Archaeologists have discovered a SECRET tunnel beneath a 3,000-year-old temple in the Peruvian Andes, claiming that its architecture is completely unique.

The tunnel is one of 35 discovered beneath a temple at Chavn de Huántar, an archaeological site located 270 miles north of Lima in the north-central Andes. Chavn de Huántar, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is thought to have been occupied as early as 3000 BC, with ruins and relics going back to roughly 1200 BC. The Chavn, a prominent pre-Inca society, dominated the area between 900 and 500 BC.

According to scholars, the site served as a gathering place for the people of the region to get together and worship during the Chavn culture.

In fact, Chavn de Huántar is thought to have been a significant place for people from several adjacent regions.

Between 500 and 300 BC, the broader Chavn civilisation began to disintegrate, and the key open-air space known as the “Circular Plaza” was supplanted by a tiny town due to social instability.

A succession of cultural groups occupied the plaza over time, with occupants using building stones and carvings from the ruins to create their homes as late as the 1940s.

Archaeologists from Stanford University used a robotic camera to study a small duct uncovered in one of the remains at the Chavn de Huántar site in 2019, which led to the discovery of the new tunnel.

This effort showed the presence of a gallery with what appeared to be a central object.

The team was recently allowed to access the gallery for a better look, despite the coronavirus outbreak delaying further investigations.

These tunnels, according to the experts, predate the galleries of the upper temple and were built between 1200 and 200 BC.

“It’s a passageway, but it’s very different,” Stanford University archaeologist Dr. John Rick remarked. “It’s a different form of construction .”

“It has features from earlier periods that we’ve never seen in passageways.”

Meanwhile, the enigmatic object discovered in the 2019 camera survey was discovered to be a sculpted ceremonial stone bowl with wings on either side and a sculpture of a condor’s head.

Based on this artifact, the team has named the room where it was discovered “the gallery of the condor,” which they believe was a completely ceremonial location.

The underground tunnels of Chavn de Huántar have long been known.

In reality, the archaeological site was the inspiration for a military action that took place in Lima in December 1997.

142 Peruvian Armed Forces commandos stormed the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima in Operation Chavn de Huántar to rescue hundreds of captives abducted by 14 members of the Tpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.

To get access to the premises, the military built tunnels beneath the ambassador’s residence from nearby buildings and used explosives to burst through the floor.

Image Credit: Getty

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