El Fuerte de Samaipata

- 18,175 - 63.819444444444Koordinaten: 18 ° 11 ' S, 63 ° 49 ' W

El Fuerte de Samaipata (Spanish Fort of Samaipata ) is an archaeological site of the Inca culture in Bolivia. It is protected as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1998. El Fuerte de Samaipata is located on a mountain peak 1,950 meters above sea level in the foothills of the Cordillera Oriental ( eastern Andes). The facility is located near the small town of Samaipata, around 120 kilometers southwest of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

The plant of El Fuerte de Samaipata is about 40 hectares and consists of an approximately 200 meter long and 40 meter wide sandstone cliffs and one south of the rock plateau. In the sandstone cliffs countless lines, channels, levels, characters and depictions of animals are chiselled, including two long, parallel channels that run exactly in the east-west direction. On the plateau south of the rock, archaeologists found numerous remains of settlements from the period up to 1500 BC lies on the southern edge of the complex a deep, well-like hole (El Hueco ), whose origins and meaning is unclear.

The purpose of the facility was for a long time unknown. The first Spanish explorers suspected because of the camouflaged position on a hilltop a fortress, whence the present name el Fuerte stirred. Later, it was suggested, among other things, the channels would have served for washing gold. The Swiss author Erich von Däniken suggested the two parallel east-west channels as a launching pad for UFOs.

Even if the importance of the representations is not entirely clear as before in detail, there is now wide agreement that it is a ceremonial site of the Incas.

El Fuerte de Samaipata applies with its rock -hewn as a unique testimony to the traditions and cults in the time before the Spanish conquest of South America.