Photography: Sharon Odb / Creative commons
A 3,000-year-old temple is still giving up its secrets as archaeologists discovered a previously unknown, sealed tunnel in an ancient temple complex 190 miles northwest of Lima.
‘The Condor’s passageway’ was discovered last May when archaeologists at Peru’s Chavín de Huántar UNESCO site unearthed a sealed entranceway. According to Reuters, archaeologists believe the tunnel, at the southern portion of the temple complex, was closed due to ‘structural weakness’ and dates from the earliest days of Chavín culture – a society that thrived more than 2,000 years before the Incas.
The archaeology team, led by Stanford anthropology professor John Rick, used robot-mounted cameras to explore the debris-filled tunnel, which partially collapsed due to flooding. They discovered a colossal 37 lbs ceramic piece at the entrance of the passageway decorated with what is believed to be a condor’s head and wings. In Chavín culture, the condor symbolises the sun deity and the ‘upper world.’
What we have here has been frozen in time,’ Rick told Reuters this week. He added that much of the complex is still to be excavated.
