Archaeologists recently discovered the lost ruins of a ceremonial temple buried in sand and estimated to be between 4,000 and 5,000 years old in northwestern Peru. The team first discovered the walls, then uncovered a series of features that suggested the structure had once been a temple. Then came the skeletal remains of three adults, hidden between the walls.
“We are possibly dealing with a 5,000-year-old religious site that represents an architectural space defined by walls built of rammed earth,” Luis Armando Muro Inoñán, director of the Ucupe – Valle de Sanya Cultural Landscapes Archaeological Project, said in a translated statement from Peru’s Culture Ministry.
The oldest part of the site features not only walls that are up to 5,000 years old, but also various architectural features that help identify the site as a ceremonial temple. “We have what could have been a central staircase that led up to a kind of stage in the central area,” Muro Inonyan said, noting that the stage could have been used for ritual performances in front of an audience.
The ruins include friezes depicting cats, reptile claws, and a human body with a bird’s head. The paintings were preserved in “fine plaster,” helping scientists determine the exact age of the site and the origins of the religion. The team plans to study the chemical composition of the pigments in the frescoes painted on the walls to confirm the age of the site this fall.
But there was more than just architecture in the sand dunes — there were human remains, too. According to Reuters, a team of archaeologists found the remains of three adult bodies nestled between the walls of the temple. There was also a bundle wrapped in linen, which may have been an offering.
“It was amazing,” Muro Inonyan said, according to a statement from the Field Museum in Chicago. “This discovery tells us about the early origins of religion in Peru. We still know very little about how and under what circumstances complex belief systems arose in the Andes, and now we have evidence of some of the earliest religious spaces that people created in this part of the world.”
Muro Inonyang said the newly discovered temple likely holds more information about a group of people who existed before the region’s known inhabitants. “We don’t know what these people called themselves,” he said, “or what other people called them. Everything we know about them comes from what they created: their homes, their temples, and their burial goods.”
A team of archaeologists was called to the site after local authorities noticed looting in the area. “It was so surprising that these very ancient structures were so close to the modern surface,” said Muro Inonyang. “We think a large temple was built into the side of the mountain, and we found a part of it.”
Archaeologists also found a later temple, dating to sometime between 600 and 700 A.D. Muro Inonyang believes the second site belongs to the Moche culture. There are also remains here — a young child, perhaps aged 5 or 6 — but from a later time.
“People here created complex religious systems and ideas about their cosmos,” Muro Inonyan said. “Religion was an important aspect of the emergence of political power.”