Unfortunately, this information is not reliable, since the piece was found by looters, who tend to lie about the provenience of archaeological finds because of possible legal implications or to maintain secret the location of sites containing valuable artifacts.

[1] Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana (The Ecuadorian House of Culture) published a picture of the golden sun in a 1953 bulletin.

[1] In 1960, the Central Bank of Ecuador bought Max Konanz's collection and adopted the Golden sun as its logo.

[2] The change in the provenance of the piece from Chunucari to La Tolita was the cause of many discussions, for this reason, the Central Bank carried out chemical studies in both Golden suns in 2001 and 2002.

[1] In the Golden sun of La Tolita, the ears are two concentric semicircles from which three lines are born that presumably represent earrings.

[1] On the other hand, in the Golden sun of Estrada, the ears consist of a double spiral placed backwards.

This typological inconsistency was pointed out by archaeologist Karen Olsen Bruhns to suggest the possibility that this piece is fake.

[1] The art historian Costanza Di Capua pointed out the existence of very similar figures in other pieces of La Tolita to argue that this culture was the origin place of the golden sun.

These are an artistic element of South American prehistory that consists of turning the long and thin appendages of any piece into snakes.

[1][5] In order to know whether the origin of the Golden sun is the one indicated by Mr. Ariolfo Vásquez (the province of Azuay) or if it comes from the Ecuadorian or Colombian coast, the Central Bank ordered physical-chemical analyzes to be carried out on the two golden suns and several samples from pre-Columbian goldsmith pieces from Ecuador.

This led to the hypothesis that they were made in the same workshop, which contradicts the supposed forgery of the Golden sun of Estrada.

[6] A second chemical composition study was carried out in 2018 in order to verify the authenticity of the Konanz Sun due to rumors that it had been stolen.