Photo Gallery

The legends are only available in German, French or Spanish
On ne peut qu'admirer, dans la Vallée sacrée, l'imposante entrée d'un palais d'0llantaytambo. Sans doute les tenons qui ressortent de cet incroyable «jeu de cubes» ont-ils servi à soulever et à mettre en place d'énormes monolithes aux angles parfaitement jointurés.

The legends are only available in German, French or Spanish
Entre Cuzco et Abancay, à 3500 mètres d'altitude, surgit un fascinant monolithe! Sculptés dans un dôme de lave haut de plus de 2 mètres, entre des «temples, des lagunes-réceptacles et des canaux, ressortent quelque deux cents figures allégoriques: morts allongés, pumas, serpents, vigognes, singes, lézards, crapauds, scorpions. Peut-être la «maquette» en pierre de Sayhuite était-elle liée à des sortilèges et à des rites de pluviomagie...

In Abada, between Zouar and Faya in Chad, there is a curious, very ancient necropolis where the gender of the buried dead is expressed by the shape of the flat stone stelae, about 1.30 metres high. Those intended for men are rounded at the top, while those for women have a slight cleft in the centre of the crown. The survival of this custom is attested in several countries, but here it is very old, certainly pre-Islamic ... This emphasis on sexual dimorphism is undoubtedly related to magic, for it is now very rarely found among developed peoples. - Zouar - Tibesti - Chad - 1967

Monolithic statues from the "archaeological park" of San Agustín (Huila department, Colombia). The heyday of this culture is assumed to be around the birth of Christ: when the Spaniards arrived, it had long since ceased to exist. - Tumulus 8 - The figure is 60 cm high, holding two fish in her hands. - 1977

Monolithic statues from the "archaeological park" of San Agustín (Huila department, Colombia). The heyday of this culture is assumed to be around the birth of Christ. - Tumulus B - The crocodile measures 2.40 m x 0.96 m - 1977

Monolithic statues from the "archaeological park" of San Agustín (Huila department, Colombia). The heyday of this culture is assumed to be around the birth of Christ. - Statue with a vessel in his hands. - 1977

The Raimondi Stele is a 1.95-metre-high, finely carved granite monolith from the pre-Columbian Chavín culture of Peru (c. 900–550 BC), which is now housed in the National Museum in Lima. It depicts the so-called ‘Staff God’ – an anthropomorphic, feline deity holding a staff or sceptre in each hand. The relief is designed in such a way that, when viewed from the opposite perspective (upside down), completely different figurative faces and symbols can be discerned. It is named after the Italian scholar Antonio Raimondi, who discovered it in the 19th century at the archaeological site of Chavín de Huántar. – Peru – 1976

Chavín culture, Peru – Detail of the lower part of the Raimondi stele. Considered a masterpiece of this culture, the stele is 74 centimetres wide, 195 centimetres high and 17 centimetres thick. First described by A. Raimondi at the end of the 19th century, the stele served as a table for a farmer for many years; fortunately, it was turned upside down, meaning that the engravings are exceptionally well preserved and were also spared by the landslides that repeatedly buried the Chavín site. The figure in this detail is sometimes interpreted as a human with big cat attributes, and at other times as a feathered cat god. When turned upside down, a second face appears, formed from the mouth and chin of the upright figure. Museo Nacional de Antropología y Arqueología, Lima, Peru. - 1976

The Ponce Monolith is a well-preserved stele, carved from a single block of andesite, situated in the inner courtyard of the Kalasasaya Temple at the pre-Inca archaeological site of Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) in Bolivia. The statue features delicate, complex geometric and zoomorphic reliefs (such as sun, fish and condor motifs) as well as a mask-like facial form. The monolith is named after the Bolivian archaeologist Carlos Ponce Sanginés, who uncovered it in 1957. – Bolivia – 1976