LAMBAYEQUE, PERU—Live Science reports that archaeologist Edgar Bracamonte of the Royal Tombs of Sipan Museum and his colleagues have discovered a 3,000-year-old temple at the site of Huaca El Toro in northwestern Peru’s Zaña Valley. The temple, built on a foundation of cone-shaped clay with large, carved stones carried to the site from mountains located about two miles away, is situated between two rivers, and is thought to have been used for fertility rituals by a water cult. Small wells called pocitos, which were hollowed out of rocks near the temple, may have helped to predict rainy seasons, Bracamonte said. A man was buried at the temple with a ceramic bottle with two spouts and a bridge handle during this period, he added. The temple was abandoned around 250 B.C., but the Chumy people reused the site as a cemetery around A.D. 1300. The team has uncovered 20 Chumy graves so far. To read about human sacrifices in Peru around A.D. 850, go to "Women in a Temple of Death."
