Floating artificial islands are generally made of bundled reeds, and the best known examples are those of the Uros people of Lake Titicaca, Peru, who build their villages upon what are in effect huge rafts of bundled totora reeds. The Uros originally created their islands to prevent attacks by their more aggressive neighbors, the Incas and Collas. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, was surrounded with chinampas, small artificial islands used for agriculture known as “floating gardens” (though not really floating). Spiral Island was a more modern one-person effort of constructing an artificial floating island in Mexico. . __
