Arturo Posnansky Biography

Arturo Posnansky

(Arturo or Arthur Posnansky; Vienna, 1874-La Paz, 1946) Bolivian archaeologist.Born into a family of Polish origin, he studied in his country and in Bavaria, and became an engineer and doctor in natural sciences.At the end of the 1890s, during the rubber rush, he worked in a river transport company, for which he made numerous expeditions and explorations through the Amazon of Bolivia and Brazil.On behalf of the company, he carried out the hydrographic survey of the Acre River.

Arthur Posnansky

When the independence movement broke out in the state of Acre in 1900, Posnansky supported the Bolivian government; During the war he made his river boat available to the authorities of La Paz, which he renamed Iris, to participate in the blockade of the Acre River.After the defeat of Bolivia in the war he decided to return to Europe.In 1903 he returned to Bolivia and established his residence in La Paz.He then began a brilliant and multifaceted scientific career as an engineer, explorer, anthropologist, archaeologist, historian, photographer, film director and owner of mines; Thanks to his scientific merits, the Bolivian government granted him Bolivian citizenship.

In the 1920s he founded the film production company Cóndor Mayku, with which he produced and directed numerous shorts, documentaries and feature films.One of the most important works produced by his production company was La Gloria de la Raza , a feature film that Posnansky himself directed in 1928.In this case, he used the cinematographic medium to disseminate his discoveries and draw attention to the monumental character of pre-Columbian civilizations.Posnansky was the central character in the film, in which, accompanied by a native as a guide, he visited the ruins of pre-Columbian cultures.

He dedicated a large part of his life to photographing, filming and studying the ruins of Tiwanaku, which, according to his investigations, was the city in which all the civilization of South America originated, a theory that was never accepted by the scientific community.He thought that the Tiwanaku culture had started in the region around 1600 BC.and lasted until 1200 AD.In 1922 he founded the Tiwanaku Archaeological Museum, which he endowed with an important collection of lithic pieces, ceramics and other samples of the Tiwanaku culture and other pre-Columbian cultures of the region.Posnansky also photographed mining towns, villages and numerous rural settlements, topics on which he published numerous books.

In the field of engineering, Posnansky focused his attention on the treatment of the waters of the highlands and their drainage to the western basin, then Bolivian territory.Around 1930 he proposed the construction of a dam near Lake Titicaca, which would be fed by diverted rivers from the Eastern Cordillera.In this way it intended to take advantage of the water for irrigation, the production of electrical energy and the creation of new navigable routes.In 1937 he spread his proposal to empty the waters of the Desaguadero River towards Pisagua through a complicated system of aqueducts and tunnels.With this project he intended to generate a large amount of electrical energy, which could even be exported to Argentina.

He was appointed by the Bolivian government as director of the National Museum of Bolivia.His prestige earned him the election of president of the Archaeological Society and the Institute of Folklore of Bolivia.He wrote numerous works throughout his life, among which are Tiwanaku and Islands of the Sun and the Moon; Tiwanaku, the cradle of American man; Prehistoric monuments of the Andean highlands; The Chipaya language; Anthropology and sociology of the inter-Andean races and of the adjacent regions .An eminent archaeologist and anthropologist, Arthur Posnansky brilliantly expounded his doctrines on the antecedents of the discovery of America and the origins of pre-Columbian civilization, and his scholarly work has an obvious literary interest due to its qualities.

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