Ancient Peru Site Older, Much Larger

Seattle Times ^ | 12-23-2004 | Thomas H. Maugh

[blam]

Thursday, December 23, 2004 - Page updated at 12:03 A.M.

Ancient Peru site older, much larger

By Thomas H. Maugh II

Los Angeles Times

A Peruvian site previously reported as the oldest city in the Americas actually is a much larger complex of as many as 20 cities with huge pyramids and sunken plazas sprawled over three river valleys, researchers report.

Construction started about 5,000 years ago — nearly 400 years before the first pyramid was built in Egypt — at a time when most people around the world were simple hunters and gatherers, a team from Northern Illinois University and Chicago's Field Museum reports in today's issue of the journal Nature.

The society and its people — known only as the Andeans — persisted in virtually the same form for 1,200 years before they were overrun by more warlike neighbors. That is the longest time any known ancient civilization survived, according to archaeologist Jonathan Haas of the Field, who led the expedition.

The results greatly expand understanding of how complex states began in the Americas.

"We are seeing the emergence of centralized decision-making, government and religion out of pristine conditions," Haas said. "They were not following a pattern established by someone else. They were developing it on their own. An Andean culture was being invented in this area."

Haas said people always have thought the Americas were behind Europe, Africa and Asia in terms of developing civilizations. The new dates for the region show the two worlds developed more or less simultaneously.

The findings also are overturning the previous belief that South American civilization was based in coastal cities supported by fishing. Instead, Andean society seems to have been built primarily on cotton farming and trade, supported by fishing villages.

"There wasn't anything like this in the world as far as I can tell," Haas said.

The first city to be discovered, Caral in the Supe River Valley, about 120 miles north of Lima, lay virtually ignored for more than 100 years after its discovery, despite its nearly 100-foot-tall pyramids. It had no golden or jeweled artifacts, no pottery shards with which to date it, and no art or writing to indicate its origins.

It was not until Haas' team first reported radiocarbon dates for the site three years ago that scientists appreciated its antiquity. Those dates indicated that Caral was built about 2600 B.C., much earlier than thought possible.

A new series of dates from the Supe River Valley, as well as the nearby Pativilca and Fortaleza valleys, show construction began even earlier, about 3000 B.C.

The driving force may well have been the Humboldt Current, a broad band of cold water rich in marine life, which served as a valuable food source.

But the climate turned much drier beginning about 3100 B.C., eliminating naturally growing fruits and vegetables that villagers relied on to supplement their diet of fish. They began looking inland for new food sources, Haas said.

"They figured out that if you take water out of the rivers and put it on desert land, the desert blooms and becomes very productive," he said. In the Norte Chico region, they could do so by hand-digging short canals.

They grew guava, beans, peppers and fruits — but not the corn or potatoes that researchers previously believed necessary to support a large population. But their most important crop was cotton, which was traded to coastal villagers to make fishing nets.

Andeans were peaceful. "They didn't fight with each other, and nobody else was big enough to fight with them," Haas said.

But beginning about 1800 B.C., possibly because the soil began to lose its productivity, new buildings and monuments got smaller and the big cities began to decline. New, larger cities appeared north and south of Norte Chico.

Warfare eventually began, and Norte Chico was conquered and abandoned.

The only occupants today are scattered farmers.

[norton]

You are correct, not a 'leftist' bias but I had to lay the book down over far too many instances of bending his findings. He plays too much to a belief that, given that we all started out with the same basic equipment, there is no real difference in the value of ANY society that has come to pass. I guess that's fine if you are still living in a rain forest and eating monkeys but it ceases to apply when the neighbors from the 21 century show up.

At least a couple of postings on this thread talk the same way about 'advanced civilizations' in the Americas:
OK, there were civilizations in South America that built cities and could count their crops. They each seem to have been trounced by a long list of neighboring cultures and left only the vaguest of record. Then the whole continent (both of them) was steamrollered by foreigners who had managed to move miles beyond proto-american technology and organization in the same period of time.

As to Haas:
I'd attribute the antiquity of this pronouncement to the standard researcher's desire to find something really, really, great; not to anything that can be duplicated.

[norton]

To Strategerist
I admit I did not finish the book - as stated.
Will give another try to see if perhaps it eventually goes another direction.

