Metaphorical return of an ancient empire

Bolivia's recently elected leader Evo Morales underwent a traditional cleansing ceremony.

The day before Bolivia's president-elect Evo Morales dons the presidential sash in front of more than a dozen visiting heads of state Sunday, he will stand barefoot and wear a traditional woven poncho at the Tiahuanaco ruins near the shores of Lake Titicaca, paying homage to mother earth and father sun in an ancient indigenous ceremony.

The ceremony was held at the pre-Incan site of Tiwanaku, the ritual and administrative capital of a precursor to the Inca Empire.

According to Holbrook Travel, Aymara is the original language used by Incan nobility; it later gave way to Quecha, the common language of the Inca Empire. Morales is an Aymara Indian.