Chavin (Archaeological Site)

Between 1500 and 300 BC, a religious culture radiated from this high valley in the Peruvian Andes — a culture that now bears the site's name: Chavin. Terraces and sunken plazas framed by dressed-stone buildings still carry ornament dominated by animal forms, feline fangs and coiling serpents cut into the rock. Among the earliest and most celebrated pre-Columbian sites, Chavin was inscribed by UNESCO in 1985.