[SunkenCiv]

Picked it up on the way out to the country. It's "Riddle of the Desert Mummies"...

Google

[-=Wing_0_Walker=-]

THANKS, I'll have to search

[blam]

"The Americas have had pyramids of their own and there are other similarities to the ancient Egyptians."

The pyramids in the Americas are older and bigger that those in Egypt.

[-=Wing_0_Walker=-]

I agree, Blam. I am starting to think that civilization went from the Americas to Egypt. Some theories on Atlantis place it near Peru - possible.

[blam]

" I am starting to think that civilization went from the Americas to Egypt. Some theories on Atlantis place it near Peru - possible."

You'll like this then.

Atlantis In Bolivia

[-=Wing_0_Walker=-]

Great - Thanks! They are still looking. Wish someone would find something. I'll be in PERU the end of the month. Perhaps I'll take a look see.

[piasa]

They don't know when the first pyramid was built in Egypt, though.

Apparently it was 4,600 years ago.

;-)

[SunkenCiv]

bruinbirdman got there first, just noticed this as I was searching to make sure the one I was going to post hadn't been done... [blush]

Archaeologists push back beginning of civilization in Americas 400 years
The Daily Telegraph ^ | Dec. 23, 2004 | Nic Fleming
Posted on 12/22/2004 6:09:11 PM PST by bruinbirdman
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1306976/posts

[Lando Lincoln]

I'd certainly like to be on your GGG ping list........

I recently had the opportunity to visit Peru. I spent nearly a week tromping around the ruins of various sites - including Machu Picchu. I have had the opportunity in my life to visit Egypt, the Greek isles and Greece, Italy and the Roman ruins, much of South America and a very small portion of China. For me, nothing compared to Machu Picchu and the Inca civilization. They had societal order, agriculture, engineering, etc. that was incredible. Essentially, their society remained in balance until the Spaniards arrived. At that point, the word of God, as spread by the Spaniards, largely destroyed their society. That and the illnesses brought over by the New World. But I must say, theirs was a phenomenol civilization.

Lando

[SunkenCiv]

Welcome to the Gods, Graves, Glyphs ping list.

To browse for topics, try this nice feature of the FreeRepublic:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=godsgravesglyphs

Here's the alpha list:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/1173106/posts

[vannrox]

First City in the New World?

Peru's Caral suggests civilization emerged in the Americas 1,000 years earlier than experts believed

Six earth-and-rock mounds rise out of the windswept desert of the Supe Valley near the coast of Peru. Dunelike and immense, they appear to be nature's handiwork, forlorn outposts in an arid region squeezed between the Pacific Ocean and the folds of the Andean Cordillera. But looks deceive. These are human-made pyramids, and compelling new evidence indicates they are the remains of a city that flourished nearly 5,000 years ago. If true, it would be the oldest urban center in the Americas and among the most ancient in all the world.

Research developed by Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady Solís of San Marcos University suggests that Caral, as the 150-acre complex of pyramids, plazas and residential buildings is known, was a thriving metropolis as Egypt's great pyramids were being built. The energetic archaeologist believes that Caral may also answer nagging questions about the long-mysterious origins of the Inca. Caral may even hold a key to the origins of civilizations everywhere.

What has amazed archaeologists is not just the age but the complexity and scope of Caral. Pirámide Mayor alone covers an area nearly the size of four football fields and is 60 feet tall. Inside a large sunken amphitheater, which could have held many hundreds of people during civic or religious events, Shady's team found 32 flutes made of pelican and condor bones and 37 cornets of deer and llama bones. "Clearly, music played an important role in their society," says Shady.

Eventually Caral would spawn 17 other pyramid complexes scattered across the 35-square-mile area of the Supe Valley. But based on Caral's size and scope, Shady believes that it is indeed the mother city of the Incan civilization.

