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A rare, unlooted royal tomb has been found in Peru, replete with gold and silver riches, the mummified bodies of queens and other, less-adorned bodies thought to have been human sacrifices. The pristine state of the site is something of a miracle, say archaeologists, surrounded as it is by other heavily looted areas. The queens ruled over the Wari, an ancient civilization that built South America's earliest empire between 700 and 1000 AD, National Geographic reports.....

Reuters) - Archaeologists in Peru on Thursday said they have unearthed a massive royal tomb full of mummified women that provides clues about the enigmatic Wari empire that ruled the Andes long before their better-known Incan successors. "For the first time in the history of archeology in Peru we have found an imperial tomb that belongs to the Wari empire and culture," lead archeologist Milosz Giersz said. Researchers said the discovery will help them piece together life in the Andes centuries before the rise of the Incan empire, which was written about in detail by the conquering Spaniards. The mausoleum,...

Pre-Columbian tunnel complex discovered in southeastern Peru Story Filed: Thursday, August 15, 2002 8:40 AM EST Lima, Aug 15, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- A pre-Columbian tunnel complex has been discovered in southeastern Peru, officials said. Chumbivilcas Mayor Florentino Layme told Panamericana Television that the tunnels were discovered in the southeastern province of Chumbivilcas, some 1,300 kilometers (about 808) miles southeast of the capital. The tunnels apparently were made by the Wari people who lived in the area prior to the emergence of the Inca empire and are located under the village of Lliqui. The walls of the tunnels, or...

Elite Women Made Beer in Pre-Incan Culture Robert Roy Britt Mon Nov 14, 6:00 PM ET An ancient brewery from a vanished empire was staffed by elite women who were selected for their beauty or nobility, a new study concludes. The finding adds to other evidence that women played a more crucial role in ancient Andean societies than history books have stated. It may also in some ways reflect modern drinking traditions in the Andean mountains, where women get drunk as much as men, researchers say. The brewery, on a mountaintop in southern Peru, cranked out hundreds of gallons of...

Pre-Incan Metallurgy Discovered Charles Q. Choi Special to LiveScience Thu Apr 19, 9:50 AM ET Metals found in lake mud in the central Peruvian Andes have revealed the first evidence for pre-Colonial metalsmithing there. These findings illustrate a way that archaeologists can recreate the past even when looters have destroyed the valuable artifacts that would ordinarily be relied upon to reveal historical secrets. For instance, the new research hints at a tax imposed on local villages by ancient Inca rulers to force a switch from production of copper to silver. Pre-Colonial bronze artifacts have previously been found in the central...

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. researchers have unearthed what they say may be the oldest known brewery in the Andes, a pre-Incan plant at least 1,000 years old that could produce drinks for hundreds of people at one sitting. The University of Florida said on Thursday that its archeologists and researchers from the Field Museum in Chicago found the brewery at Cerro Baul, a mountaintop religious center of the Wari empire that ruled what is now Peru hundreds of years before the Incas. At least 20 ceramic, 10- to 15-gallon (38- to 57-litre) vats were found at the site some 8,000...

Public release date: 27-Jul-2004 Contact: Greg Borzo gborzo@fieldmuseum.org 312-665-7106 Field Museum Ancient brewery discovered on mountain top in Peru Field Museum online expedition still in progress describes discovery of 'Beer of Kings' Archaeologists discover a 1,000-year-old brewery from the Wari Empire's occupation of Cerro Baúl, a mountaintop city in the Andes. Remains of the brewery were well preserved because a fire set when the brewery was closed made the walls collapse over the materials. Photo by Patrick Ryan Williams, courtesy of The Field Museum CHICAGO--Archaeologists working in southern Peru found an ancient brewery more than 1,000 years old. Remains of...

Nov. 15, 2005 — Around a thousand years ago, a group of people gathered in a Peruvian brewery, drank copious amounts of brew, smashed their drinking vessels to the ground and torched the building as part of a complicated abandonment ritual, according to a new study. The authors of the study in the latest Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences believe the structure was one of the earliest and largest state-sponsored breweries in the Andes. They also discovered that a group of elite women served as the brewmasters, unusual both for ancient times and even for today. Remnants of ingredients,...

LIMA (AFP) – Archeologists have discovered a group of ancient tombs in the mountainous jungle of southeastern Peru they say is as important as the discovery of the lost city of Machu Picchu. The tombs belonging to the Wari culture were found on the jungle-covered eastern slope of the Andes in Cuzco department at a long-abandoned city thought to be the last redoubt of Inca resistance to Spanish colonial rule. The Waris, a pre-Inca civilization, had an enormous cultural impact in the Andean region between 600 and 1200. The Inca empire (around 1400 to 1532) was the largest pre-Columbian empire...

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....

Prehistoric communities in one part of Peru's Andes Mountains may have gone from maize to amazingly complex. Bioarchaeologist Brian Finucane's analyses of human skeletons excavated in this region indicate that people living there 2,800 years ago regularly ate maize. This is the earliest evidence for maize as a staple food in the rugged terrain of highland Peru, he says. Maize agriculture stimulated ancient population growth in the Andes and allowed a complex society, the Wari, to develop, Finucane contends in the August Current Anthropology. Wari society included a central government and other elements of modern states. It lasted from around...

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

Trophy Skull Sheds Light on Ancient Wari Empire Earthwatch volunteers working with Dr. Mary Glowacki (Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research) in Peru unearthed a previously unknown cemetery and found a trophy skull from the Wari civilization. The finds give researchers further insight into the rise and fall of the Wari Empire that lived high in the Andes 1,500 to 1,000 years ago. Courtesy of Mary Glowacki Earthwatch-supported archaeologist Dr. Mary Glowacki (Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research) holds a vessel excavated from an elite cemetary at the ancient Wari site of Cotocotuyoc. Spectacular finds include the "trophy" skull of a warrior...