Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Josep Maria de Sagarra Biography

Josep Maria de Sagarra (Josep Maria de Sagarra i Castellarnau; Barcelona, ​​1894-1961) Spanish poet, playwright and storyteller in the Catalan language who was the most popular author on the Catalan scene during the decades of 1920 and 1930.Son of a linajuda native family of the region of La Segarra, his father, Ferran de Sagarra i de Siscar, was a notable historian and archaeologist specialized in stealth.Sagarra's literary vocation was manifested from his childhood: at the age of eight he wrote verses and performed comedies at home. Josep Maria de Sagarra He was educated with the Jesuits of Barcelona; one of his teachers, Father Moreu, encouraged him in his penchant for poetry.At the age of twelve he saw his first verses published, and in 1914 his first book appeared: Primer llibre de poemes .He studied Law at the University of Barcelona: among his friends and classmates were the poets Josep Maria López-Picó and Carles Riba.It was presented to Joan Maragall, who guessed i...

Heinrich maier Biography

Heinrich Maier (Heidenheim, 1867-Berlin, 1933) German philosopher.He produced a "critical realism", along the lines of H.Driesch.He is the author, among other works, of Aristotle's syllogistics (1896-1900) and of The philosophy of reality (1926-1935).

Jose Maria Nemesio Otaño Biography

José María Nemesio Otaño (José María Nemesio Otaño y Eguino, Azcoitia, 1880-San Sebastián, 1956) Spanish composer and musicologist, one of the essential figures in the reform of sacred music in Spain during the first half of the 20th century. He studied organ in Guipúzcoa and later counterpoint and composition with Vicente Goicoechea in Valladolid.In 1896 he entered the Society of Jesus and soon obtained the position of organist at the Loyola Basilica. In 1907 he organized the First National Congress of Sacred Music in Valladolid, and that same year he founded the magazine Hispanic Sacred Music , which, following the proposals of Pope Pius X, served to give new air to the religious music that had been performed in Spain until now. Since 1911 he was director of the choir of the Pontifical University of Comillas, which became a model of good functioning for other religious choral groups in Spain.Simultaneously, Otaño continued composing, giving classes and organizing activities...

Jorge Donn Biography

Jorge Donn (Buenos Aires, 1944-Lausanne, 1992) Argentine dancer and artistic director.He began his studies in 1952, at the Escuela del Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.In 1960, he was seen by Maurice Béjart, who was on tour in America with his dance company, and invited him to join it, which Donn did from 1962; two years later he joined it permanently in 1964 and became its first male figure.In 1963 he went to Europe to become a principal dancer with the Ballet du XXe Siècle.With this company he premiered numerous ballets by Maurice Béjart.He was a guest dancer with the New York City Ballet, the Opéra de Paris and the Bolshoi Ballet.In 1980 he was appointed artistic director of the Ballet du XXe Siècle.He appeared in the films Le Danseur (1968) and Les Uns et les Autres (1981).

Jose Miguel Ullán Biography

José Miguel Ullán Spanish poet born in Villarino de los Aires (Salamanca) in 1944.He is the author of the poetry books El jornal (1965), Peninsular love (1965), Human power (1966), Maniluvios (1972), Frases (1975), Soldadesca (1979) and Named spots (1984).The essay genre includes the works Las soldades by Francisco Peinado (1977), Abecedario by Brinkman (1977) and Zóbel (1978).A regular contributor to written press and literary magazines, he brought together in Ardicia (1994) a wide sample of his poetic work.Always very close to plastic artists such as Chillida, Miró, Palazuelo or Saura, his reflections on the work of Tápies were published in 2000 under the title Tápies, ostinato .In 2003 he published two books of visual poems, Ni mu and Con todos las letras .The following year he returned to poetry written with Master of Keys .

Jose Bono Biography

José Bono (José Bono Martínez; Salobre, Albacete, 1950) Spanish politician.A true heavyweight of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), he was president of the Community of Castilla-La Mancha for six consecutive legislatures (1983-2004) and Minister of Defense in the first cabinet of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2004-2006).From 2008 to 2011 he presided over the Congress of Deputies. José Bono A Jesuit student in his childhood and a law degree from the University of Navarra, specialized in Criminal Law, José Bono took the political habit from a Catholic commitment that he held throughout his public career.Around 1973 he began to practice as a lawyer and joined the ranks of the PSI, reconverted into the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) by Professor Enrique Tierno Galván.The transition to democracy began after the death of dictator Francisco Franco (1975), José Bono was a candidate for this formation to the Congress of Deputies in the 1977 general elections, but did not win the ...

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam Biography

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (Jean-Marie Mathias Philippe Auguste, Count of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam; Saint-Brieuc, 1838-Paris, 1889) French writer.Author of stories considered masterpieces of the genre, which present a novel synthesis of philosophical tale, horror story, science fiction and esotericism, his first works ( Two poetry essays, 1858; First poems, 1859) do not allow us to deduce what was his later production, once he had met Charles Baudelaire (1859) and Stéphane Mallarmé (1864), and discovered Hegel's philosophy.In 1866 he collaborated in the Parnasse Contemporain .In 1867 he founded the Revue des Lettres et des Arts and wrote The Intersign , his first "cruel tale." In 1870 he sided with the commune; In 1883, the publication of his Cruel Tales earned him some notoriety, but his living conditions remained precarious until his death.His other works include the novels Isis (1862) and The Future Eva (1886), the short novel Claire Lenoi...

Francesco Clemente Biography

Francesco Clemente (Naples, 1952) Italian painter, associated with the Italian trans-avant-garde movement.He studied architecture at the University of Rome and was related to the artistic environments of Rome in the sixties, presided over by figures such as Cy Twombly and Alighiero Boetti.The presence of Beuys's work in Rome also exerted a powerful influence on Clement.In 1974 he traveled with Boetti to Afghanistan.Before his friendship with Boetti, Clemente had already drawn countless drawings in which he developed a personal vocabulary of symbols.His first paintings consisted of an abstract mixture of pictorial symbols with figures, animals and objects, sprinkled on the surface, in such a way that all the elements function independently and maintain their identity.His first solo exhibition took place at the Valle Giulia gallery in Rome in 1971.Since the early eighties his work has been present in important galleries and museums in Europe, America and Japan.

Edgar faure Biography

Edgar Faure (Béziers, 1908-Paris, 1988) French politician.Doctor of Laws, he was director of Legislative Services of the French Committee for the Liberation of Algiers, and was part of the French delegation in the Nuremberg process.As a Radical Socialist deputy he was several times Minister of Economy and Finance and, on two occasions, President of the Council of Ministers.Excluded from the Radical Party, he evolved to Gaullist positions.When de Gaulle retired, he led the Gaullist left, returned to government as Minister of Social Affairs, and was elected President of the National Assembly in 1973, a position he held until 1978.