[vannrox]

Caral: The Oldest Pyramids in the World

By Dr. Greg Little

The January 27, 2001 issue of Science announced the discovery of “America’s Oldest City” — Caral, located 120 miles north of Lima, Peru and 18 miles inland from the Pacific coastine. Caral is one of 18 ancient pyramid complexes located in the Supe Valley, all of which are essentially mud brick pyramid sites.Caral is a 200 acre site which has a huge plaza surrounded by six truncated pyramids. The largest pyramid has a base of 450 by 500-feet, and it stands 60 feet high. The site had three large, circular plazas, which were sunken into the ground much like a kiva. The pyramids were covered with rooms, stairs, open areas, and other structures. Like many other South American pyramids, the Caral pyramids are believed to be honeycombed with tunnels. Caral has been carbon-dated to 2727 B.C. and only one of the other related complexes has been dated. It dated at 2800 B.C. making it older than the pyramid long thought to be the oldest: the Step Pyramid of Zozer in Egypt. In addition, pyramids at the Aspero site, related to Caral, are dated to 3500 B.C. It is curious that the oldest known pyramids in the world are in S. America.

The discovery of Caral and the associated sites is forcing a major change in how archaeologists think about South America. South American archaeologists have published evidence showing that the continent was certainly inhabited by 50,000 B.C., but other evidence, including data gathered by the U.S. Geologic Survey, shows that the continent had human occupants as long ago as 300,000 B.C. More information can be found in our book, Ancient South America.

[vannrox]

Americas Oldest Urban Cities

By Giorgio Piacenza

How and why did civilization emerge? Did it happen simultaneously around the world or first in the old world and then in the Americas?

The ancient sacred citadel-complex of Caral, discovered in 1905 by archaeologist Max Uhle, basically forgotten for decades and, finally, explored from 1994 to date by Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, is a most beautiful enigma on the nature of how early civilizations started and, therefore, on what the human mind is capable of producing during the creation of urban complexity. This enigma developed in the late archaic, pre ceramic period and, until Ruth Shady came along conducting an extensive survey in situ, it was considered of lesser interest by archaeologists pressed for funds. This was due to the fact that the existence of ceramics (apparently invented in America by the Valdivia civilization of Ecuador and in Puerto Hormigas, Colombia) was considered to go hand in hand with more advanced and interesting cultures.

Dr. Ruth Shady still spends a great amount of time digging in Caral and is being helped in the U.S. by Dr. Jonathan Haas from Chicago’s Field Museum and by Dr.Winfred Creamer from Northern Illinois University. Although funds are sorely needed, the National Geographic Society and the National Museum of Natural History have contributed some and the Peruvian government is also contributing to a somewhat greater extent than in the past.

Caral’s importance for the world rests on many fascinating and intriguing facts rather than in its striking monumentality as in the case of places like Macchu Picchu or Teotihuacan. For instance, other than considering China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and Central America, we can now reliably speculate about an older original civilization in the Americas, one located in Peru and being at least 1,000 years older than Monte Alban in Mexico which, off course, lies much closer to the Straight of Bering. Roughly speaking, it is calculated that Caral was occupied between 3000BC and 2000 BC.

Curiously, the absence of weaponry or signs of armies and wars suggest that the old notion that wars played a necessary role in the development of urban settlements may not always apply. A civilization may have already enjoyed one thousand years of relative peace. A third aspect that comes to mind about Caral’s apparent unique or isolated development is the absence of comparable cultural developments in the neighborhood capable of exerting cross fertilizing influences beyond their domains. For this reason, unlike places like Egypt, the site of Caral and its surrounding, culturally connected settlements, seem to have been able to develop the essentials of urban complexity in relative isolation. What could have inspired this pre ceramic culture to brake off on its own and develop the cultural and social manifestations normally found in later historic time periods? Why did this early development take place in the Supe Valley of South America, even though South America is thought to have been colonized later than Central America? Why wasn’t Caral’s geographical region repopulated and re-utilized by subsequent important state-based civilizations with large economies?

According to some learned estimates, a fourth aspect relevant to Caral, is that it could have harbored a population of up to 3,000, sustaining itself with agriculture and barter but in the absence of major irrigation projects. This unique situation seems to have been facilitated by the ample fertile overflow of the Supe River for which reason, small drainage canals were used. In other words, perhaps mostly the essentials for comfort and minimum surplus seem to be needed to create a civilization with urban centers. Also, sharing a worldview connected to a socially binding or participatory way of life in the absence of invaders may be necessary to maintain peaceful coexistence for a very long time.

