evidence I later found indicates that elephants did exist in prehistoric times in the Americas. A mammal known as "Cuvier's elephant" once roamed South America, especially at the southern end of the Andes, until it suddenly became extinct around 10,000 years ago. This long-trunked animal resembles today's elephants and has tusks and a trunk, closely resembling the "elephant" carved on the Sun Gate of Tiwanaku.
I took a few steps forward to closely observe these elephants. Each elephant is composed of the heads of two facing condors (the crest on top representing the elephant's "ears", and the upper half of the neck representing the "tusks"). This way of creating animals still appears to me as an elephant because I know that the sculptors of Tiwanaku were accustomed to using a unique and clever visual technique, representing one object with another for symbolic effect. Thus, the ears you see on a statue's face may be formed by bird wings. Similarly, a meticulously carved crown may be made from several fish heads and condor heads interwoven; the sculptor might use a bird's neck and head to symbolize a person's eyebrows, or an animal's head to represent the front of a sandal, and so on. For this reason, the elephant formed from condor heads on the Sun Gate is not merely a visual illusion but a highly creative composite technique that perfectly aligns with the overall artistic style of the lintel's frieze.
Among the uniquely styled animal images carved on the Sun Gate, I also discovered other already extinct creatures. According to my research, one of these creatures has been identified by experts as the "saber-toothed cat". It is a three-toed amphibious mammal, about 9 feet long and 5 feet tall at the shoulder, resembling a stout hybrid of a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus. Like Cuvier's elephant, the saber-toothed cat thrived in South America during the late Pliocene (approximately 1.6 million years ago) and became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene (around 12,000 years ago).
This indicates that the date of the construction of Tiwanaku, as determined by experts based on astronomical archaeological data—the end of the Pleistocene—may very well be correct; thus, the traditional historical view that Tiwanaku is only 1,500 years old must face a more rigorous challenge, as the artisans of that time clearly carved the saber-toothed cat images on the Sun Gate based on actual specimens. Notably, there are no less than forty-six saber-toothed cat heads carved on the lintel's frieze. The image of this grotesque animal does not only appear on the Sun Gate; on the contrary, it can be found everywhere on pottery shards unearthed from Tiwanaku. Furthermore, several sculptures present this ancient creature's form in a complete and three-dimensional manner. Additionally, the ancient biological figures discovered at Tiwanaku also include an extinct quadrupedal animal that was active during the day and a species known as "Hippotherium", which was slightly larger than modern horses and had distinctly three-toed feet.
These images suggest that Tiwanaku qualifies as a picture book recording ancient rare creatures; these animals, though extinct, like the legendary giant bird Dodo, are forever preserved in stone art.
However, the creativity of the Tiwanaku sculptors suddenly came to a halt one day; thereafter, this fortress sank into profound darkness. This tragic day is also recorded in stone—the masterpiece of human art, the "Sun Gate", was never fully completed. The unfinished images on the lintel's frieze indicate that one day disaster suddenly struck, forcing the sculptors, who were "making the final touches on the work", to "hurry and drop their chisels and flee". As Professor Bosnansky noted.
