The remnants of at least ten pyramids have been discovered on the coast of Peru, marking what could be a vast ceremonial site of an ancient, little-known culture, archaeologists say.
In January construction crews working in the province of Piura discovered several truncated pyramids and a large adobe platform (see map). Officials from Peru’s National Institute of Culture (INC) were dispatched to inspect the discovery.
Now a seeming regular occurrence in Peru, ruins and civilisations thought to have been the oldest in the Americas have again be surpassed by new discoveries that push back the start of history in Peru and the American continent.
Inca ruins, splendours from even-older cultures, Spanish colonial towns, pristine jungles and good food: Peru has much to offer the tourists who are flocking there in ever-greater numbers. But if it is not careful, its tourist industry risks becoming its own worst enemy.
It has only been a few months since the last series of violent protests brought the country to a halt. This time, rather than being about teachers having to know how to read and write by law – something they are still complaining violates their human rights, farmers have been protesting, partly about their impending doom brought on by the Peru-USA free trade agreement.
The One Laptop Per Child program, that aims to produce and sell its XO Laptops for $100 dollars and sell them en-masse to 3rd world countries for use by children in schools, as you may have heard in the news has lost chip-maker Intel as a partner.
Did you vote for the T’ikapapa project in the BBC-Newsweek’s World Challenge 2007?
If yes you’ll be pleased to know it has won first place.
The new discovery filled with murals has been discovered on the north coast.
The ancient temple inside a larger ruin in the Lambayeque valley is home to what is believed to be one of the oldest murals of its kind in the Americas. Video:
Realising that the new found mineral wealth on the pacific coast lay entirely in Bolivian and Peruvian hands, and sparked by Bolivia’s plan to tax Chilean companies extracting it, Chile launched an invasion against the two nations. After their successful land grab in the south, Chilean troops continued up the coast, burning down towns and massacring thousands. When they reached Lima, all resistance was put down and troops began ransacking Peruvian national treasures – Lima having been the centre of the Spanish empire in the new world.
The Mesa Redonda fire of the 29th December 2001, just two days before New Year caused deaths in the hundreds. Now, almost six years on, an almost identical tragedy was narrowly avoided, showing that no lessons had been learned.The Mesa Redonda shopping district in downtown Lima was jam-packed full of people, as it normally was, but more so now in the height of shopping season.
The Amazon Rainforest is full of isolated indigenous peoples. They exist in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brasil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru. For President of PetroPeru Daniel Saba speaking of this is like speaking of the Loch Ness monster. Faced with protests from organized native groups, who point out the dangers for uncontacted and isolated tribes of selling off huge areas of Peru’s Amazon, he declared in April of this year “no one has seen them, so what uncontacted people are they talking about?” Surely Saba is not so unbelieving now, after the publication of photos taken from the air on the 18th of September by a group of belonging to the Zoological Society of Frankfurt and the National Institute of National Recourses of Peru, showing some 20 isolated and previously unknown villages along the Los Piedras River.
The following article has been translated by me from an insert of the newspaper El Comercio, regarding the sale to oil companies of a large part of the most biodiverse place on earth, the Amazon rainforest of Madre de Dios in southern Peru.
“On Sunday, October 21st, the whole of Peru is under house arrest. Nobody may leave their home; no business may open; even the homeless will be rounded up and confined to sports stadiums. Police and military will patrol the streets to enforce the “immobility order”.
![A marvellous hummingbird display [Featured]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2519/4072727785_0a05cd7c49_m.jpg)
