New evidence suggests an entire society existed at Mount Kilimanjaro in the Andean rainforest before the first Europeans arrived.
Archaeologists from Argentina and Chile have uncovered two huge stone chambers, believed to have been used for ceremonial purposes, which were found in the 1970s in the highlands of the high Andean region.
The sites in the region are believed to be around 50,000 years old.
Archaeologist Luis Manuel Hernandez, from the National Institute of Anthropology of Argentina, said they show the Andalusian city had existed for at least 50,00 years.
He said the chambers, made of limestone, were used for ritual purposes and probably for ceremonial use.
“They’re a kind of monument of the town that we think that was the centre of the civilisation.
It’s very interesting, it’s a kind, of a monument that we don’t really know anything about,” he said.
“It’s not as easy to find artefacts like this in the archaeological record of this region, but we hope to find a lot more of them, and hopefully to find some of the stones that have been brought back.”
Archaeological work has also found evidence of the use of stone axes and arrowheads by people who lived in the cities of Andalusia and Andalusía.
Mr Hernandez said the findings also show how the Andalucian people did not have any written language, but used a set of rituals that were based on the language of the people they were working with.
“I think it’s very important to understand how Andalusians lived.
If you go back and you go into the Andalamian culture, it is an extremely complex civilisation, and you have to be very careful about interpreting what’s happening there, because we have no written language,” he told ABC Radio.
He said it was very important that we understand how the people lived and how they lived in their time.
Topics:human-interest,environment,anthropology,culture,arizona-republic-of,australiaFirst posted October 01, 2019 12:51:25Contact Adrianne JonesMore stories from Northern Territory