Archaeologists Discovery

Archaeologists have discovered a sophisticated temple and celestial observatory high in the Andes that's as old as Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, says the Los Angeles Times. The observatory, which rests atop a 33-foot pyramid in the Peruvian Andes, reveals the existence of a previously unknown civilization sophisticated enough to calculate the celestial mathematics behind the seasonal harvest schedule. Radiocarbon tests date the site at around 2200 BC, three millennia before the Incas. The temple features an enormous stone sculpture of a round, frowning face, whose orientation points to the astronomical direction of the winter solstice, the last day of the harvest. Scientists think that the sculpture might be the first-ever representation of the ancient South American mother goddess Pacha Mama. Another statue of a human figure looks through a window that marks the line of the summer solstice, when seasonal floods would begin. Until these ruins were discovered, archaeologists believed the first sophisticated civilization in South America began to take shape 800 years later.
The Week Magazine, June 2, 2006, Vol. 6, Iss 261, pg. 22.