Photo. The bird on the ground seen from above - up
in the air view. Why and how have this and other amazing images been made?
Here are some of the recent great discoveries in Peru:
Inca ruins at Llactapata near Machu Picchu, November
2003
Oldest intact Maya mural found in Guatemala, March
2003 (also related to Peru and other places in South
America)
Inca ruins called Cota Cota near Machu Picchu, June
2002
The oldest City in the New World in Caral, near Lima, April
2001
Mummies in Tupac Amaru, a
shantytown on the outskirts of Lima, 1999
Peru is full of unsolved mysteries from the past. Perhaps some of them could
be solved by the new discoveries?
1. Inca ruins at Llactapata near Machu Picchu
On
the 6 November this year (2003) an Anglo-American team, supported by The Royal
Geographical Society, discovered unknown Inca ruins in the Peruvian cloud-forest
2 miles from the famous Inca site Machu Picchu, also called the Lost City.
Llactapata is approximately 50 miles north-west of Cuzco, the old Inca capital,
and only two miles from Machu Picchu. Flying over the Andes, the team
experimented with infra-red cameras to see through the thick jungle vegetation.
Later, they used mules and machetes to cut their way through to a substantial
site, which lies at 9,000 ft in the Eastern Andes and is called Llactapata.
The team was led by the British writer and explorer Hugh Thomson and the
American archaeologist Gary Ziegler. The expedition found a plaza with
ceremonial doorways aligned to Machu Picchu. They also located a two-storey
temple, which faces the rising sun. The only previous identification of the main
part of the site had been by the American explorer Hiram Bingham in 1912, but he
left such an inaccurate account of its position that no expedition has ever been
able to find it since.
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The Thomson-Ziegler expedition both re-located this sector and also
identified as many as five sectors spread out over several square
kilometres across a hillside, making the Inca settlement of Llactapata a
site of some magnitude. Photo. It's believed
that the ruins at the Llactapata site is closely related to Machu Picchu,
and perhaps that could extend our perspective of Machu Picchu and its
history. |
 |
2. Oldest intact Maya mural
found in GuatemalaGuatemala offer also great
opportunity for discoveries and explorations connected to Peru.The archaeologist William Saturno is
currently revealing the most elaborate depiction of Maya origins ever
discovered. It's a mural that shows the first known portrayal of the corn god's
journey from the underworld to earth. This is reported by National Geographic,
Carol Kaufmann, December 2003. Saturno is a curator of Maya hieroglyphs at the
Peabody museum and a senior lecturer in anthropology at Harvard. Already in
March 2001, Saturno found a small part of the mural in San Bartolo, Guatemala,
while seeking shade in a looters' trench dug into an unexcavated pyramid. The
four-foot-long (one-meter-long) fragment showed the advanced ornaments and
muscled thighs of the corn god, a mythic Maya figure.
The find of mural in San Bartolo, Guatemala, shows that the Mayans were very
skilful in arts. It's assumed that the Mayans were trying to portray the origin
of maize and people. Precise brushstrokes, perfectly formed geometric shapes,
and life like figures, leads Saturno to believe that Maya art also began to
develop much earlier than A.D. 100. The researchers continue the work to reveal
more of the Mayans masterpieces and their early life. Hopefully Saturno and his
team find more creatures and faces of a lost world on the walls.
3. Inca Ruins called Cota Cota
Last year the
same team made headlines around the world when they discovered another lost Inca
site, called Cota Coca, at the bottom of a deep river ravine. A team of
explorers from Britain and US discovered on 6 June (2002) the ruins of a "lost
city" in Peru, hidden in a remote mountain jungle and untouched for more than
500 years (according to The Royal Geographical Society, with the Institute of
British Geographers). The ruins are in south-east Peru, about 50 kilometres
southwest of the well-known Inca site of Machu Picchu in the Andes. It's a major
new Inca site. Britain's Royal Geographical Society reported that Cota Coca's
"constructed area" was more than twice as large as any found at the other Incan
ruin whose discovery was announced just a few months ago. The ruins include
about 30 stone buildings around a central plaza. One structure, believed to be a
large meeting hall or barracks, measures longer than 20 metres. But the newly
discovered site is extremely remote, hidden at the bottom of a near-inaccessible
river canyon in dense jungle.
The expedition was co-led by Mr Thomson and by American archaeologist Gary
Ziegler, who began looking for the site after a tip from a mule-handler. Remote
jungle - Cota Coca, at 1,850 metres above sea level, is located on a plateau
near where the Yanama and Blanco rivers meet in a deep canyon. The river and
valley have become impassable, so the expedition had to approach the city from
the mountains above, trekking for five days from the nearest trailhead into
thick jungle. And Cota Coca is likely one of the places to which fleeing Incas
retreated from the Spanish in 1532, before their total defeat about 40 years
later. The site is called Cota Coca because the "coca" in the name may refer to
the coca leaf, which could have been grown there and which only Inca nobles were
allowed to chew as a natural stimulant.
4. The oldest City in the New World in Caral
On
27 April 2001 the journal Science reported that the development of urban life
and complex agriculture in the New World, started nearly a millennium earlier
than previously believed. Dr. Ruth Shady of the Museum of Archaeology at the
National University of San Marcos, Lima, Peru, is Project Director for the
ongoing research at Caral. Radiocarbon dates from the ancient city of Caral, in
the Supe Valley of Peru, 23 km from the coast (and not so far from Lima, the
capital in Peru), display that monumental architecture there was under
construction as early as 2627 B.C. and until about 2000 B.C. It was even before
ceramics and maize were introduced to the region. By comparison, the Great
Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt was built between 2600 and 2480 B.C. (referred from
the Channel's website).
