Archaeologists solve mystery and find over 1,000-year-old mural in Peru

A team of Peruvian archaeologists led by a researcher from Switzerland has rediscovered an important historic find in Illimo, in northern Peru: a thousand-year-old illustrated mural, which had last been seen more than a century ago.

With about 10 meters still preserved and full of paintings, the wall known as Huaca Pintada was originally unveiled in 1916. At the time, the group of relic hunters who found it wanted to sell the architectural work.

Barred by the residents of the region, they saw the possibility of profiting from the mural being frustrated and ended up destroying a good part of the 18 meters of wall remaining at the time —according to archaeologists, the construction was up to 30 meters when it was erected, in mid-900 AD

German ethnographer Hans Heinrich Brüning managed to photograph the wall still intact at the time, and after relic hunters left the region, Huaca Pintada was practically forgotten for over a hundred years—the work was only seen in Brüning’s images.

“The coordinates of the location of the mural were known, but the place was completely abandoned”, he tells the Sheet Swiss archaeologist Sâm Ghavami, whose postdoctoral work at the University of Fribourg culminated in the rediscovery of Huaca Pintada.

He reports that the archaeological site is on what is now private property and that “the owners didn’t want anyone digging in the land.” After visiting the region for the first time in 2014 —he has been working in the South American country for more than a decade—, it took the specialist two years to gain access to the site and finally start the research, in 2018, with support from the National Foundation for Swiss Science.

Since obtaining authorization, the search for Huaca Pintada has effectively taken two years. “It was always a big mystery because no one had really explored the terrain,” he says.

The property is cut in half by a road, and when excavations began in 2019, the team was unlucky enough to choose the wrong side of the lot — nothing related to the mural was found in this first phase. “It was only last year [2021] that we found painted fragments of the wall.”

According to the Swiss, the excavation point was a small mound in the shape of a pyramid, completely covered by forest. The first task, then, was to remove the vegetation.

Little by little with the excavations, evidence and clues came to light, indicating that the archaeologists were stepping on the correct coordinates. They expected, however, to find only fragments of the Huaca Pintada. “We didn’t think there would be 10 meters of wall,” says Ghavami.

On the surface of the mural, according to the Swiss, a “profound scene of regional mythology” is represented: a deity, surrounded by about 20 warriors who march towards her; above, a river and some fish. “It looks like she’s somehow controlling forces of nature,” he explains.

The iconography represented on the mural refers to a period of transition between two ethnic groups. According to the archaeologist, the mural was built between the decline of the Mochica tradition, which lasted between 300 and 700 AD, and the effervescence of the Lambayeque culture, established from 980 to 1300.

From the discovery, Ghavami intends to elucidate the transition phase of these Peruvian ethnic groups and explain what were the mechanisms that led them to restructure after a period of crisis and social upheaval.