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Chavín De Huántar Overview of the Old Temple Our first view of the temple is facing the Old Temple. It consists of a number of rectangular structures up to 12 meters in height which appear to be platforms of solid masonry. These structures are honeycombed with interior passages and small rooms, roofed with large slabs of stone and connected with each other and with the open air by an effective system of ventilating ducts. The old Temple placed a sunken circular court in the arms of a U-shaped building. The circular courtyard, discovered by Luis Lumbreras in 1972, sinks below the surface of the surrounding courtyard by two and a half meters and measures 21 meters in diameter. Above these feline, rectangular sculptures are a series of vertical slabs depicting anthropomorphic, elaborately costumed beings, again in pairs forming a procession toward the main stairway. Typical Chavín motifs such as jaguars, strombus shell, fanged faces with clawed hands and hair of snakes, as well as San Pedro, an Andean hallucinogenic plant, are depicted in these sculptures. Additions, such as the east-west stairway entrances to the plaza being wedge shaped, were not partical but can be seen as typical Chavin flourishes. Bibliography Burger,
Richard L. Chavín and the Origins of Andean Civilization. Thames and Hudson:
London, 1992.
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