3,800-year-old human skeletons unearthed in Peruvian temple surprise explorers

In Northern Peru, archeologists found 3,800-year-old human skeletons in an ancient temple, which speaks multitudes about their culture.

Peru, also known as the land of ancient wizardry , has long attracted tourists and history lovers alike for its scenic beauty and very ancient civilizations, notably the Norte Chico, one of the six oldest in the world.

Recently, archeologists, while excavating a ceremonial temple that honored the gods of another ancient local culture, uncovered human remains between mud and stone walls in an otherwise sparse area of land in the North of the country, according to The Epoch Times.

The coastal Viru Province in the La Libertad cradled many major ancient cultures such as the Incas, so this discovery will give archeologists “a clear idea of the cultural evolution in this area,” Feren Castillo, research project head from the National University of Trujillo explained.

A culture from 1800 BC

Just last month, researchers unearthed human skeletons “of 11 ‘high class’ dating to 800 years ago,” according to Reuters, in the largest mud citadel in the Americas. It belonged to the Chimu culture that, before the Incas conquered them, encompassed the largest political system with a state that stretched about 1000 kilometers along the coast.

This discovery dating even further back in time, 3,800 years ago, of bodies in a temple communicates that, most likely, more are buried on the grounds and that being laid to rest in the temple might indicate a cultural ritual that will help archeologists better understand a prehistoric culture.

“It also shows the importance of the space. People have for a long time wanted to be buried in temples because these are very sacred spaces to them,” Castillo said via Reuters .

As four bodies surfaced, archeologists will continue their investigation and possibly discover more, according to Epoch Times .

Perhaps they might have belonged to a special class or the presence of more bodies might lead archeologists to deduce a collective ritual.

Prehistoric Americas in the limelight

Around 3,800 years ago or 1800 BC, Hammurabi conquered Mesopotamia, the new Kingdom of Egypt was established, the Indus Valley civilization went into decline, the mammoth went extinct, and the Bronze Age started in China. These skeletons belong to prehistoric humans who existed around the European Bronze Age and the Megalithic Building Cultures in Britain and Brittany.

This research project opens up another area of the world at a very ancient moment in history that was rich in cultures. The 11 high-class bodies uncovered in the Chimu citadel suggest that the site was closer to a royal estate rather than a sacred religious site. However, these two entities might not have been as black and white as the church and state might have been more connected than not.

So were there unifying belief systems and practices that archeologists can track over the course of time in these different cultures? Speculation aside, in this case, the choice of being buried in a designated temple, not citadel, in such a small area has led Peruvian archeologists to suspect that more are buried there which might indicate a cultural practice, where people were buried in a holy house rather than a separate gravesite.