UPDATE ON NEW WORLD'S EARLIEST MURALS

Listeros,

Below is some new information on Cerro Ventarron from Archaeology
Magazine.

Mike Ruggeri



New World's Earliest Mural
Volume 61 Number 2, March/April 2008
by Angela M. H. Schuster
Ancient paintings, ritual fires, and rare birds are found in northern
Peru.

The oldest-known polychrome mural in the Americas was recently
discovered during rescue excavations at Cerro Ventarrón, a site on
Peru's arid north coast. Unearthed last fall by archaeologist Walter
Alva of the Royal Tombs of Sípan Museum, the 4,000-year-old painting
depicts a deer snared in a net. The mural adorns a wall of what has
been identified as a fire temple, a well-known feature of later Andean
ceremonial architecture in which people burned offerings to the gods.
Adjacent to the mural is a 10-foot-high, semicircular chimney that
held the temple's ritual fire--its walls still blackened with soot.
The exterior walls of the temple, which was built atop a multi-
terraced platform mound, are painted with a red-and-white zigzag
pattern.

"The architecture of the fire temple is very, very primitive," says
Alva, noting that the adobe used to construct it was devoid of stone
and appears to be made up of little more than dried blocks of river
sediment. However, the temple is significant because it bears a number
of hallmarks that seem to be the most ancient expressions of
fundamental ideas in Andean religion. "The stylized rendering of a
deer snared in a net," he explains, "runs deep in Andean iconography,
being symbolic of the primordial hunt and man's first offerings to the
gods." The captured deer image was still being used 2,000 years later
by the Moche.

Alva also recovered a cache of offerings, including a conch shell
trumpet and the remains of a monkey and an Amazonian parrot, the
latter entombed with a simple turquoise collar. "This combination of
offerings--possibly deposited during a ceremonial burial of the
building--is extremely significant, particularly at this early date,"
says Alva, pointing out that they represent the three realms of the
world: sea, earth, and sky. This too, he says, is a religious concept
that is more fully developed in the art of later Andean cultures, such
as the Moche and the Inca.

Cerro Ventarrón is the latest in a string of recent finds, including
the vast 4,600-year-old ceremonial complex of Caral-Supe ("A
Monumental Feud," July/August 2005), that continue to push back the
date for large-scale ritual architecture in the Andean region. While
Caral-Supe is notable for its monumental buildings, including a fire
temple, and an extraordinary collection of flutes and whistles made
from the wing bones of condors and pelicans, it has yet to yield any
paintings like the mural at Cerro Ventarrón.




© 2008 by the Archaeological Institute of America
www.archaeology.org/0803/trenches/mural.html



Mike Ruggeri's The Ancient Americas Breaking News
http://web.mac.com/michaelruggeri

Mike Ruggeri's Ancient Andean World
http://tinyurl.com/2o79jy

Mike Ruggeri's Andean Archaeology News and Links
http://community-2.webtv.net/Topiltzin-2091/MikeRuggerisAndean/index.html

Andean and Amazonian Archaeology Discussion Group
http://tinyurl.com/2fnzpm











.

Relevant Pages