Santa Ana (La Florida)

Santa Ana (La Florida) is an important archaeological site in the highlands of Ecuador, going back as early as 3,500 BC.

[1] This ancient settlement is located on the eastern slope of the Andes, in a transitional zone between the highlands and the lowland jungles in a narrow Palanda River valley.

This represents a discovery of a new ancient culture in the Chinchipe river basin on the border of present-day Ecuador and Peru.

One of the two artificial platforms features a temple with a spiral configuration, and a ceremonial hearth, where a cache of greenstone offerings had been found.

"Several tombs have been documented with fine ceramic vessels; exquisite polished stone bowls and mortars, as well as hundreds of turquoise and malachite beads fragments of Strombus sea shells, and small sculptures.

The scholars used three independent lines of archaeological evidence (cacao starch grains, absorbed theobromine residues and ancient DNA dating) to confirm their findings.