Pyramid is giant farming clock
THE archeologist Bob Benfer will never forget the moment when he realised that a pyramid he had unearthed high in the Andes was the New World’s oldest alarm clock.
On a barren hillside just north of Lima, he had found an observatory more than 4,000 years old that had been built by a lost civilisation with astonishing sophistication.
The oldest astronomical observatory in the Americas, it told farmers exactly when to sow their crops. Its discovery has provided startling clues to the way in which early man learnt to cultivate his fields.
“I was staring up at a statue on a ridge above the temple and realised it all aligned with the stars — it was an amazing moment,” the bearded scientist said last week.
“This alignment meant that at dawn at every winter solstice 4,200 years ago, key stars would appear in line with the temple and alert priests that river flooding was due and it was time to start planting crops. It was laid out as a wake-up call to the community.”
The 20-acre site is dominated by two buildings. The northern pyramid, which Benfer has called the Temple of the Fox after a painting of the animal, is built around a priests’ platform.
This points at 114 degrees directly to an 8ft tall carved head on a mountain ridge nearly 200ft away. On December 21 each year, just before the local River Chillon starts flooding, a constellation known to Andeans as the fox swings into the sightline. According to Andean myth, the fox is the creature that taught farmers how to cultivate plants.
Well, then what purpose did the Egyptians pyramids serve if they were located in a desert valley?
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