"Spider God" Temple in Peru

Look closer.

People of the Cupisnique culture, which thrived from roughly 1500 to 1000 B.C., built the temple in the Lambayeque valley on Peru's north coast. The adobe temple, found this summer and called Collud, is the third discovered in the area in recent years. ^[1]

"They were associated with divination of rainfall because spiders come out before rain," said (Richard) Burger, an archaeologist at Yale University who was not involved with the Lambayeque excavation. The spider deity was also associated with textiles, hunting, war, and power, Burger added. "There is an image of spider deities holding nets filled with decapitated human heads, so there was an analogy with successful warriors and claims of power." ^[2]

The carved image of the spider god has a spider's neck and head, the mouth of a large cat, and a bird's beak.