The list of unique characteristics related to Caral also includes the fact that on this site no other social group, empire or civilization buried its remnants under subsequent constructions. Unlike other ancients sites like Jericho, when Caral was abandoned it was simply covered by sand over the millennia, thus providing us today with a rare opportunity to explore the unmodified remnants of a seminal culture whose manifestations found echo in most subsequent developments of the Andean and coastal regions of Peru until the time of the Inca some 4,400 years later. Very likely, the sunken plazas, pyramid platforms and other cultural manifestations found in Caral were adopted by subsequent civilizations.

Not to be forgotten is the role religion, spirituality and ritual played in the organization of this long lasting and, apparently, peaceful cultural center. Many elaborate fire pits have been found, both in ceremonial areas and in residential ones, suggesting that fire was a favorite and continuous means to communicate with the unseen dimensions of life. Burnt textiles, quartz crystals and marine products have been found in the ceremonial fire pits. Also, three circular sunken plazas have been found, suggesting rituals in which many individuals participated or acted as spectators. The remains of a few human sacrifices have been also found suggesting that this propitiatory practice was extensive throughout the world, even during the earliest stages of a civilization that could be considered essentially peaceful. Buried female figurines have also been recovered under residences, suggesting an acceptance of beliefs associated with sympathetic magic and perhaps fertility rites.

The word “Caral” derives its name from the proximity of a small town of the same name in the Supe Valley of Lima. It may be related to a Quechua word meaning, “banquet” or “receiving people for banquets.” Ruth Shady thinks that the people from Caral may have spoken a form of pre proto Quechua.

The archaeological site of Caral itself is the largest sacred citadel-complex in the area and comprises 65 hectares. 17 other sacred-citadels complexes with similar characteristics are found in the surrounding areas extending from the Pacific Ocean coast to part of the Andes. These other sites average 10-15 hectares in size. This is a unique concentration of sacred/social centers in a wide area. The nearest three neighbors are called “Chupacigarro” “Miraga” and “Luriwasi” and the seven most recent carbon datings conducted on site in Caral itself have thrown a timeline that goes back to 2900BC, 2945 BC and 2950 BC! This means that perhaps the first stages of this outstanding site predate the building of the three main pyramids in the Giza Plateau.

Is Caral coastal or Andean? Well, it is definitely not high in the Andes as Chavin de Huantar, a later development once considered to have been the main cultural powerhouse or seeding civilization in ancient Peru. Caral is only about 15 miles inland from the coast and rests just at about 500 feet above sea level. It is also located about 113 miles north of Lima, traveling along the Panamerican Highway (take a side road due east on km 182 or one on km 152). I would say that Caral was strategically located at the beginning of the Andes but so close to the coast that it benefited as an in between station that served some of the spiritual and commercial needs of peoples from its cultural milieu and neighboring areas. The expansion of this multi-settlement civilization apparently extended at least another 25 miles inland, although the presence of jungle products like “Achiote” (or annatto seed) suggests that there was more far-reaching exchange.

The people of Caral did not cultivate corn, which had been considered as fundamental to Andean civilizations. They may have used corn for ceremonial purposes instead. Nevertheless, they did cultivate sweet potatoes, squash, ice cream beans, peanuts, lima beans, hot pepper and cotton and traded with inhabitants of contemporary coastal sites like Aspero. Guava and lucuma fruits have also been found and an important aspect of trade with fishing communities was the export of cotton used for fishing nets in exchange for clams, mussels, sardines and their favorite dried fish: anchovies. The remnants of striped tuna and sea bass have also been found but residential complexes of the elite.

Not possessing ceramics or sophisticated stone building technologies was no impediment to enjoy some of the basics of “civilized” living or for building lasting homes and temples. In the first case, cut out bottle gourds were used as pots and much cooking was done with heated stones inside holes in the ground. This technique is known as “Pachamanca” today in Peru. Also, some archaeologists believe that, instead of aspirin, these people used the leaves of willow trees. Whale vertebrae that served as seats and also pelican bone flutes and llama bone horns have been found. A comb with hair still in it was also found.

Regarding home building techniques, layers of adobe bricks were interlaced in strategic wall spots with sturdy plant material for extra resistance and flexibility. Also, during their regular remodeling practices, “shicras” or woven reed rope sacks filled with river stones were used to bury previous floor layers and to build upward, maintaining anti seismic properties. Coarse sand was placed between these floor layers. The “shicra” technique is still occasionally used in a few places in Peru.

