Cool Finds

This Colorful Mural of Stars and Fish Is the First of Its Kind Found on the Coast of Northern Peru

The 3,000- to 4,000-year-old artwork decorated the wall of a temple atrium during Peru’s Formative Period

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

August 11, 2025

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Researchers in Peru have discovered a multicolored mural created by an Indigenous group more than 3,000 years ago. The artwork, which features astronomical and fishing-related motifs, is the first of its kind found on the country’s northern coast, says dig leader Ana Cecilia Mauricio, an archaeologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, in a statement.

The dig team found the mural last month, during an excavation of the Huaca Yolanda site, which is located in a valley in Peru’s northwestern coastal region of La Libertad. The three-dimensional mural once adorned the wall of an atrium in a ceremonial temple.

The mural reveals the rich symbolism of pre-Inca cultures in the region. It “has characteristics that are unique in Peruvian archaeology,” Mauricio tells Agence France-Presse (AFP). “We had never before found iconography or drawings of this type.”

The wall is a remnant of a temple from Peru’s Formative Period, an era of archaeological history that lasted from about 2000 to 1000 B.C.E. The period saw the emergence of northern Peru’s first complex societies, including the community that built Chavín de Huántar, a UNESCO World Heritage Site south of Huaca Yolanda. The exact group that created the newly discovered mural remains unidentified.

As Mauricio told RPP Noticias’ José Flores last month, the mural contains stars, fish-like figures and fishing nets. Some are decorated with blue and yellow pigments. Based on its design, Mauricio estimates the artwork is between 3,000 and 4,000 years old.

That means the mural at Huaca Yolanda was created some three millennia before the Inca—the Indigenous empire that built the Andean city of Machu Picchu in the 15th century—thrived in Peru. In Quechua, the language of the Inca, “Huaca” means a sacred place or object. The word appears in the names of many Peruvian archaeological sites designated as pre-Hispanic, meaning they predate Spain’s colonization of South America.

So far, the researchers have only partially uncovered the mural wall, which measures just over 13 feet long and nearly 5 feet tall. They have yet to reveal the bottom of the wall, which might bring its total height to closer to seven feet tall, Mauricio tells Andina, the Peruvian government’s news agency.

The mural likely stood in an atrium located near the top of a U-shaped temple. The atrium was probably buried by the same community that built it to allow for construction of a different structure on top—a common practice in ancient Peru.

Mauricio is hopeful that her team will find more of the temple belowground in future excavations. The researchers will also perform a radiocarbon analysis on the mural’s pigments to determine exactly when it was created.

Huaca Yolanda, in the Chao Valley, is known for its ancient adobe buildings. Over the years, Mauricio has seen the site increasingly placed at risk. Nearby farming operations disturb the land with heavy machinery, and looters have likely stolen artifacts from the site.

Mauricio has called on Peruvian authorities and the Ministry of Culture to protect Huaca Yolanda and its treasures. As she tells AFP, the recently discovered mural “reveals the historical and cultural wealth of the Peruvian people.”

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Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in Chicago.