A thousand year old temple complex has been found in northwestern Peru, near the city of Chiclayo.

The discovery of the complex, excavated near the city of Chiclayo between 2006 and late 2009, has injected a dose of reality into the legend of Naylamp, the god who supposedly founded the pre-Inca Lambayeque civilization in the eighth century A.D., following the collapse of the Moche civilization.

That’s because evidence at the Chotuna-Chornancap archaeological site indicates the temple complex may have belonged to people claiming to have descended from Naylamp—suggesting for the first time that these supposed descendants existed in the flesh.

The sophisticated Lambayeque culture, also known as the Sicán, were best known as skilled irrigation engineers until being conquered in A.D. 1375 by the Chimú, a civilization also based along Peru’s arid northern coast.

Archaeologists have been “trying to decode the legend’s mystery” for a century, said dig leader Carlos Wester La Torre, director of the Brüning National Archaeological Museum in Lambayeque. “The goal was to understand the possible relations between the oral legend and archaeological evidence.”

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Archaeologists in Peru have found an 800-year-old tomb containing 500 nectarine seeds which are famous for its aphrodisiac properties.

Peruvian daily El Comercio reported that a ceramic vessel containing the nectarine seeds was the first clue to finding the remains of the ancient healer, who was buried near the valley of the Tucume Pyramids in northern Peru.

Archaeologist Marco Fernandez said that at first they thought it was another ceremonial burial site; but after finding more objets, they confirmed these were the remains of a shaman from the pre-Incan Lambayeque culture.

According to Marco Fernandez, the individual not only healed people but also spoke with the gods, just as shamans from the Mochica and Lambayeque cultures used to do.

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Knut Haugland, the last crewman of the Kon-Tiki voyage across the Pacific Ocean on a balsa wood raft in 1947, has died.

The explorer died of natural causes in Oslo’s hospital, the Kon-Tiki museum director said.

The expedition was launched from Peru by anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl to demonstrate that South Americans could have settled Polynesia.

The Kon-Tiki sailed with basic equipment some 8,000 km (4,900 miles).

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According to studies of corisol levels found in the hair of ancient Peruvians, one in three suffered from stress.

“By studying the lives of people using traditional archeological methods like surveying and excavation and combining that with new research techniques like sampling ancient hair specimens, we can get a good picture of what life was like and how our ancestors may have responded to life-changing experiences like illness and disease,” explains Webb.

Analysis of cortisol levels in ancient hair allows researchers to assess stress during a short, but critical, period of an individual’s life. For this pilot study, the Western researchers selected hair samples from 10 individuals from five different archaeological sites in Peru, and analyzed them in segments to determine cortisol levels.

While many of the individuals studied showed high stress levels right before death, Webb noted that a majority also experienced multiple episodes of stress throughout their final years of their life, again proving that much like today, stress was very much apart of ancient Peruvian’s daily lives.

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What is thought to be the sacred temple of Naylamp, the first ruler of the Lambayeque civilization, has been found in Peru.

The multicoloured scenes of human sacrifice in which we see armed warriors carrying decapitated heads – partially revealed in 1983 by investigator Christopher Donnan – were the clues archaeologists followed during eight months of the excavation and discovery of a sacred building.

More than a thousand years old, it is thought to be the temple of Naylamp, the supposedly mythical founder of the post-Moche civilisations in the region.

Removing the sand dunes that for centuries covered the 250 square metres that make up the temple took as many as 50 men, directed by archaeologist Carlos Wester La Torre, using only small digging tools and wheelbarrows to haul away the carefully removed sands, all in the midst of strong winds that plague the area.

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