1893 Reclus print INCA TEMPLE, ISLA DE LA LUNA, LAKE TITICACA, BOLIVIA, #48

Description: Reclus18_48 1893 Reclus print INCA TEMPLE, ISLA DE LA LUNA, LAKE TITICACA, BOLIVIA, #48 Nice view titled Lac Titicaca, et ruines du Temple des Vierges, dans l'ile Coati, from wood engraving with fine detail and clear impression, approx. page size is 26 x 18 cm, approx. image size is 19 x 13 cm. From La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes, 19 vol. (1875-94) (edition in English: The Earth and Its Inhabitants, 1878-94), great work of Elisee Reclus. Lake Titicaca, Spanish Lago Titicaca, the world's highest lake navigable to large vessels, lying at 12,500 feet (3,810 m) above sea level in the Andes Mountains of South America, astride the border between Peru to the west and Bolivia to the east. Titicaca is the second largest lake of South America (after Maracaibo). It covers some 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) and extends in a northwest-to-southeast direction for a distance of 120 miles (190 km). It is 50 miles (80 km) across at its widest point. A narrow strait, Tiquina, separates the lake into two bodies of water. The smaller, in the southeast, is called Lake Huinaymarca in Bolivia and Lake Pequeno in Peru; the larger, in the northwest, is called Lake Chucuito in Bolivia and Lake Grande in Peru. Forty-one islands, some of them densely populated, rise from Titicaca's waters. The largest, Titicaca Island (Spanish: Isla de Titicaca, also called Isla del Sol), lies just off the tip of the Copacabana Peninsula in Bolivia. Ruins on the shore and on the islands attest to the previous existence of one of the oldest civilizations known in the Americas, antedating the Christian era. The chief site is at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, at the southern end of the lake. On Titicaca Island ruins of a temple mark the spot where, according to the tradition of the Incas (a Quechuan people of Peru who established an empire about 1100), the legendary founders of the Inca dynasty, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, were sent down to Earth by the Sun. The Aymara people living in the Titicaca Basin still practice their ancient methods of agriculture on stepped terraces that predate Inca times. They grow barley, quinoa (a type of pigweed that produces a small grain), and the potato, which originated on the Altiplano. The highest cultivated plot in the world was found near Titicaca—a field of barley growing at a height of 15,420 feet (4,700 m) above sea level. At this height the grain never ripens, but the stalks furnish forage for llamas and alpacas, the American relatives of the camel that serve the Indians as beasts of burden and as a source of meat. The remnants of an ancient people, the Uru, still live on floating mats of dried totora (a reedlike papyrus that grows in dense brakes in the marshy shallows). From the totora, the Uru and other lake dwellers make their famed balsas—boats fashioned of bundles of dried reeds lashed together that resemble the crescent-shaped papyrus craft pictured on ancient Egyptian monuments.

Price: 23.99 USD

Location: Zagreb, HR

End Time: 2024-02-05T17:20:29.000Z

Shipping Cost: 8.5 USD