Montegrande (archaeological site)

Montegrande is an exciting old place in Peru where people found a big, special building made a very long time ago, around 3000 BC. It is in a place called the Cajamarca department, in Jaén province, and in the Jaén District of Peru. This special building looks like a spiral and was made by people who lived near where Peru and Ecuador meet today.

The Montegrande site is very important because it is about 5,000 years old, which makes it older than another famous old place called Caral. You can find Montegrande just outside a town named Jaén in Peru. Learning about places like Montegrande helps us understand how people lived many, many years ago.

Excavations

Excavations at Montegrande began in 2009, supported by the Andean Community. A team of Ecuadorian and Peruvian archaeologists worked together to explore the site. Before this, people thought the hills in the area were just natural land with some old remains from the Bracamoros culture. But no one had imagined such ancient buildings could be hidden there.

At Montegrande, workers cleared away trash and modern buildings to uncover yellow steps and floors. Under a layer of clay and pebbles, they found the remains of a large spiral-shaped building. At other nearby sites, more discoveries were made, including special murals and signs that people were growing cocoa thousands of years ago, much earlier than previously believed. This ancient culture is now called the Mayo-Chinchipe, and its home stretches from Podocarpus National Park in Ecuador to near Bagua, Peru.

Spiral construction

The spiral enclosure of Montegrande was built using adobe and rounded stones. People believe it may have been a special place for ceremonies, and there might have been a tomb underneath for someone important, like a healer or a priest.

Spirals were very meaningful to people in the Andean world. They might have stood for a coiled snake, an idea seen in other nearby places. The spiral shape is also found in the famous Nazca Lines, like the monkey geoglyph. This shape matches that of a special shell called Spondylus, from the coast of Ecuador, showing that people traded with those areas.