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Familiarity with the epic tale of Gilgamesh in South America is one facet of the evidence for prehistoric contacts between the Old and New Worlds. of in South The hallmark of such familiarity was the depiction of Gil- gamesh fighting the lions. Amazingly, such depictions—in a continent that has no lions—have been found in the lands of the Andes. One concentration of such depictions on stone tablets ("A" and "B" below) has been found in the Chavin de Huantar/Aija area in northern Peru, a major gold-producing area in prehis- toric times, where other evidence (statuettes, carvings, petro- glyphs) indicates the presence of Old World peoples from 2500 B.C. on; they are similar to the Hittite depictions (Fig. 45b). Another area where such depictions proliferated was near the southern shores of Lake Titicaca (now in Bolivia), where a great metalworking metropolis—Tiahuanacu—had once __ flour- ished. Begun by some accounts well before 4000 B.c. as a gold-processing center, and becoming after 2500 B.c. the world's foremost source of tin, Tiahuanacu was the place where bronze appeared in South America. Among the artifacts discovered there were depictions, in bronze, of Gilgamesh wrestling with lionlike animals ("C below)—artwork undoubt- edly inspired by the Cassite bronzemakers of Luristan (Fig. 45c). GILGAMESH IN AMERICA