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The oldest documented mural in the Americas has been found inside a 4,000-year-old temple near the Peruvian coast.
Washington, Nov.13 : The oldest documented mural in the Americas has been found inside a 4,000-year-old temple near the Peruvian coast.
Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva discovered the temple and mural in Ventarrón in Peru's Lambayeque Valley, some 804 kilometres from the national capital, Lima. "We have found what we believe is the oldest mural in the Americas," the National Geographic quoted Alva, the director of the Royal Tombs of Sipán Museum, as saying.
Ventarrón is located 20 kilometres from Sipán, the religious and political heart of the ancient Moche people, who flourished near Peru's northern coastlands from around A.D. 1 to A.D. 700.
Alva said the Ventarrón mural and structures predate Sipán by nearly 2,000 years. The structures were made from "primitive" materials, but were relatively sophisticated in some ways, he added.
His team found a wall painting-which depicts a deer caught in a net-after discovering a staircase leading up to a hidden altar. Another red-and-white wall painting was also found.
The site was built by a culture that predated other pre-Columbian cultures such as the Cupisnique, Chavinoide, Chavín, and Moche, Alva said.
Alva's team also found ceremonial offerings, including the skeletons of a parrot and a monkey that would have come from Peru's jungle regions. They also found shells that would have come from coastal Ecuador, he said.
Over the years, Ventarrón has been almost totally destroyed by locals digging for materials to make adobe buildings and livestock corrals.
Alva said the tomb was ransacked in 1990 and 1992, but the raiders failed to find the staircasee leading to the temple.
ANI
