Oldest religious icon in Americas

(BBC - News)

According to archaeologists, it pushes back the dawn of religion in the region by 1,000 years.
The fragment of a bowl dated to about 4,000 years ago bears the image of the Staff God, the main deity in the Andes for thousands of years.

The figure was found at a looted cemetery on the coast of Peru, 120 miles north of Lima.

The area appears to have been the ancestral home of pre-Inca civilisation.

'Icon'

"Like the cross, the Staff God is a clearly recognisable religious icon," said Jonathan Haas, MacArthur curator of North American anthropology at The Field Museum, Chicago.

"This appears to be the oldest identifiable religious icon found in the Americas.

"It indicates that organised religion began in the Andes more than 1,000 years earlier than previously thought."

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