The world's highest navigable lake — 3,812m above sea level, the floating reed islands of the Uros people who never touch the shore, the Taquile island weavers with a UNESCO-listed textile tradition, and the Inca birthplace of the sun
Lake Titicaca spans the border between Peru (northwest) and Bolivia (southeast), at 3,812m altitude — the world's highest commercially navigable lake (the qualifier 'commercially navigable' distinguishes it from some smaller high-altitude lakes; Titicaca is the highest lake at which full-size vessels operate). The lake (8,372 sq km total surface area, 190km from north to south) is the birthplace of the Inca civilization according to Andean cosmology: the Inca creation narrative has Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo (the first Inca couple) emerging from Lake Titicaca by divine command to found Cusco…
Lake Titicaca's human history begins approximately 3,500 years ago with the Chiripa culture (the first pottery-producing culture of the Titicaca basin, 1500-100 BCE) and the Tiwanaku civilization (100-1000 CE — the highland civilization centered on the Bolivian south shore of Titicaca that became the dominant cultural force of the Andes before the Inca, building the city of Tiwanaku from quarried andesite and developing the Andean raised-field agricultural system that reclaimed the shallow lakeshore for intensive agriculture). The Inca formally incorporated the Titicaca basin in the 15th cent…