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Written in the stars at least 4200 years ago
May 17, 2006
ARCHAEOLOGISTS working high in the Peruvian Andes have discovered the oldest known celestial observatory in the Americas - a 4200-year-old structure marking the summer and winter solstices that is as old as the stone pillars of Stonehenge.
The observatory was built on the top of an 11-metre-tall pyramid with precise alignments and sightlines that provide an astronomical calendar for agriculture, said archaeologist Robert Benfer of the University of Missouri, who presented the find last month in Puerto Rico at a meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
The people who built the observatory - three millenniums before the emergence of the Incas - are a mystery, but they achieved a level of art and science that archaeologists say they did not know existed in the region until at least 800 years later.
Among the most impressive finds was a massive clay sculpture, an ancient version of the modern frowning "sad face" icon flanked by two animals. The site, protected from looters beneath thousands of years of dirt and debris, marked the position of the winter solstice.
The find adds strong evidence to support the recent idea that a sophisticated civilisation developed in South America in the pre-ceramic era, before the development of fired pottery sometime after 1500BC.
May 17, 2006
ARCHAEOLOGISTS working high in the Peruvian Andes have discovered the oldest known celestial observatory in the Americas - a 4200-year-old structure marking the summer and winter solstices that is as old as the stone pillars of Stonehenge.
The observatory was built on the top of an 11-metre-tall pyramid with precise alignments and sightlines that provide an astronomical calendar for agriculture, said archaeologist Robert Benfer of the University of Missouri, who presented the find last month in Puerto Rico at a meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
The people who built the observatory - three millenniums before the emergence of the Incas - are a mystery, but they achieved a level of art and science that archaeologists say they did not know existed in the region until at least 800 years later.
Among the most impressive finds was a massive clay sculpture, an ancient version of the modern frowning "sad face" icon flanked by two animals. The site, protected from looters beneath thousands of years of dirt and debris, marked the position of the winter solstice.
The find adds strong evidence to support the recent idea that a sophisticated civilisation developed in South America in the pre-ceramic era, before the development of fired pottery sometime after 1500BC.
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