Riddle of the bowl of Fuente Magna: how the cult vessel of the Sumerians fell into the Bolivian Andes

There are many artifacts on our planet, the existence of which is difficult to explain, relying on official historical science. One of these unusual finds was the ceramic bowl of Fuente Magna - the Great Bowl.

Bowl Fuente Magna

A bowl about 1 meter in diameter was found in the 1950s in the vicinity of the ancient city of Tiwanaku in Bolivia by a local peasant. Since he was not a professional archaeologist or historian, the thicket found with texts and drawings did not arouse his special interest and was used by him for household needs. A unique artifact could still serve as a container for feeding pets, if it had not been seen by the Bolivian archaeologist Max Portuguese Zamora. He bought the cup, which contained inscriptions in an unknown language, and gave it the name Fuente Magna.

The ceramic bowl inside and outside is covered with various drawings and text in two languages resembling cuneiform writing. The researcher tried to read the inscriptions, but could not understand anything, and when the find fell into the hands of the municipal authorities, it was considered a fake and sent to a warehouse.

The story of the Fuente Magna bowl was continued after Bolivian researchers Bernardo Biadis Yakovazzo and Freddy Arce drew attention to it in the early 2000s. It turned out that one of the languages in which the inscriptions were made on the bowl is close to the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians, an ancient civilization of the Middle East. Dr. Clyde A. Winters, a specialist in Sumerian cuneiform writing, was able to translate a text that mentions the Sumerian goddess Ni-Ash, and suggested that the cup itself is most likely a cult vessel. He could not translate the inscriptions in the second language.

Cuneiform Sumerians

But a number of experts are skeptical of the version of the Sumerian letter on the bowl found in the Bolivian Andes. Researchers did not offer any reasoned versions of how a ceramic vessel with traces of the Sumerian civilization of the Middle East could be in South America. The heyday of the Sumerian civilization fell in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, and in the 2nd millennium the Sumerians were already subjugated and assimilated by neighboring peoples. If the Sumerians had contacts with the American Indian civilizations of America, then they had to overcome a long way through the Atlantic and the Andes, which was practically impossible to do with the level of development of navigation that existed at that time.

In addition to the mysterious bowl, in the vicinity of Tiwanaku, the Monolith of Pocotia was found. He was discovered by an archaeological expedition in 2002, and with the cup he is united by the fact that it also contains inscriptions made by Sumerian cuneiform. The authenticity of the monolith is not in doubt. The decoding of the inscriptions on the Monolith of Pocotia also testifies to its cult mission.