| Located 110 kilometers southeast of Huaraz in the Province of Huari.
approximately 3 ½ hours by car. It was discovered by Dr. Julio César Tello in 1919 and was declared by UNESCO to be Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 1985.
The temple, whose plan is rectangular and structure is a
truncated pyramid, is constructed with enormous blocks of
symmetric stones, secured with wedges of the same material
set in clay mortar.
At the center of the interior of the Old Temple is the gallery
of the so-called Lanzón (“lance”), where there is a great stone
carved in the form of a giant lance point 4.6 meters high and
bearing a representation of a personage with feline, avian and
serpentine attribute.
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The interior galleries are constructed with stone walls. Originally,
they may have been plastered with mud and painted. Forming the
roof of the galleries are huge stone slabs with not only serve an
architectural function but were also decorated with religious
designs.
There are other galleries contemporary with the Old Temple,
such as the galleries of the Camp, the Offerings, the Stairways,
the Niches and the labyrinths of the Bat, the Captives and the
Double Lintel.
The antiquity of Chavín has not yet been precisely determined,
but its beginnings may go back to about 1200 B.C. |