As with other early civilizations in which specialization existed, social stratification is evident by the fact that some groups of houses are better finished than others. It also seems that Caral was ruled by a priestly class that found an effective way to maintain, as said before, about 1000 years of peace, without the use of weapons. A generalized instructing worldview, Caral’s source of order, may have been so extensive and crucial to the spiritual-religious needs of peoples from within the urban center and throughout the region that the use of force may have seemed completely unnecessary. The lack of walls surrounding this site bears witness to this fact and gives us reason to hope that human civilizations don’t need to be riddled with unending series of grave conflicts. Perhaps, due to the lack of competing ideologies, social control was exerted mostly through group and social expectations.

When one arrives to Caral one may experience a sensation of openness and harmonious building in relation to nature and to the open sky. Six large platform mounds that could also be considered pyramids surround a large central plaza where great gatherings could have taken place to bring together peoples from the neighborhood. The religion could have been astronomical due to the respect for the open sky, the use of fires to burn offerings that rise up in heat and smoke. It could also have been quite participatory in nature, considering that people could have participated not only in the large central plaza but also in and around the sunken circular plazas. 32 flutes and 38 horns but no fire pits were found in the main sunken circular plaza or amphitheater. Perhaps people from all over the area and beyond arrived to Caral requesting divination services and the leaders were oracle-priests using religion instead of force to maintain cohesion and order.

Overall, we find 32 architectural structures. Due to a mild slope, the site is roughly divided into upper and lower Caral. Four residential areas have been excavated and one of them was built next to a pyramid facing a monolith with a private stairway to the top. The houses on the outskirts used smooth pebbles in their construction and those further inside within used quarried rocks and what Peruvians call “quincha” (walls of reeds mixed with adobe).

Three pyramids are being excavated: the largest one, called “Piramide Mayor” (60 feet tall with 2 sides of 450 feet and 2 of 500 feet) is where the burial of a 20-25 year old fingerless, well-groomed, tall sacrificed man was found. Also, a medium size pyramid and a small one are being excavated. All the stairs that go up the pyramids end up in atriums or walled areas. In fact, the “Piramide Mayor” possesses 3 atriums and 2 monoliths marking something like an entrance. Also as far as has been ascertained, none of these pyramids have secret passages and they were built piling up “shicras” aided by flat face rocks. In order to enlarge the pyramid, another one was built on top. Then, pyramids were plastered and painted in pink, yellow, beige, grey and blue grey and faint remnants of these colors are visible. It is believed that groups of people related to the residential areas close to each pyramid sat in their own pyramid ceremony.

While walking around Caral I was impressed by the most elaborate fire pit that had a 6 feet 5 inch tall circular wall and a special ground level duct to strengthen the fire. I was also impressed by the beauty of the largest sunken plaza (100 feet in diameter), by the large 6.5 feet tall monolith (called Huanca and a precursor of the Solar clock or “Inti Huatana” of the Incas) standing in front of a pyramid, by the alignment of the central pyramid stairways of various pyramids with the summer solstice, by a rock painting depicting what looks like a square-headed man, and by a form of concentric, diamond shaped woven cross called “the eye of God” found in the central plaza. This last finding in particular is very interesting because extremely similar “eyes of God” can be also found in Mexico and in southwestern U.S. lands. The fact that it was found in what is supposed to be the largest public area where peoples from different communities gathered suggests that this ubiquitous magical adornment may have been brought from somewhere else.

Due to its age and uniqueness Caral definitely needs to be researched carefully and in earnest if we are to piece together important clues about our mysterious America whose role in the world is being re assessed with findings like these.

Sources:

The Archaeology Channel (www.archaeologychannel.org/caralint.html) “Caral: Oldest City in the New World: A Conversation with Ruth Shady.”

BBC Documentary: “The Lost Pyramids of Caral” January 31st, 2002.

Belsie, Civilization Lost? The Christian Science Monitor, January 03, 2002.

Mauro, “Ancient City May Predate the Mayas,” The Miami Herald, March 03, 2002

Parisi, “Creamer Makes Headlines with Peru Research”, Northern Illinois University Today, May 07, 2001.

Pringle, Archaeology: The First Urban Center in the Americas “Science Magazine” April 27, 2001, 292: 621

Shady (interview), “La Cultura Caral Es Mas Antigua De Lo Que Se Creia”, El Tiempo, June 28, 2004.

[vannrox]

On 27 April 2001 came the stunning announcement in the journal Science that the emergence of urban life and complex agriculture in the New World occurred nearly a millennium earlier than previously believed (Shady Solis et al. 2001).

Radiocarbon dates from the ancient city of Caral, in the Supe Valley of Peru 23 km from the coast, show that monumental architecture there was under construction as early as 2627 B.C. and until about 2000 B.C., even before ceramics and maize were introduced to the region. (By comparison, the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt was built between 2600 and 2480 B.C.)

Also remarkable is the enormous size of the urban complex: 65 hectares in the central zone itself, encompassing six large platform mounds (or "pyramids"), many smaller platform mounds, two sunken circular plazas, and diverse architectural features including residential districts. Caral is by far the largest recorded site in the Andean region with dates older than 2000 B.C. and appears to be the model for the urban design adopted by Andean civilizations that rose and fell over the span of four millennia

[jpsb]

Not sure I buy the 2750 B.C. for the Egyptian pyramids either, there are many that believe the great pyramids are more like 10,000 years old. But thanks for the interesting ping. I thought pyramids in South America were much younger, more like 1 A.D. Thanks for the history lesson.

[vannrox]

Six Ancient Pyramids Found in Peru
Oldest City In Americas?

CARAL Peru 5-25-01 (Reuters) - On a scarp overlooking a lush valley carved through Peru's dusty Andean foothills, archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is the oldest city in the Americas - the sacred ruins of Caral. A team from Peru's San Marcos University has painstakingly excavated the arid hillocks above the River Supe north of Lima to reveal six ancient pyramids, an amphitheater and residential complex that they have dated to as early as 2627 B.C.

In these structures of stone, mud and tree trunks we find the cradle of American civilization," said Ruth Shady, who is leading the excavations. The discovery is already being hailed as the most exciting find in Peru since 1911, when Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham stumbled on the ruined Inca citadel of Machu Picchu hidden in the clouds of the craggy Andean highlands.

Anthropologists working at Caral believe the windswept ruins 14 miles from the Pacific will provide a glimpse of the birth of urban society in the Americas and may challenge theories that the earliest civilizations settled by the sea. They say a priestly society built the stone structures here without the aid of wheels or metal tools almost a century before the Egyptians erected the Great Pyramid at Giza. The remains, 120 miles north of Lima in a coastal desert between the Andes and the Pacific, predate Machu Picchu by three millennia and are 1,100 years older than Olmec in Mexico, the oldest city in the Americas outside Peru.

I hope this will help Peruvians understand their history," said dust-caked archaeologist Rodolfo Peralta, 31, standing atop the biggest pyramid, which is 60 feet high and a staggering 500 feet long. Otherwise people will think our history is just a tale of being conquered by the Spanish," he said.

Up to 10,000 people may once have inhabited the 160-acre site at Caral, archaeologists believe, and its construction suggests a regional capital with urban planning, centralized decision making and a structured labor force. Now Andean Indians - including women with braids, black hats and traditional colored skirts - carve out a livelihood tending goats and growing corn beside the dirt track that connects Caral to the nearest town an hour's drive away.

Despite the hardships of working in the blazing sun and living in an isolated farmhouse with no electricity or running water, the sunburned, bearded Peralta brims with enthusiasm. For a nation subjugated by 16th-century Spanish conquistadors who ransacked its rich indigenous culture in a frenzied lust for gold, such discoveries testify to the long heritage of what Europeans dubbed the "New World.

The once-in-a-lifetime find has sparked acrimony in the international academic community. Shady accuses American anthropologist Jonathan Haas of Chicago's Field Museum of trying to steal the credit for seven years of her hard work. The problem is that he has now presented Caral as his discovery, when my team has been investigating here since 1994, sleeping on the ground and working tirelessly to uncover it," an irate Shady said in her cluttered Lima office. Haas helped Shady carbon-date reed matting from Caral last year after he became interested in the site in 1996. The two co-wrote a paper in the April 27 edition of Science magazine.

