Ancient 4,750-Year-Old Megalith Discovered On Peruvian Mountain
PUBLISHED
2 days ago
The unique circular plaza is one of the earliest ever found in the Americas.
author
MADDY CHAPMAN
Edited by Francesca Benson
What remains of the ancient plaza today.
Image credit: Toohey et al., Science Advances, 2024 (CC BY-NC 4.0)
An ancient ceremonial megalith dated to 4,750 years ago has been discovered in the Peruvian Andes. The find is older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt and represents one of the oldest circular plazas in the region.
Unearthed at an archaeological site called Callacpuma in northern Peru’s Cajamarca valley, the plaza measures around 18 meters (60 feet) across and features concentric walls of large, free-standing, vertically placed megalithic stones, the likes of which have never been seen before in the Andes.
Having been the subject of archaeological interest for nearly 60 years, the site has now been excavated and subjected to radiocarbon dating, placing its construction between 2632 and 2884 BCE, during the Late Preceramic period. This dating makes the plaza one of the earliest examples of monumental, megalithic architecture in the Americas.
“This structure was built approximately 100 years before the Great Pyramids of Egypt and around the same time as Stonehenge,” Associate Professor Jason Toohey, who led the project, said in a statement.
More:
https://www.iflscience.com/ancient-4750-year-old-megalith-discovered-on-peruvian-mountain-73114
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Archaeologists Discover Mysterious Stone Circle Built Before Great Pyramids
Published Feb 28, 2024 at 3:55 PM EST
By Aristos Georgiou
Science and Health Reporter
Archaeologists have discovered a mysterious stone circle in the Andes Mountains that they say was constructed before the great pyramids of Egypt.
The circular stone plaza, which measures around 60 feet in diameter, consists of two concentric walls made from unshaped stones set vertically in the ground, according to a study reporting the find in the journal Science Advances.
The monument is at the Callacpuma archaeological site in northern Peru's Cajamarca Basin, which lies around 10,000 feet above sea level near the summit of a peak in the Andes. Stretching for more than 5,000 miles along the western edge of South America, the Andes range is the longest in the world.
Using radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers determined that initial construction of the circular plaza took place around 4,750 years ago, corresponding to the "Late Precaremic" period of Andean archaeology.
More:
https://www.newsweek.com/archaeologists-discover-mysterious-stone-circle-built-before-great-pyramids-1874439?piano_t=1
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(That non-intervention thing from Star Trek didn't do ancient native citizens a lot of good, did it? They could have at least given them the 3 Stooges Eye-Poke!)
