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<< Other Photo Pages >> El Paraiso - Ancient Temple in Peru

Submitted by bat400 on Friday, 05 July 2013  Page Views: 6519

Multi-periodSite Name: El Paraiso Alternative Name: Chuquitanta
Country: Peru Type: Ancient Temple
Nearest Town: San Martin de Porres
Latitude: 11.9539S  Longitude: 77.1183W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4
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El Paraiso
El Paraiso submitted by bat400 : El Paraiso Huaca (Ruin). Photo to accompany news comment. Description: Español: restos arqueológicos del complejo arquitectónico de El Paraíso. Date: 27 June 2004(2004-06-27) Author: Dibojutri This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Ancient Temple Complex in Peru.
A Preceramic site in the Chillon Valley north of Lima. One of the largest examples of early monumental archatecture in Peru. The group of buildings were made of roughly trimmed local stone and covered in plaster; built and occupied from ca. 1790 to 1,065 BCE.

It is assumed that the Huaca El Paraiso (Ruin or Sacred Hill of Paraiso) was a central ceremonial site for the area. Finds of the remains of seabirds, shell, and bones suggest that most protein came from the sea, and plant remains suggest that much of the agriculture was to grow cotton and gourds for making nets and storage vessels, but some finds of squash and beans have also been found.

The site contained 7 major structures, many with multiple stories, and as many as 5 additional structures. In June 2013 one of the major structures (the main pyramid) was completely destroyed by Lima developers using bulldozers - the remains set alight. Locals near the scene interupted the devlopers' workers attempting to raze several other units in the complex, while the mayor of San Martin de Porres sent police to stop further descruction and secure the site.

Anthropologist Robert Benfer (University of Missouri) has also identified nearby mounds (which are generally natural hills that have been augmented with man made mounds, rock piles, and the like) predating the pyramid structure (ca. 2000 BCE for some mounds).

Note: Burial from 3500 years ago. Weaver woman buried with tools of trade?
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 14.1km SSE 159° Museo Arqueologico Rafael Larco Herrera* Museum
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 81.2km NE 45° Cantamarca Ancient Village or Settlement
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 128.5km NNW 339° Cerro Colorado Ancient Village or Settlement
 128.8km NNW 338° Lurihuasi Ancient Village or Settlement
 130.0km NNW 339° Pueblo Nuevo Ancient Village or Settlement
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"El Paraiso" | Login/Create an Account | 4 News and Comments
  
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3,500-year-old skeleton discovered at El Paraiso by bat400 on Friday, 12 February 2016
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Archaeologists unearthed the remains of a Pre-Ceramic Period woman from the El Paraiso archaeological site of Lima’s San Martin de Porres district on Sunday.

The skeleton was found beneath food residues which were estimated to be 3,500 years old, a few centuries after the construction of El Paraiso during the Pre-Ceramic Period.

“In completing the restoration of Building 1, we have found food products of the period – seafood, fish, agricultural products as well as the remains of a woman about 30 years old, robust, brunette, who apparently was dedicated to textiles,” Joaquin Narvaez, director of the El Paraiso restoration, told Correo.

Researchers believe the woman worked as a weaver because textile tools were placed around her body. Seashells as well as residues of seafood, legumes and corn were also found. The woman died from blunt trauma to the head, the first indication that the El Paraiso site was used as a burial ground, at least during the period the woman died.

Peru’s Pre-Ceramic Period between 3000 B.C. and 2000 B.C. was characterized by increasing size of sedentary populations which had not yet developed agriculture or the ceramic pottery required for cooking.

Dating back at least 4,000 years and as many as 5,000, the El Paraiso huaca is Lima’s oldest archaeological site. The 120-acre area features eight structures, the most famous of which is the 20-foot tall Building 1.

Located near the border of Callao’s La Ventanilla district, El Paraiso was the target of a 2013 land invasion in which settlers demolished and burned one of the site’s pyramids. Peru’s culture ministry and police dislodged the settlers until December 2014.

Source: Peru Reports
Also see: discoveries presented from Lima's oldest archaeological site
[ Reply to This ]

Pyramid at El Paraiso Complex Destroyed by Developers by bat400 on Friday, 05 July 2013
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Authorities in Peru say an ancient pyramid at the oldest archaeological site near the capital, Lima, has been destroyed.

They are pressing criminal charges against two real-estate companies blamed for tearing down the structure, which was 6m (20-ft) high.

An archaeologist said those responsible had committed "irreparable damage".

The building was one of 12 pyramids found at the El Paraiso complex and is thought to be at least 4,000 years old.

