ART on view A Return to Chavín de Huántar’s History What exactly was Chavín de Huántar? The first account of it was provided in 1623 by Carmelite Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, who describes the ruins he had seen a few years earlier: “Near the village of Chavín, there is a large edifice of considerable proportions, made of stone and very well built. This is one of the pagans’ most important sanctuaries, much like Rome or Jerusalem are to us. The Indians came to this place from all parts of the kingdom to perform their sacrifices, and the demons would respond 74 to their requests. There are large subterranean galleries that, it is said, pass beneath the waterway that flows nearby.” This account is quite precise—although none of the galleries inside the Old Temple pass beneath the river, but they may have been used for fertility rituals by diverting smaller streams into them. Importantly, it tells us that even in the seventeenth century, the ruins of Chavín de Huántar were a place to which the native population came to perform its rituals. Three centuries later, the first archaeologist to study the site described the Chavín de Huántar culture as the “mother” of all ancient Peruvian cultures, maintaining that the cultural traits that would define and characterize the following centuries first developed there. Today, this role of “mother” to all Peruvian cultures has been reduced to more reasonable proportions through research that has shown that there were many other even older centers, especially along the coast, that might have been of similar importance. This site happens to be well preserved due to its monumental stone architecture, which protected it from the ravages of time and weather and enabled it to fare far better than sites FIGS. 21 and 22: Taking measurements using laser scanning in oblique light, Chavín, 2012. Photo © ArcTron 3D. FIG. 23 (right): 3D reconstruction of the four sides of the Lanzón, the main deity. Graphics: Museum Rietberg and ArcTron 3D.
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