http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/education/story/62FEB7BBE05643158625715B00209429?OpenDocumentHe helped match a skull with the remaining bones of Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro. And he led the team that excavated the oldest known village in the Americas.
Now retired University of Missouri at Columbia anthropology Professor Robert Benfer, working with a team of archaeologists, has another exciting find to add to his impressive resume: uncovering an ancient temple that he says contains the oldest sculptures and astronomically oriented structures found in the New World.
Benfer and his team uncovered the 33-foot stepped pyramid temple, the Temple of the Fox, in a 20-acre excavation site at Buena Vista, Peru. He says the temple dates to 2220 B.C. - which makes it 1,000 years older than anything of its kind previously found, he said.
The alignment of the temple with the sun and constellations on the equinox and summer and winter solstice suggests that the early Andeans used astronomical signs and constellations to guide their agricultural activities.