The enormous size of the urban complex is also remarkable: 65 hectares in the
central zone itself, encompassing six large platform mounds (or "pyramids"),
many smaller platform mounds, two sunken circular plazas, and diverse
architectural features including residential districts. Caral is the largest
recorded site in the Andean region with dates older than 2000 B.C. and appears
to be the model for the urban design adopted by Andean civilizations that rose
and fell over the span of four millennia.
5. Mummies in Tupac Amaru
In a shantytown called
Tupac Amaru on the outskirts of Lima, children play in the dust of ages. Beneath
their feet, preserved by the bone-dry soil, lies one of the largest Inca
cemeteries yet found in Peru. This pre-Hispanic site, known to archaeologists as
Puruchuco-Huaquerones, dates from the Late Horizon (1438 to 1532). Since 1999 a
team of scientists from National Geographic had to race against bulldozers to
pull the past out from under the burgeoning present. Beneath the schoolyard
alone, one of 15 areas examined in three years, the have excavated more than 120
mummy bundles (layers of cloth encasing a body and personal effects) typical of
pre-Inca and Inca burials.
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Photo. Mummy in
Peru.
Mummies are found several places in Peru. Here
is a mummy from the desert area outside Nazca.
The mummies here are naturally preserved which differ from the mummies
in Egypt. Represents from the National Geographic are doing a great job to
save the mummies so they avoid destruction of bulldozers. Photo |
 |
The story behind it, told by the National Geographic, there were some 340
families fleeing guerrilla activity in the highlands settled on this property in
1989, misled by land traffickers to believe they would soon be given title.
Meanwhile, six feet (2 meters) under and defenseless against the sudden influx
of sewage and water, the mummies were decomposing. Some squatters dug them up
and burned them, hoping to avoid a scientific excavation that would delay town
development. During 3 years researchers have removed, examined, and photographed
more than 2,200 individuals of all ages and ranks buried within 75 years of one
another.
At 20 acres (8 hectares) this is the second largest cemetery ever excavated
in Peru (after Ancón) and the largest from a single time period. The Peruvian
Institute of Culture (INC) have been involved in the research work. A local
museum is under construction for displaying these cultural treasures.
These discoveries are just some of many interesting
founds in Peru in recent time. Peru is unique in the world. It has probably the
highest density of archaeological sites in the worlds. The country is filled
with them! And Peru is probably also one of the last countries where it`s
possible to found unknown cultural and archaeological treasures. Bear in mind
that the Incas have paths linked to several sites. Maybe the recent discoveries
lead to new discoveries. Still haven't the legendary Inca gold treasure Eldorado
and the Inca gold city Vilcabamba been found, but who know what would be next.
Hopefully will the treasures soon be available for visitors too.
Stein Morten Lund, 21 November 2003
Additional information
1. Inca Ruins at Llactapata:
For the more information about the
expedition and discovery see the website at Adventure Specialists:
www.adventurespecialists.org/pressrelease.html
Bear
Basin Ranch
Westcliffe, Colorado 81252
info@AdventureSpecialists.org
Fore full report:
www.thomson.clara.net/llactapa.html
2. Oldest intact Maya mural found in Guatemala:
Web links advised
by National Geographic:
San Bartolo Maya Mural Project:
www.sanbartolo.org
Learn about the special technology used in the excavation along with the
process of conserving the mural once it is uncovered.
Harvard University Peabody Museum:
www.peabody.harvard.edu/SanBartolo.htm
View more pictures of the mural and explanations of the characters on it at
this Harvard University website.
Bonampak:
www.peabody.yale.edu/exhibits/bonampak
Another significant Maya mural site, Mexico's Bonampak is discussed on this
Yale University website.
National Geographic
News:
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0312_0314_mayamurals.html
Read more about Saturno's discovery of the mural, and what other Maya experts
are saying about it.
Bibliography:
Coe, Michael D. The Maya (Ancient Peoples and
Places). Thames and Hudson, 1999.
Freidel, David, and Linda Schele. A
Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. Quill, reprint edition,
1992.
3. Inca ruins called Cota Cota:
For more information contact Tina
Gardner, Communications Officer, at the RGS-IBG on 0207 591 3019 [International:
+44 207 591 3019]. Alternatively you can email the expedition leaders Hugh
Thomson at thomson@clara.co.uk and Gary
Ziegler at discovery@adventurspec.com
For the full report on the expedition see
www.thomson.clara.net/cotacoca.html
See also the web site for The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute
of British Geographers):
http://www.rgs.org/templ.php?page=15med011
4. The oldest City in the New World in Caral:
References:
Shady Solis, Ruth, Jonathan Haas, and Winifred
Creamer.
2001 Dating Caral, a Preceramic Site in the Supe Valley on
the Central Coast of Peru.
Science 292:723-726.
Related links:
www.archaeologychannel.org/caralint.html
www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/caral.html
www.rdboyd.com/rdboyd/Caral.html
5. Mummies in Tupac Amaru:
National Geographic's website www.nationalgeographic.com
See also the National Geographic's magazine - May
2002 edition - Inca rescue: Excavating a centuries-old
graveyard.
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