COLUMBIA, MISSOURI—A team led by Robert Benfer, a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri, examined a volcano-shaped earthwork in the Nepeña Valley of coastal Peru thought to have been constructed by the Yungas people. Live Science reports that when the researchers dug into the “crater” at the top of the 50-foot mound, known as El Volcán, they found a collapsed stairwell that descended past a layer of adobe bricks to a mud-plaster floor and a fireplace. Charcoal and pieces of shell in the fireplace were radiocarbon dated to between A.D. 1492 and 1602. Benfer thinks the Yungas may have used the earthwork and the fireplace in ceremonies to celebrate four eclipses that occurred in the sixteenth century. The structure itself may have been built much earlier. For more, go to “Letter from Peru: Connecting Two Realms.”
