1,400 year-old Pyramid Discovered in Peru

A team of archaeologists has uncovered a 1,400 year old pyramid in Peru at a site called Huaca Colorada – a name meaning “coloured hill”.

The pyramid was built by an ancient people called the Moche. It was flat at the top and a settlement was built around it that housed thousands of people. It was in use until around 1,200 years ago. 

Professor Edward Swenson, of the University of Toronto, led the team that made the discovery. “People walked over this thinking that it was just a big mountain where squatters lived,” he said. “I knew it was more than a natural hill – this was modified.”

Work at the pyramid is ongoing and the team is not yet certain of its precise dimensions. “I truly believe that they cheated a little bit and they built this pyramid on top of a natural stationary sand dune and hill – which makes the excavation not that easy,” added Professor Swenson. This summer researchers will return to the site to conduct ground penetrating radar work to find out how big it is. 

Exploring the pyramid

While much of the pyramid is still obscured by sand and soil, the team has made some remarkable discoveries at its peak.

“Our biggest surprise was that (at) the top of this pyramid construction we found elite residences – this is very unusual,” said Professor Swenson. He explained that in the Moche world pyramids were used for burials and ritual activity, not for everyday living.

Prof Swenson estimates that no more than 25 people would have lived in this complex, which contains several rooms including patios, corridors and even a kitchen. The walls were made of adobe brick.

On the side of the pyramid the team found several containers known as paica stands. “It’s a word in Spanish for very large vessels that store water and corn beer,” said Swenson.

Perhaps the strangest find was a bin in one of the rooms, used to hold guinea pigs. “The preservation was so good that we actually came across guinea pig coprolites (feces).”

But make no mistake, there is evidence for gory rituals and activity too.

A possible human sacrifice?

In a platform on top of the pyramid, the team found the complete skeletons of three adolescent girls. They also found body parts belonging to four other individuals.

The girls were buried with beads around their neck. Their feet were close together suggesting that they were bound. Charring on the girls' knees indicate that the bodies were subject to “ritualistic burning.”

This evidence raises the possibility that the girls were sacrificed as part of a ritual, something that was not uncommon among the Moche. However physical anthropologists examining the skeletons could find no evidence of trauma. This means the girls either died naturally or were killed in such a way that no evidence was left on their bones. “It’s possible they were sacrificed but we don’t know,” added Swenson.

Murals

When the team explored the complex, on top of the pyramid, they discovered several murals. “The wall murals were actually found in corridors of all places,” said Professor Swenson, “really weird.”

The best preserved one depicts a Moche warrior carrying a club. The team released a picture, shown above. “This guy looks kind of like a smurf but that’s a Moche warrior,” said Swenson.

Others are harder to make out. One shows a scene depicting what appears to be a cactus, two mountain peaks and a rainbow. Another shows two litter-bearers carrying someone.

Lords of Huaca Colorada?

Swenson believes it’s a mystery as to who controlled this site. Was it a “lord,” so to speak, who ruled over the pyramid and adjacent settlement? Or was it several families who banded together to rule the area?

The answer may lie to the south of the pyramid. Here the team found a large number of copper artefacts. Spatulas, knives, smelting receptacles and ornaments - “I’ve never found such a high quantity of copper,” said Swenson. “The power of these elites could very much have been grounded in control of copper production.”

Supplying copper for this site would have been no mean feat. Huaca Colorada is near the coast of Peru, an area where copper is scarce. In order to keep production going the site’s rulers would have had to trade with people living in the mountains to the east.

“It’s at least 200km away,” said Swenson. “Whether there was a middleman or down the line trade we don’t know at this point.”

So what could this mean for how the site was governed?

The rulers “may have been considered lords – but lords of a particular kind – in transforming ore into finished products,” said Swenson. On the other hand it could have been a “corporation of say co-operating but high status practitioners.”

An open site

Another mystery for the team to ponder is why Huaca Colorada appears to be undefended. Swenson said the team found “no walls, no slingstones... unlike many of the sites built on the coastal hills.”

Also the area surrounding the settlement was mostly flat and would have offered little assistance in stopping an invader. It’s “kind of like (the) open city of Rome in World War II,” said Swenson. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on.”

There was certainly warfare in the Moche world and there is no shortage of violence in the culture’s art. But, perhaps for some unknown reason, Huaca Colorada and its pyramid were off-limits to invaders.

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Owen Jarus (follow me: e-mail or )

Last three pieces by this author:

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Owen Jarus is a freelance writer based in Toronto ,Canada. He has written articles on archaeology for a variety of media outlets including The Canadian Press newswire (CP), U of T Magazine, The Mississauga News and The Guelph Mercury. Education: BA from the University of Toronto in History, Geography and Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations.