A large votive plaque with a cosmographic function, whose symbolic space is entirely dotted with numerous finely crafted cupules and is clearly delineated in several zones by slightly incised lines forming a pattern, with a delimitation symbolised by an elegant furrow running along all the edges.

The meaning of engraved stones of this type, which are almost always rectangular in shape and which here are very large and exceptionally decorated on both sides, remains unknown to this day, but it seems that the motifs represented can be considered as an evocation linked to the cosmos and to a divinatory system based in part on astrology.

The motifs represented here are among the most complex models known, with an inner space clearly framed by a thin incised border and divided into 4 subspaces, which are themselves separated into two parts by a symmetrical diagonal.

It might be of interest to know that these first settlers in the Americas left records in stone called “Cosmograms” (left), a term referring to ideograms related to space—a pictographic writing system and the first in America, is about the inherent relationship between the stars and Earth. Many of these cosmograms with anthropomorphic characteristics or geometric engravings have been unearthed at this ancient site and appear to be a pictographic writing system—the first in the Americas. Pieces of broken cosmograms and other artifacts show symbols that were later used throughout South and Central America, all of which can be traced back to these Valdivian renderings (a collection of which is housed in a private museum in Quito).

Comparing certain Valdivian cosmograms (many collected over the years by artist and sculpture Eduardo Maldonado) with the primitive divinatory calendar used throughout Mesoamerica until recently, where the dotted bands were recorded in pictograms related to this 260-day ceremonial calendar, it becomes apparent that the origins of the divinatory calendar seem likely to have been with the Valdivians, not those of Mesoamerica. Roots of many other American myths, legends, songs, and derived religions probably also had the same common ancestry as the Valdivians, who seem to have come from the Caucuses—the hills just north of the Jaredite homeland in Mesopotamia between the Black Sea and the Caspian that would have been developed by cousins to the Jaredites.