While looking up these ‘staples’ (wanted to see a pic) I found it impossible to avoid the ancient astronauts explanation.
As one man put it, “it seems that the Ancient Aliens meme has taken over any rational discussion about these sort of topics. As of right now, the mystery of Puma Punku has nothing to do with aliens, and anyone who lumps them together is doing us all a disservice.
For example, this guy wrote an article “debunking” the claims about Puma Punku, when all he does is say:
“So once again, we have an accomplishment by ancient craftsmen whom some paranormalists have attempted to discredit by attributing their work to aliens. This is not only irrational, it’s a non-sequitur conclusion to draw from the observations.”
and he added, “I couldn’t agree more!”
Well yeah — there’s a great deal of nuttery about the age of Tiahuanaco. An alleged archaeologist in the late 1940s or so came to the conclusion that the city was 12000 or 14000 years old, which is not even remotely in the ballpark, and would make it (at that time) the oldest city on Earth.
The fact that hardworking ancient peoples moved large stones isn’t that big a deal — what the big deal is to me, why did they get started doing it, what was the motivation. I can understand why they *stopped* doing it...