Chavín de Huántar and the first pan-Andean religious cult
- Date
- c. 900 BCE
- Category
- Religion & ideology
- Region
- Andean Highlands, Peru (Ancash)
- Era
- Ancient Civilizations
- Significance
High in the Peruvian Andes at about 3,150 metres, between the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Negra, the ceremonial centre of Chavín de Huántar was founded around 900 BCE and grew into the focal sanctuary of the Chavín culture, the first religious and artistic tradition to unify much of the Andean world.
The Old Temple, built around 900 BCE, was a U-shaped platform honeycombed with narrow stone galleries and ventilation ducts, at whose heart stood the Lanzón, a 4.5-metre granite shaft carved with a fanged, anthropomorphic deity. Pilgrims drawn from across the Andes experienced a carefully engineered ritual landscape of dark passages, roaring water channels and the disorienting effects of psychoactive San Pedro cactus, designed to manifest the power of the cult's priests. Chavín's instantly recognisable iconography, jaguars, caimans, raptors and snarling composite beings, spread far beyond the site through textiles, ceramics and goldwork, while the centre anchored long-distance exchange in shell, obsidian and other prestige goods. As the earliest large-scale unifying horizon in the Andes, Chavín de Huántar laid ideological and artistic foundations on which later civilisations such as the Moche, Wari and Inca would build.
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Empires active in c. 900 BCE
- Neo-Assyrian Empire911 BCE – 609 BCE
- Zhou Dynasty1046 BCE – 256 BCE
- Kingdom of Kush1070 BCE – 350 CE
- Phoenician City-States1200 BCE – 539 BCE
- Elamite Kingdom2700 BCE – 539 BCE
Related religion & ideology events
- Construction of Solomon's Temple (First Temple) in Jerusalemc. 957 BCE
- Enuma Elish: the Babylonian epic of creationc. 1150 BCE
- Zoroaster and the rise of dualist religionc. 1200–900 BCE
- Akhenaten's Atenist revolution and the Amarna periodc. 1348 BCE
- Composition of the Rigvedac. 1500-1200 BCE
- Great Ziggurat of Ur and temple-centred religionc. 2100 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Religion
Accessible sweep of humanity's faiths and belief systems from prehistory to the present.
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