Biography of Julio Cesar Tello

(1880/04/11 - 1947/06/03)

Julio Cesar Tello

Physician and Peruvian archaeologist

He was born on April 11, 1880 in Huarochirí, Peru.
His parents, Julián Tello and María Asunción Rojas de Tello were peasants.
Graduated on November 16, 1908, with the thesis "Antiquity of syphilis in the Peru", degree obtained by acclamation at the Faculty of medicine of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. He received his doctorate in Anthropology from Harvard University, United States, in 1911.
He served as Deputy for Huarochiri before Congress of the Peru between 1917 and 1929. He founded the Museum of Peruvian archaeology in 1924. He discovered the Chavin and Paracascultures. He argued that the native cultures of the Peru are the product of the experience of the man in this land and not by foreign influence. Performs research and voyages of exploration by all the Peru.
The cornerstone of his theory is the "Chavin culture" (1,500 a.n.e.), which was considered as a matrix of Peruvian cultures pre-Hispanic. The investigations show that the cultural route of the man in the Peru began thousands of years before Chavin, and although it was not exactly as proposed by Tello, if the native origin of the Peruvian culture has been fully demonstrated.
Julio Cesar Tello died in Lima on June 3, 1947 and was buried in the gardens of the National Museum of archaeology and anthropology, Magdalena Vieja.