The Pyramid of Montegrande in the Highlands of North Central Peru

Not far from Cajamarca (city of Bountiful), in the rain forests of the Andean highlands of north central Peru, lies the city of Jaen, in the valley by the same name, that dates back to 1500 to 1000 BC. Artifacts dated to 900 to 200 BC have recently been found there, an area no one ever suspected had been anciently inhabited—south of that was the city .

Cerro Montegrande near Jaen, Peru, recently discovered that it was a giant pyramid

In this valley there is a hill that looks like nothing more than another hill, that stretched out over two acres of land. Farmers building in the area were digging in the hill and to their surprise and that of the archaeological world, found all sorts of artifacts in an area that had never been considered to be once inhabited.
    While a little steeper than other hills, no one ever thought it was anything more than a mound of earth. Overgrown with bushes and taken as a natural hill by people living nearby, it was ignored for centuries, and, in time, as Peru’s cities and towns stretched further out in the Southwest Amazon, farmers even set up their homes on top of the hill.
    In time, then they started to dig into the hill for planting, and immediately started to uncover sherds of old pots. These, they soon learned, were more than old utensils—they were relics of the past, and they were more than 1,000 years old.           
    Their homes on the hill quickly became an archaeological site, and in 2010, archaeologist and historian Quirino Olvera, who currently serves as president of the Peruvian Association of Archaeology and Social development of the Amazon, and the director of the Archaeological Project in the High Amazon Region of Peru,  along with his team started digging into the Montegrande hill, and soon discovered what they were excavating wasn’t a hill at all.

The recently discovered Spiral Temple, an example of Montegrande's public architecture 

Their dig quickly showed that the hill was a massive pyramid, built by a forgotten civilization in the Amazon rainforest over 3000 years ago. Thus, the pyramid at Montegrande changed everything—it is now understood for the first time, that there is hard evidence of ancient civilizations thriving in the Amazon rainforest.
    Ancient civilizations had certainly flourished in South America, but, up until recently, it had been believed that the Amazon itself was a place few dared to tread for long. The few people who lived there in ancient times, archaeologists believed, were sparsely separated, nomadic people. They would wander from place to place, setting up the odd short-lived farm before moving on.
    When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in South America, they wrote stories about massive towns in the Amazon full of farms and supporting whole fleets of boats—but there’d never been anything to back up what they were saying. Every piece of archaeological evidence we could find suggested that no one in the Amazon had stayed still long enough to build a home.
    Discoveries like Montegrande, though, are changing the history of a nation. Now it’s believed that, at its peak, there may have been as a many as 5 million people living in the Amazon. They built civilizations and cultures that are completely forgotten to time.
    The Spiral Temple (shown above), is an example of Montegrande's public architecture. It obviously had a religious character that reflects the solid ritual apparatus of a well-organized society, whose beliefs and cosmology contributed to the design, expressed in the principal elements of the architecture. It seems clear that the creation of the architectural forms followed the rules and the artistic patterns of a high culture. Archaeologist have now learned that the people who built the Montegrande pyramid had an incredibly sophisticated society.

Two newly discovered platforms have been found in the vicinity of Las Juntas and Bagua, the latter being a rugged land cut by deep gorges with important rivers, including the Utcubamba, crossing the valleys. This area has shown a notable trait that was totally unknown in this part of the upper Amazon.
    The remains of the walls were covered with colored frescoes that have miraculously survived the passage of time, mostly colored in red, white and black, including very particular graphic designs very similar in concept and form to the polychromic murals of Tierradentro in southwest Colombia.
    The dates associated to the archaeological contexts place these frescoes as the oldest examples of mural paintings in the upper Amazon region of Peru and possibly in the whole western Amazon of South America.
    This pre-Chavin culture did not just build one pyramid and leave. They first built around 1,000 BC, but reworked their pyramids and rebuilt them at least eight times. Before their empire ended, they had lived in that one spot for more than a thousand years.

Six-foot high walls were built around the settlements at Montegrande

Toward the end they built six-foot walls to protect their people and setting up offices where rulers governed their people. They built a grid of homes across the riverbank, had a detailed religion of their own, and were part of an elaborate trade network that stretched across Peru.
    The entire history of these people, that covered at least a millennium, has been buried by time with only a small amount being uncovered today. What is known is only scraped together from their ruins, but the massive pyramids they left behind are enough to give an incredible glimpse into their society.

The top of the Montegrande Pyramid

The top of the mound is a spiral of rocks, coiled in the shape of a massive snake or, perhaps, in the swirl of the shell of a snail. You could walk along the spiral like you were making your way through a labyrinth. Every step would take you further down below the ground until you reached the center, forty feet below the first step. At the center of the spiral, the people who once lived here burned fires. These were likely sacred fires, used for some religious purpose.
    Archaeologists have found snuff spoons and mortar grinders still holding the residue of seeds, which did not grow where they lived, but were imported in connection with their elaborate trade network.

Spirals seem to have been an obsession for the people who lived here. Inside the remains of their civilization, there are still snail shells scattered everywhere. Honored dead were covered in them when they died, and the shape fills every part of their society.

    A mile away from Montegrande, the researchers found a second pyramid and the burial of many people, including several children. In the most glamorous burial site found, one of the important people of this ancient culture, completely covered in snail shells and who Archaeologists call “The Lord of Snails,” died 2800 years ago (April Holloway, Plus One Journal , San Francisco, California, 2013).
    Not a single word written by the people who lived here remains. If they were literate at all, we do not know or have what they wrote. We do not know their names or their thoughts. Nor do we know why they moved into the rain forests of central and northeastern Peru, nor what happened to them—they have simply been a people who have been forgotten for the past 2,000 years.
    One thing we can be quite certain about is that this area was on the East Coast of the Land of Promise, and when the East Sea receded to its present position after the crucifixion, it would have existed at a time when the golden age of the Nephites took place over the two hundred year period following Christ’s visit to the Land of Promise. This was the time when buildings were constructed, cities built and others renewed. It was the time that the people of Nephi did wax strong, and did multiply exceedingly fast, and became an exceedingly fair and delightsome people (4 Nephi 1:10).