Posted on 11/11/2007 8:50:06 AM PST by BGHater
LIMA (Reuters) - A 4,000-year-old temple filled with murals has been unearthed on the northern coast of Peru, making it one of the oldest finds in the Americas, a leading archaeologist said on Saturday.
The temple, inside a larger ruin, includes a staircase that leads up to an altar used for fire worship at a site scientists have called Ventarron, said Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, who led the dig.
It sits in the Lambayeque valley, near the ancient Sipan complex that Alva unearthed in the 1980s. Ventarron was built long before Sipan, about 2,000 years before Christ, he said.
"It's a temple that is about 4,000 years old," Alva, director of the Museum Tumbas Reales (Royal Tombs) of Sipan, told Reuters by telephone after announcing the results of carbon dating at a ceremony north of Lima sponsored by Peru's government.
"What's surprising are the construction methods, the architectural design and most of all the existence of murals that could be the oldest in the Americas," he said.
Lambayeque is 472 miles from Lima, Peru's capital.
Discoveries at Sipan, an administrative and religious center of the Moche culture, have included a gold-filled tomb built 1,700 years ago for a pre-Incan king.
Peru is rich in archaeological treasures, including the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in the Andes.
Until the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s, the Incas ruled an empire for several centuries that stretched from Colombia and Ecuador in the north to what are now Peru and Chile in the south.
"The discovery of this temple reveals evidence suggesting the region of Lambayeque was one of great cultural exchange between the Pacific coast and the rest of Peru," said Alva.
GGG ping, Peru
That’s impressive!
Very cool!
cool, bmflr
Nothing predates muuuuHamhead. La la la allah BOOM!!!!
I think there’s a pyramid in China as well
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So what do the murals depict? Religious ceremonies? Beheadings? Sacrifice? Snakes? Recipes?
Maybe it’s a map.
Possibly an ad for the prehistoric, pre-telecom version of the Simpsons.
What is interesting about this is that it takes pre-Columbian civilization back to the age of ancient Sumeria and Egypt, and they still didn’t get any further than the Incas and Aztecs! Why did they fail — perhaps it was because of their bloodthirsty religions?
Nah... Didn't you see the hairy guy in one of the murals? It's obviously a proto-Geico Commercial....
the infowarrior
Wow, great find !!
He looks kinda like the rebel admiral in the original “Star Wars” (now called “A New Hope”).
:’) At the very least, massive human sacrifice would have a long-term impact on population. The Corncrib, which stood down the center of the plaza in front of the pyramid in Tenochtitlan was filled with 100s of 1000s of human skulls. After the conquest the Spanish cleared it off and buried it. Another factor in the declines and falls (and rises) of various PreColumbian civs was climate change — natural climate change.
A pryamid was ancient man’s attempt to mimic mountains, the most forboding natural structure that could be seen. To be able to recreate a mountain and to be able to reach the top of that mountain would have had serious political and social ramifications to those would-be leaders of the time.
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