Archaeologists Discover 1,400-Year-Old Murals of Two-Faced Men in Peru
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Loading... - Castro David
- 01 May 2023
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In northern Peru’s Nepeña Valley, archaeologists have discovered murals of two-faced men in golden headdresses.
One image depicts a man holding a feather fan and a goblet, from which four hummingbirds drink. In another, a man holds a feather fan, as well as an unknown object that’s now partially obscured.
stimated to be 1,400 years old, these murals are impressive for their elaborate detail alone. But researchers say they’re also unique: Such images have “never before [been] seen in Moche art or any other pre-Hispanic tradition of the Andean region,” says Jessica Ortiz Zevallos, the Peruvian director of the Archaeological Research Project, to Hyperallergic’s Taylor Michael.
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Conservator Rafael Gordillo Méndez reveals the painted surface of a pillar at the Pañamarca archaeological site. Lisa Trever / Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Zevallos led the research alongside Lisa Trever, an archaeologist and art historian at Columbia University, and Michele Koons, an archaeologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. They estimate that researchers have uncovered less than 10 percent of the paintings at the site, an architectural complex called Pañamarca. Experts think that the Moche people, who lived on Peru’s northern coast and predated the Inca Empire by several centuries, constructed the site between 550 and 800 C.E. Read More…
