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VATICAN CITY — Two-and-a-half years ago, Pope Francis was trying to fill a big job. For decades, that position — heading the powerful office that helps vet and select bishops — had gone to consummate Vatican insiders. But Francis had staked his papacy on expanding the boundaries of the Catholic Church. And he had his eye on a surprise contender: an American-born missionary operating in the coastal plains of Peru, some 6,000 miles from Rome.“You know that I am very happy in Peru,” the missionary, then-Bishop Robert Prevost, recalled telling Francis. “But if you ask me to take on a...

According to an ArtNet News report, the seventh-century A.D. throne room of a female ruler has been discovered in northwestern Peru at the Moche site of Pañamarca by researchers from the Archaeological Landscapes of Pañamarca, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and Columbia University. The room has been dubbed the Hall of the Moche Imaginary for its paintings, which are said to shed light on Moche beliefs and practices. The throne itself, made of painted adobe, is surrounded by walls and pillars painted with scenes depicting women spinning and weaving, a procession of men carrying a crown, sea creatures,...

Kuelap – the Machu Picchu of Northern Peru.The mysterious super fortress of the Chachapoyan Cloud PeopleKuelap is the largest building structure of the Americas. It is estimated to contain 3 times more material than Egypt’s largest pyramid. Peru considers Kuelap to be as good as Machu Picchu and is trying to make this its equal 2nd major destination. It is twice as old as the Incas and in remarkably better condition before restoration. Kuelap is an unknown giant just waking up. Peru is a huge country the size of the 5 west coast states, California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Montana....

We may think of potatoes as the most basic of foods, given their modern ubiquity and low cost, but in the Moche culture in ancient Peru, archaeologists had assumed they were highly charged symbols of the elite because they were found only in artifacts. New research, however, has shown that our understanding of New World potato consumption is biased by the fact the starchy vegetable is nearly always consumed in its entirety. In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers Guy Duke of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and Victor Vásquez-Sanchez and Teresa Rosales-Tham of...

In the bone-dry coastal desert of northern Peru, the ancient Moche sculpted and painted intricate murals on the adobe walls of the site now known as Huaca de la Luna (Temple of the Moon). Created between A.D. 100 and 800, the images hold intriguing clues to a mysterious people who left no written texts to help explain their beliefs and customs. Now, a composite photo in super high resolution has captured one of those murals in amazing detail, allowing anyone with a computer to zoom in for close-up views of individual figures. (Click here for the interactive version of the...

This shield, the front of which is shown here, dates back around 1,300 years and was discovered in a sealed portion of an ancient temple at the site of Pañamarca in Peru. Made by the Moche people, it's about 10 inches (25 centimeters) in size. The front has red and brown textiles along with about a dozen yellow feathers, which appear to be from the body of the Macaw bird. Originally it may have had more than 100 feathers arranged in two or more concentric circles. The back of the shield has basketry weaving and a handle. The shield would...

LIMA (Reuters) - A 4,000-year-old temple filled with murals has been unearthed on the northern coast of Peru, making it one of the oldest finds in the Americas, a leading archaeologist said on Saturday. The temple, inside a larger ruin, includes a staircase that leads up to an altar used for fire worship at a site scientists have called Ventarron, said Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, who led the dig. It sits in the Lambayeque valley, near the ancient Sipan complex that Alva unearthed in the 1980s. Ventarron was built long before Sipan, about 2,000 years before Christ, he said. "It's...

As they waited to be sacrificed outside a temple, the victims made no attempt to escape their fate: their throats were cut, they were decapitated and their hearts ripped out. Their hands were not tied and they offered no resistance to the sacrificial knife. A seed containing a potent drug was used to paralyse their bodies, leaving the victims aware of a terrifying ritual that has been revealed for the first time by a dig in the vast pre-Colombian city of Túcume in northern Peru. Archaeologists working in the ruined city of giant pyramids have discovered one of the largest...

Ancient "Human Sacrifices" Found in Peru, Expert SaysKelly Hearn for National Geographic NewsJune 4, 2008 Three possible human sacrifice victims have been found at a 4,000-year-old archaeological site in Peru, an archaeologist says. The apparently mutilated, partial skeletons (see photos) could overturn the peaceful reputation of the Pre-Ceramic period (3000 B.C. to 1800 B.C.) in the Andes mountains—a time generally seen as free of ritualized killing and warfare. Alejandro Chu Barrera, who led the dig, said: "We found two pairs of legs—probably young females around their 20s—and the decapitated body of a young male in his 20s." "They appear to...

A Site to Die For Photograph courtesy National Archaeological Museum of Brüning, Peru. Found in Peru within a chamber used for an ancient human-sacrifice rite called the presentation, this woman was likely an offering to the site, archaelogists say. Announced last week, the 197-foot-long (60-meter-long) sacrificial chamber or passageway at the Huaca Bandera archaeological site belonged to the Moche culture, a pre-Columbian agricultural civilization that flourished on the north coast of Peru from about 100 B.C. to AD 800.

LIMA (Reuters) – An ancient ceremonial ground used by a Pre-Columbian civilization for human sacrifices has been uncovered on Peru's northern coast, archaeologists said on Thursday. The discovery appears to reinforce prevailing theories about a ceremony known as "the presentation" that was carried out by the Moche people, an agricultural civilization that flourished between 100 B.C. and 800 A.D. Carlos Wester La Torre, director of the Bruning Museum in Peru and a leader of the dig, said the ceremonial site likely hosted ritual killings of prisoners of war. Photographs taken at the site show more than half a dozen skeletons...

The site, near the Pacific coastal city of Chiclayo, probably dates to the Wari culture which ruled the Andes of modern Peru between the 7th and 12th Century. The once buried city showed evidence of human sacrifice

After 10 years, the new excavations in SipánAntonio Aimi This is probably one of the most important archaeological projects in the world, at least under the economical aspect: it’s a project of about 1.350.000 Euros. As for the rest, if we want to talk cheap, roughly but objectively, we can say that the previous campaigns of archaeological excavations resulted in more than 8 kilos of gold and silver, paling the mythical Tomb 7 of Monte Albán and the treasures of any El Dorado in Colombia. We are talking about the new excavation campaign originating in these days from Sipán, a...

Ira Block/National Geographic A woman buried with a golden bowl on her face was wrapped in mummy cloths and buried with military items, hinting at a role as a ruler. A mummy of mystery has come to light in Peru. She was a woman who died some 1,600 years ago in the heyday of the Moche culture, well before the rise of the Incas. Her imposing tomb suggests someone of high status. Her desiccated remains are covered with red pigment and bear tattoos of patterns and mythological figures. But the most striking aspect of the discovery, archaeologists said yesterday,...

Lost society tore itself apart By Nick Davidson BBC Horizon The largest pyramid constructed by the Moche, the Huaca del Sol Two thousand years ago, a mysterious and little known civilisation ruled the northern coast of Peru. Its people were called the Moche. They built huge and bizarre pyramids that still dominate the surrounding landscape; some well over 30m (100ft) tall. They are so heavily eroded, they look like natural features; only close up can you see they are made up of millions of adobe mud bricks. These pyramids are known as "huacas", meaning "sacred site" in the local Indian...