Landforms of Titicaca

Amazing land

Amelia Carolina Sparavigna

Torino, Italy, 2010

 This book is dedicated to my grandmother, Carolina Dastrù.

Amelia Carolina Sparavigna is assistant professor from 1993 at the Polytechnic of Torino, Italy. She
gained her Bachelor Degree in Physics from the University of Torino in 1982, and the Doctoral
Degree in 1990. She is co-author of more than 80 publications on international journals. Her
research activity is on subjects of the condensed matter physics, liquid crystal microscopy and
image processing. She has a passion for archaeology.

Editore: Lulu.com
Copyright: © 2010 A.C.Sparavigna, Standard Copyright License
Lingua: English
Paese: Italia
On September 2010, I was investigating the possibility to see with Google Maps the "raised fields"
on the land near Titicaca Lake. The raised fields are earthworks forming with their canals and ponds
a huge agricultural system, created by ancient Andean people, with an almost unimaginable effort.

Google satellite imagery shows the slopes of hills criss-crossed with terrace walls and the surfaces
of the plains covered with earthworks. In fact, some man-made landforms are geoglyphs,
representing animals, where ponds are their eyes1.

Areas of Huata, Coata and Paucarcolla are covered by amazing drawings. For these regions,
Google Maps has enough high resolution to have a detailed survey. In the following pages, the
reader can see a show of images obtained by enhancing the satellite imagery. Each image has
coordinates and scale.

Amelia Carolina Sparavigna

1
Symbolic landforms created by ancient earthworks near Lake Titicaca, A.C. Sparavigna, 12 Sept
2010, Geophysics (physics.geo-ph); Graphics (cs.GR); arXiv:1009.2231v2 [physics.geo-ph];
Geoglyphs of Titicaca as an ancient example of graphic design, A.C. Sparavigna, 23 Sept 2010,
Graphics (cs.GR); arXiv:1009.4602v1 [cs.GR]; Geoglyphs of Titicaca, A.C. Sparavigna, Lulu
Enterprises, 26 Sept 2010, http://www.scribd.com/doc/39011733/Book-Geoglyphs-Titicaca-
Sparavigna
Raised fields.
Curved and knotted lines as in old mazes.
Periodic textures and curved lines.
Raised fields.
Lines and bends.
Lines and bends.
Complex figures.
A bird?
Animals?
A head of an animal?
Is there a snake in the upper panel?
Lines, canals and ponds.
Near the shore of the lake. Amazing lines.
Near the shore of the lake.
 Near the shore of the lake.
The structure of the lines changes according to the nature of soil.