
Found: A Miniature Incan Llama at the Bottom of Lake Titicaca - Petiver
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/found-llama-gold-titicaca
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Natales
I'm Chilean, and I lived in Bolivia back in 89. I used to travel back and
forth all the time, so I got used to see lake Titicaca from the air, and a
couple of times on the ground. The place is astonishingly beautiful. Pristine.
Ancient. The Aymara people have the deepest connection with their land, and
the lake, of any place I've ever been at.

I haven't been back in a long time, but whenever I hear about the Altiplano
(the highlands) I get an overwhelming feeling of respect for their people,
their land and their culture. In South America (at least definitely in Chile),
we're obsessed with modernism, state-of-the-art highways and skyscrapers.
Aymaras, on the other hand, seem to live in a place with no time, where even
their language expresses the past in front, and the future behind. Their
people continue to carve artifacts like that llama today, just like back then.

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codezero
It’s surprising how much the future being behind as a metaphor makes sense.
You can’t see behind you!

I wonder if there is any other indication of a focus on vision, or seeing in
their culture.

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goldenkey
It's not about vision, it's about movement. We move forward through time, thus
we consider the future to be ahead.

It's interesting that vision is antagonistic to movement though when it comes
to time metaphors :-)

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faitswulff
Maybe we are moving backwards through time and that’s why we can only see
clearly into the past. As GP comment hinted at, it’s a matter of cultural
perspective.

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goldenkey
I don't think cultural perspective as much as pure philosophy. As a coder, I
once realized that the entire universe's events could be an existing stack,
and in that stack exists the events that create the universe, because of the
requirement of consistency. Us experiencing time would just be those events
being popped off that stack.

This stack view is equivalent to what you are saying, and there is no reason
to believe it can't be the case since it does make consistency easily
satiable.

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labster
The title is confusing. They found a llama miniature, not a miniature llama.
Miniature ponies and miniature schnauzers are animals, but this is a figurine
made of shell.

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thaumasiotes
If you want to take that approach, a miniature is a painting, not a sculpture.

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c22
It's also a kind of golf.

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sradman
Abstract from the paper _The context and meaning of an intact Inca underwater
offering from Lake Titicaca_ [1]:

> As the Inca Empire expanded across the South American Andes during the
> fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD, Lake Titicaca became its mythical
> place of origin and the location of a pilgrimage complex on the Island of
> the Sun. This complex included an underwater reef where stone boxes
> containing miniature figurines of gold, silver and shell were submerged as
> ritual offerings. This article reports a newly discovered stone offering box
> from a reef close to the lake's north-eastern shore. The location, content
> and broader socio-cultural context of Inca sacrifices are examined to
> illuminate the religious and social meaning of underwater ritual offerings
> at Lake Titicaca.

The box was "at a depth of 5.50–5.80m below lake level" (18-19 feet) which a
skilled swimmer can reach; I wonder if this might be a re-usable safe box
rather than a "ritual offering".

[1]
[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/co...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/context-
and-meaning-of-an-intact-inca-underwater-offering-from-lake-
titicaca/AD2AAA3D95C2CB5551E2E02F8EA0AD11)

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dmurray
That even seems within the range of variation of the water level. Google
suggests [0] the water level rose 6m between 1943 and 1986 and generally
fluctuates 1m or so each year. If that's typical, the box could have been at
shore level, or well above, or 20m below in Inca times.

[0]
[https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1...](https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-4411-3_121)
(source is paywalled for me)

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kanobo
That's so cool, it looks like an animal cracker!

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lazyjones
The carved stone plug and box are more fascinating IMO, they remind me of the
still supposedly "lost" art of Inca stone working/fitting.

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GnarfGnarf
I crossed lake Titicaca in 1969. Must have missed it.

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mesozoic
Yeah it's mine i lost it in there.

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fortran77
> Chalmers: SKINNER! Good idea. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to my
> vacation at Lake Titicaca. Try to make a joke out of that, Mr. Smart Guy.

See:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Simpsons/Season_10#The_Old...](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Simpsons/Season_10#The_Old_Man_and_The_%22C%22_Student)

