The most famous such monument, a stela called ‘El Lanzón’ (‘the lance’), is a shaft of granite over thirteen feet tall, around which the Old Temple of Chavín was constructed. A well-lit replica of the stela, often assumed to represent a god who is also the axis mundi, or a central pillar connecting the polar ends of a shamanic universe, has pride of place in Peru’s Museo de la Nación; but the 3,000-year-old original still resides at the heart of a darkened maze, illuminated by thin slats, where no single viewer could ever grasp the totality of its form or meaning.
