The Chavin culture, which emerged in the 10th century BC, existed until the 4th century. Much mysterious remains in it, but one thing is indisputable - a high level of development. And today we are admired by amazing ceramics and magnificent works of art made of stone. The Inca state, which the Spaniards faced in Peru, arose 2 thousand years later.
Almost a third of the area of the state of Peru is occupied by mountains - the Cordillera. Archaeologists have established that it was here that the first pre-Inca civilization, Chavin, was born. As the Czech researcher Miloslav Stingl figuratively writes, “on the stage of Peruvian history, the emergence of the Chavin culture is more like an explosion, an unexpected outbreak, the consequences of which were felt for many centuries”.
Stone table
As has happened more than once, the remains of an ancient civilization were discovered more than 100 years ago by accident. In an inaccessible area, on the eastern slopes of the Cordillera Blanca ridge, at an altitude of 3200 meters, farmer Timoteo Espinoza worked on his site near the abandoned Indian village of Chavin de Huantar. One day his shovel came across an unusual stone. The find was a flat monolith more than two meters long with a carved image of a strange creature with a huge head and cat teeth.
The farmer moved the stone to the house and used it as a table for several years. Once the Italian traveler Antonio Raimondi entered the house of Espinoza, where he discovered this unusual piece of furniture. The guest carefully studied the drawing on the stone and appreciated the significance of the artifact. After Raimondi's publications at the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologist Julio Cesar Tello arrived in Chavin de Huantar. Thanks to his many years of activity, remarkable discoveries have been made.
Professor Tello suggested that an ancient settlement arose at this site around 850 BC. He also established the origin of the name Chavin - “sons of the jaguar with spears”. Tello was the first to show that Chavin is a unique culture, traces of which were subsequently found and are found throughout the vast territory of Peru. When scientists talk about the "influence of Chavin" on other ancient centers, they mean, first of all, the characteristic artistic style of the Chavin people, which differs from all others.
In the center of Chavin de Huantar are the ruins of the so-called Old Temple, 228 by 175 meters in size. Huge granite blocks, fitted to each other with millimeter precision, form rectangular outer walls that slope slightly inward. The walls were once decorated with strange stone heads with bared teeth in helmets and without. The old temple was shaped like a truncated pyramid. The temple is believed to have originated between 1000 and 500 BC. If so, then it is the oldest known cult site in all of South America. But who was worshiped here is not entirely clear.
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The main gate of the temple faces exactly to the east: a stone beam 9 meters long rests on two columns, on the sides of which are piled granite slabs, once decorated with fine carvings.
In front of the temple, there is a quadrangular square called Bolshoi. It was once completely surrounded by a wall. In the middle of the Great Square there was an obelisk made of dark diorite, 1.75 meters high. This is one of the most famous works of Chavin art. Nowadays - the pride of the Archaeological Museum in Lima.
A huge block of stone lying on the square and probably once an altar, archaeologists called the "Constellation Orion". Seven round holes are knocked out in it, really resembling in their arrangement the seven stars of Orion.
With trashnye rituals
Under the Big Square, a mysterious underground network of corridors, an average of 60 centimeters wide, as well as ventilation shafts and drainage tunnels, was discovered. One of the corridors was called the Gallery of Sacrifices. Here they found the remains of what pilgrims sometimes brought from very distant places - for example, sea shells. Among these gifts lay the skull of a woman, apparently sacrificed to a deity.
Locals called another underground gallery the Gallery of the Madman, because one of the inhabitants of the village, who was considered insane, was hiding in it for a long time. Another is called Labyrinths. These are three corridors in the shape of the letter G. But, in addition to the corridors, there are mines through the pyramid, most likely intended for ventilation of the close, located in the depths of the sanctuaries. The oldest of them is U-shaped. There is an amazing sculpture - a column called Lanson, which means "spear" in Spanish.
The height of the "spear" is almost 5 meters, and the width is only 50 centimeters. The stele looks like a stone needle. A strange, toothy creature is engraved on the surface of the monument. Perhaps it should have played a very important role in the religious cult of the "sons of the jaguar with the spears." This deity with a human body and jaguar features looks quite intimidating. In the lower part of the predator's mouth, sharp fangs protrude, bulging eyes are raised to the sky. The belt on the body of the Chavin deity is decorated with the heads of jaguars. Similar shallow relief images have been preserved on many slabs of the sanctuary. They are made with rare skill, as if a jeweler had worked with a drill.
Locals call this monolith the Bloodsucker. Most likely, he performed some kind of punitive functions in the dungeons. The Indians have long believed that the priests could take the form of jaguars and come into contact with supernatural forces. This trance-like state was achieved with hallucinogenic drugs such as huacacachu or fork nuts. Probably, the ancient sculptor recorded the stage of such a transformation of the priest.
Forgotten Tribe
From the square, along the wide Staircase of the Jaguars, you can climb to the western platform of the Great Pyramid 15 meters high. Here, too, were found the remains of columns and stones decorated with friezes with images of a jaguar.
But there is another unusual cult monument with a jaguar - this is the Raimondi stele, a 2.5 meter high pillar. The same one that once replaced the table at the farmer Espinoza. The stone is engraved with a richly ornamented image of a deity with human features and huge predatory fangs. Researchers disagree about what the ornament symbolizes: either jaguar people, or the bodies of snakes, or figures with animal heads framed by rays. Each person interprets the meaning of the drawing on the stone in his own way.
Wolfgang Volkrodt, a German, Doctor of Technical Sciences, proposed a completely inadequate interpretation of the Raimondi stele. In his book Everything Was Different, he analyzed drawing from an engineering perspective. Dr. Volkrodt saw in the images on the stele … a boiler plant for the production of steam. Steam moves eight levers, which drive rotating pistons - today this device is called a six-cylinder two-stroke engine. The central boiler provided four separate cylinder systems that could be used for all kinds of heavy work, such as moving stones for construction. In his opinion, the Raimondi stele actually depicts a diagram of a complex and well-designed machine. This monster skillfully moves his arms and even walks.
According to scientists, Chavin de Huantar was the sanctuary of some mysterious people, But what kind of people were they? In any case, according to archaeologists, they were not the Incas, for their creations look completely different. The heyday of the Chavin civilization lasted from 900 to 200 BC, later the decline began.
Once the "sons of the jaguar with spears" left their homes, and later Chavin de Huantar became a dead city. And on January 17, 1945, a terrible avalanche of mud fell from the mountains into the valley and flooded the entire district along with the ancient settlement. It turned out to be under a layer of earth, several meters thick. Ruins and everything that Tello did not manage to take to the archaeological museum of the Peruvian capital drowned under the drifts. But Tello's drawings and copies of most of his finds have survived.
Irina STREKALOVA