"It was amazing," says Ynoñán, a research scientist in the Negaunee Integrative Research Center at the Field Museum in Chicago. "This discovery tells us about the early origins of religion in Peru. We still know very little about how and under which circumstances complex belief systems emerged in the Andes, and now we have evidence about some of the earliest religious spaces that people were creating in this part of the world."

Peru's most famous archaeological site, the citadel of Machu Picchu, was built by the Inca Empire about 600 years ago, in the 15th century AD. The newly-discovered temple predates Machu Picchu by roughly 3,500 years, and was made long before the Inca and their predecessors, including the Moche and Nazca cultures.

"We don't know what these people called themselves, or how other people referred to them. All we know about them comes from what they created: their houses, temples, and funerary goods" says Ynoñán.

Ynoñán and his team were made aware of the new archaeological site, La Otra Banda, Cerro Las Animas, in 2023. The local government reached out to alert them to looting that had been taking place near the historic town of Zaña, and called on them to study the area before it was destroyed. Supporters including Dumbarton Oaks, Archaeology in Action, and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru raised funds to excavate the site, and the archaeologists began digging in June 2024.