A 4,000-year-old, 20-foot pyramid, the oldest archaeological site near Lima, Peru, has been destroyed.
A 4,000-year-old, 20-foot pyramid, the oldest archaeological site near Lima, Peru, has been destroyed.
Real estate developers used heavy machinery to level the ruins at the El Paraiso site over the weekend. The deputy minister of cultural patrimony, Rafael Varon, told reporters his agency has filed criminal complaints against the companies involved as well as taken steps to seize their equipment. According to Varon, workers tried to destroy three other pyramids at the site before witnesses stepped in to stop them.
Nobody from either of the two companies, Alisol and Provelanz, could be reached for comment.
The director of an excavation project at El Paraiso, Marco Guilen, explained the extent of the loss: “We are not going to be able to know in what ways it was constructed, what materials were used in it and how the society in that part of the pyramid behaved.”
The site predated the rise of the Inca Empire that was encountered by the Spanish. “[These people] have committed irreparable damage to a page of Peruvian history,” Guilen said.
According to reports, the pyramids were located in an unguarded agricultural field, but are now being watched by police.
This isn’t the first time major archaeological sites and structures have been demolished. In May road builders in Belize destroyed a 2,300-year-old Mayan pyramid in order to use the crushed rock for a new highway.
These devastating blows to archeologists’ and historians’ efforts to preserve and learn from the beautiful relics of our ancient history seem all too easily executed for developers with nothing but profit and efficiency in mind.
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