Chavin de Huantar, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was initially built by the Chavin, a pre-Inca culture, around 900 B.C. The site consists of two main structures, the Old Temple and New Temple. The Old Temple was an inward-facing U-shaped structure with a central court. The court contained obelisks and stone monuments with low relief carvings depicting jaguars, caimans, hawks and various anthropomorphic forms. The interior of the temple contains a maze of passageways, chambers and water conduits. The New Temple, constructed between 500 and 200 B.C., also contains many relief sculptures and is a more block-like form. A massive stair leads up to an elevated landing with a sunken rectangular court. Hidden passageways and platforms allowed priests to miraculously appear above their audiences.
Once considered one of the earliest large-scale ceremonial centers of the central Andes, archaeologists now realize that monumental architecture actually emerged considerably earlier in other parts of Peru. The spread of the Chavin style in media such as metallurgy, textiles, and ceramics dates to the last phase of the site (c.400-200 B.C.), when Chavin de Huantar was undoubtedly the most prestigious religious and urban center in Peru.
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