Ancient Ceremonial Complexes Revealed in World's Driest Desert
Last edited Wed Nov 14, 2018, 02:51 AM - Edit history (1)
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | November 7, 2018 06:32am ET
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The 5,000-year-old site in the Atacama Desert held a ceremonial complex built with these vertical stones.
Credit: copyright Antiquity Publications Ltd.
Ancient ceremonial complexes discovered in the world's driest desert suggest such places flourished thousands of years ago in what is now the Atacama Desert in Chile.
A team of archaeologists has concluded that two archaeological sites located less than 0.62 miles (1 kilometer) apart were both used for ceremonial purposes, wrote archaeology professors Catherine Perlès, from the Université Paris Nanterre; and Lautaro Nuñez, from the Universidad Católica del Norte in Chile.
To survive the harsh conditions of the arid Atacama Desert, the people who lived there made use of what scientists call eco-refuges — places that had enough water, animal and plant life to support humans, said Perlès and Nuñez in their paper. People living in nearby eco-refuges appear to have come together to build the two sites, with construction possibly being organized by religious leaders, said Perlès and Nuñez in a paper published online Oct. 26 in the journal Antiquity. [The 25 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]
Wealthy 3,200-year-old site
The most impressive of the two sites flourished between 1200 B.C. and 500 B.C. Last excavated in 2015, the site includes massive stone monuments, infant burials and offerings of gold and other exotic materials from the Amazonian and the Pacific regions, Perlès and Nuñez wrote. They noted that the remains of 28 infants, some of whom were buried with rich grave goods, were also found there.
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