The site, which dates back to the Late Preceramic (3500-1800 BC) period, is situated several kilometres north of Lima.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

We are not going to be able to know in what ways it was constructed, what materials were used in it and how the society in that part of the pyramid behaved”

Marco Guilen Director of excavation project, El Paraiso

According to Peru's tourism ministry, it was a religious and administrative centre long before the pre-Columbian Inca civilisation.

Rafael Varon, deputy minister of cultural patrimony, said the destruction had taken place over the weekend. He said company workers using heavy machinery had attempted to destroy three further pyramids, but had been stopped by onlookers.

Mr Varon said criminal complaints had been lodged against two companies.

Marco Guilen, director of an excavation project at El Paraiso, told Associated Press news agency the people who tore down the pyramid "have committed irreparable damage to a page of Peruvian history".

"We are not going to be able to know in what ways it was constructed, what materials were used in it and how the society in that part of the pyramid behaved."

Before.
And after.
Images from http://www.dailygrail.com

Thanks to jackdaw1 for submitting this link and images.
Source: Developers destroy ancient Peru pyramid
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Rare Animal-Shaped Mounds Discovered in Peru by MU Anthropologist by bat400 on Tuesday, 19 June 2012
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For more than a century and a half, scientists and tourists have visited massive animal-shaped mounds, such as Serpent Mound in Ohio, created by the people of North America. But few animal effigy mounds had been found in South America until Robert Benfer (University of Missouri anthropology professor emeritus) identified numerous earthen animals rising above the coastal plains of Peru.

Benfer said. “Some of them are more than 4,000 years old. Compare that to the effigy mounds of North America, which date to between 400 and 1200 AD. The oldest Peruvian mounds were being built at the same time as the pyramids in Egypt.”

Benfer identified the mounds, which range from five meters (16.5 feet) to 400 meters (1,312 feet) long in each of the six valleys he surveyed in coastal Peru. The mounds pre-date ceramics and were probably built using woven baskets to carry and pile up rock and soil.

Google Earth images of the mounds revealed the shapes of birds, including a giant condor, a 5,000 year-old orca, a duck, and a caiman/puma monster seen in bone and rock carvings from the area.

“The finding of animal effigy mounds where there were none before changes our conception of early Peruvian prehistory,” Benfer said. “That they probably represent the Andean zodiac is also a new find. A controversial interpretation of some Nazca figures as representations of the zodiac is supported by these mounds.”

Benfer suggested the structures may have been built as terrestrial manifestations of constellations the ancient Peruvians saw in the stars above. The mounds not only represented the stars, they aligned with them. So far, Benfer has found astronomical orientations at every giant mound.


According to Benfer, astronomer priests may have made directed construction of the mounds and then made observations of the sky and offerings to the Earth from atop the earthen creatures. For the ancients, having a celestial calendar allowed farmers and fisherman to prepare for the year ahead.

Previously, the only other effigy mounds known from South America were a few sites in the Andes, but Benfer’s discoveries may be just the beginning. “I had always noted that a very large structure just north of Lima resembled a bird. But since there were supposedly no giant animal effigy mounds in South America, I thought it couldn’t be one,” Benfer said.

Then, two years ago, while studying satellite views of archeological sites, Benfer noticed what looked like teeth on one of the mounds north of Lima. The jagged teeth-like structures had been misidentified as irrigation canals. But after a ground survey of the area, he realized he was standing atop the caiman/puma monster of Chillón Valley. He soon found the nearby condor mound and went on to identify numerous other earthen animal effigies.

The results of Benfer’s work were published in the journal Antiquity. The field team of Bernardino Ojeda, Omar Ventocilla, Andrés Ocas, and Lucio Laura produced maps and valuable observations.

Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see munews.missouri.edu.
[ Reply to This ]
    Re: Rare Animal-Shaped Mounds Discovered in Peru by MU Anthropologist by bat400 on Tuesday, 19 June 2012
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    If you click on the Google satallite view of the El Paraiso site and drag the view to the immediate northeast, you will see two mounds on a rough north-east / south-west axis. These are the "condor" and "cayman/jaguar" shaped mounds.
    You'll immediately note that these do not look much like either caymans, jaguars, or condors. Check the link to the "Antiquity" pages in the comment above for some clarification of the similarity of these mound shapes to ancient Peruvian iconography. Even with that, some of these mound shapes seem a bit tenuous as "effigy" mounds. The ground "truthing" that Benfer is performing is examining closely the extent to which the mounds are artificial.
    [ Reply to This ]

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