PERUVIAN TEMPLE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 925, 21 November 1933, Page 14

PERUVIAN TEMPLE.

Ruins of Tinted Stone in Valley. Dr. Julio Caesar Tcllo, Peru's leading Archaeologist,lias announced the discovery in the small coastal valley of Nepena, north of Lima, of the ruins of a notable stone building, buried beneath several meters of earth, sand and gravel, placed there deliberately, he believes, by the ancient Peruvians to hide the structure. In striking contrast to the adobe and rough masonry remains so far found on the Peruvian coast, this structure is of heavy monoliths, carved in deep relief. The find was made a short distance from the Cerro Blanco farm of the largo estate of San Jacinto, operated by a British company, and was incidental to the relocation of a light railway through the estate. The ruins were encountered in the course of cutting through a hillock of about .‘IOOO square meters in area and of a maximum height of fifteen meters. The part of the building so far uncovered consists of great rooms formed by thick rectangular stone walls, whose faces are decorated with beautiful arabesques, consisting of diverse designs modelled artistically in relief and painted in red, white, blue and green. This type of decoration, the first discovered in Peru, covers completely all the faces of the walls. In addition, the floors are perfectly finished in an imitation marble, with a very fine white clay painted in parts and very similar to china clay. Dr. Tello states that a careful exploration of the hillock and the study of the archaeological remains found, especially the peculiar ornamentation, reveal that the edifice which is buried under this hillock is a temple, or more probably a group of great royal sarcophagi belonging to the people of the megalithic age of Chav in, which is considered as one of the most advanced cultures of ancient Peru, possibly linked with the so-called Tialiuauaco civilisation that flourished on the southern shores of Lake Titicaca and pic-dating the Inca I'm p ire.