MU researcher discovers animal effigy mounds in Peru

A University of Missouri researcher is making international news after he released a series of images and findings that reveal prehistoric animal effigy mounds in South America. It's the first time anyone has identified the piles of rocks and soil as effigies, says Bob Benfer, who stumbled on the discovery by accident. Benfer, who is retired from teaching but still conducts research, was using Google Earth to scan satellite images of Peru for an unrelated project. That's when he noticed from a mound shaped like a condor. Animal effigy mounds dating back some 1,200 years are known to exist in the central United States and several now double as state parks. In Iowa, for instance, there are 191 known prehistoric mounds, 29 of which are bears or birds, located in Effigy Mounds National Monument, according to that state's Department of Natural Resources. They're thought to have been used in religious ceremonies or to track time and seasons. Benfer's discovery shows ancient civilizations were sculpting giant animal shapes as early as 4,000 years ago — about the same time the pyramids were being built in Egypt. Benfer said when he first saw the bird-like image from an aerial view, he was skeptical and thought it might be a "huge coincidence." But when he began to find more animal shapes looking down at Peru, he traveled to the sites to check them out. He's since found dozens of small effigy mounds and about 10 large ones, including a mound shaped like an orca — a killer whale that hunted off the Peruvian cost before industrial fishing removed their prey. In another large mound, Benfer found the shape of a puma monster that also shows up in art and drawings from prehistoric Peruvian cultures. That mound included carvings of teeth that locals thought were irrigation canals. Benfer believes the mounds were used as astronomical orientations — the Milky Way is directly overhead of that area. Last week, he released images and findings to the journal Antiquity. He's trying to spark interest from residents in that area in hopes that the mounds will be preserved rather than bulldozed — which has happened to most of the animal effigy mounds in the United States. In the 19th century, he said, there were 10,000 animal effigy mounds in the United States. "They're being removed before my very eyes," Benfer said. Farmers and developers "don't think they're important, so they're being destroyed very rapidly now." Benfer thinks the latest identified animal effigy mounds could be a tourist draw for Peru. The mounds are among his top discoveries, but the longtime archeologist has made other major finds. In 2006, he discovered a 4,200-year-old observatory high in the Peruvian Andes used to mark summer and winter solstices.