THE archeologist Bob Benfer will never forget the moment when he
realised that a pyramid he had unearthed high in the Andes was the
New World's oldest alarm clock.



On a barren hillside just north of Lima, he had found an observatory
more than 4,000 years old that had been built by a lost civilisation
with astonishing sophistication.

The oldest astronomical observatory in the Americas, it told farmers
exactly when to sow their crops. Its discovery has provided startling
clues to the way in which early man learnt to cultivate his fields.

"I was staring up at a statue on a ridge above the temple and
realised it all aligned with the stars — it was an amazing moment,"
the bearded scientist said last week.

"This alignment meant that at dawn at every winter solstice 4,200
years ago, key stars would appear in line with the temple and alert
priests that river flooding was due and it was time to start planting
crops. It was laid out as a wake-up call to the community."

Other archeologists now believe that Benfer, 67, has found a temple
built in 2200BC, which proves that the ancient Andeans were familiar
with the movements of the stars long before the ancient Britons
finished Stonehenge, which many believe is linked to the heavens.

Benfer stumbled across the temple while trawling through a green
valley floor in search of information about ancient diets. Working
with a number of Peruvian colleagues, he unearthed a 30ft-high
pyramid that had once been brightly painted red and white. He
believes that it served its community, known as the Kotosh people,
for 800 years.

The 20-acre site is dominated by two buildings. The northern pyramid,
which Benfer has called the Temple of the Fox after a painting of the
animal, is built around a priests' platform.

This points at 114 degrees directly to an 8ft tall carved head on a
mountain ridge nearly 200ft away. On December 21 each year, just
before the local River Chillon starts flooding, a constellation known
to Andeans as the fox swings into the sightline. According to Andean
myth, the fox is the creature that taught farmers how to cultivate
plants.

To the south, another temple holds a scowling clay head, which Benfer
believes represents the earth goddess Pachamama. It aligns with stars
that line up when the harvest is due to be gathered.

Larry Adkins, professor of astronomy at Cerritos College in
California, said that such alignments were beyond coincidence: "They
may not be precise by modern standards, but they are close enough to
allow the priests to produce a theatre of predictions."