Oldest Archaeolgocial Find in Americas Discovered in Peru

A 4,000-year-old temple filled with murals has been unearthed in the Lambayeque valley, near the ancient Sipan complex on the northern coast of Peru, making it one of the oldest finds in the Americas, a leading archaeologist said on Saturday. Discoveries at Sipan, an administrative and religious center of the Moche culture, have included a gold-filled tomb built 1,700 years ago for a pre-Incan king.

The ancient "Fire Temple" found in Peru was built thousands of years ago according to carbon dating tests and excavation. The colorful temple, built long before the Inca, was built thousands of years ago by an advanced civilization according to Walter Alva, a museum director and prominent archaeologist, as published by a Peruvian newspaper. The carbon dating tests indicate that the site is 4,000 years old—the oldest known city in the Americas is Caral, also near the Peruvian coast, which researchers dated to 2627 B.C.; however, the mural at Ventarron is considered the oldest artifact found in the Americas.

Unearthed in Peru's archeologically rich northern coastal desert, the temple has a staircase leading to an altar that was used for worshipping fire and making offerings to deities. Some of the walls of the 27,000-square-foot site—almost half the size of a football field—were painted, and a white and red mural depicts a deer being hunted with a net. The stairway caught their attention because it is an architectural oddity in that region, Alva said. The temple was apparently constructed by an "advanced civilization" because it was built from blocks of river sediment rather than adobe or stone.

The site was built by a culture that predated other pre-Columbian cultures such as the Cupisnique, Chavinoide, Chavín, and Moche, Alva said. "This discovery shows an architectural and iconographic tradition different from what has been known until now.” Scientists have called the site Ventarron, which is about 470 miles from Lima, and twelve miles from another ancient site, called Sipan that flourished from 1 A.D. onward.

The impressive state of preservation at the 4,000-year-old site is likely due to its having been intentionally buried thousands of years ago. When the site's use was complete, the culture that built the temple covered it with earth. The discovery of this temple reveals evidence suggesting the region of Lambayeque was one of great cultural exchange between the Pacific coast and the rest of Peru." According to Alva, they found shells that would have come from coastal Ecuador.

Once again, non LDS scientists, archaeologists and anthropologists have found evidence of an advanced civilization in the Andea area of South America that not only predates Mesoamerica, buy shows a building ability commensurate with the abilities of the Nephites.