I think there has been a misunderstanding. I never wanted to take any credit from Ruth for her discovery," Haas told Reuters by telephone from Chicago, adding that U.S. media had played up his role. One of the many riddles now confronting archaeologists at Caral is why the inhabitants abandoned the settlement. Like all pre-conquest civilizations in Peru, the people here left no written records, and the settlement at Caral was too early even to have ceramics or more than the most basic tools.

One theory is that a drought produced a famine, which forced the city dwellers to move on," said Peralta, noting that residents painted many buildings black in the final stage of habitation, after originally coloring them white for purity. Subsequent civilizations never occupied the site but apparently revered it, leaving gold and silver offerings at its perimeters. South America's most advanced pre-conquest civilization, the Incas, built temples on its outskirts. Inhabitants of Caral also apparently believed the buildings were divine, dotting their homes and temples with tiny alcoves filled with dried-mud figurines and small sacred bonfires. Excavations have also exhumed a skeleton from the walls of one home, which was buried there rather than sacrificed.

BURYING THE DEAD

As with the Maya who ruled Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras around A.D. 300, the construction of religious pyramids suggest the existence of a theocracy, but the inhabitants of Caral differed by living in their ceremonial centers, Peralta said.

Rooms and courtyards on top of the terraced mounds suggests they had both religious and administrative purposes. Varied housing also suggest a stratified society, with different residential areas for the priestly and laboring classes.

There are also signs Caral had the earliest-known system of crop irrigation in the Americas. Coastal artifacts, including 32 pipes made of pelican bones and copious anchovy and sardine bones, suggest the residents may have traded their cotton and fruit crops with fishing communities in return for food.

Researchers expect to learn much more about the daily lives of the people when they discover the city's cemetery. You can tell a lot from a culture from the way they bury their dead," Peralta said as the sun set behind a pyramid over corn fields in the valley below.

Peru has by far the most archaeological sites in South America. Eight more unexplored prehistoric settlements in the once-fertile Supe basin make it of unique importance. Researchers discovered these ruins 100 years ago, and Peralta criticized the impoverished Andean nation's government, which has put culture "bottom of the list" for spending.

With a team of only four laborers from a local village, progress is slow, but Peralta believes the picturesque ruins at Caral could vie with Machu Picchu for tourist attention. It would be good for the world to hear something about Peru other than political scandals," he said, referring to a decade of corruption under ex-President Alberto Fujimori. "But let's not bring the devil into paradise.

April 2001 - An ancient city in what is now Peru was built at the same time as the great pyramids of Egypt, archaeologists have revealed. New evidence indicates the desert site at Caral, on the slopes of the Andes, was built between 2,600 BC and 2,000 BC. What we're learning from Caral is going to rewrite the way we think about the development of early Andean civilisation Jonathan Haas, Field Museum in Chicago

This date pushes back the emergence of the first complex society in the New World by nearly 800 years. And it suggests that the people behind the project were advanced enough to organise the labour needed to create the architectural wonder of the day. Caral is one of 18 sites in central Peru's Supe Valley, which stretches eastward from the Pacific coastline, up the slopes of the Andes. Earth pyramids All the inland settlements once had architecture on a grand scale, including the six huge platform mounds seen at Caral. Because of its size and complexity, archaeologists had thought Caral was built about 1,500 BC. But carbon dating of plant samples found at the site add another 1,000 years or so to this figure.

That puts Caral in the same period as the great pyramids of Egypt, and long before the huge stone structures of Mexico. "What we're learning from Caral is going to rewrite the way we think about the development of early Andean civilisation," said study leader Jonathan Haas of the Field Museum in Chicago, US. The Peruvian-American archaeological team says the pyramids and irrigation system show an organised society in which masses of people were paid, or compelled, to work on centralised projects. This suggests that power and wealth were held by an elite group at a time when, in most of the Americas, people were still hunting and gathering in much smaller communities.

"The size of a structure is really an indication of power," said Haas. "It means that leaders of the society were able to get their followers to do lots of work." What is surprising to archaeologists is that the city was created by a society that had yet to invent pottery or cultivate grain. Its people grew peppers, beans, avocadoes and potatoes - all of which they roasted, having no pots to boil them in. They also ate lots of anchovies, which may have been used in dried form as a kind of currency, as grain was later. The research is published in the journal Science.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks VR. :')

[ForGod'sSake]

Just wow. For purposes of discussion, what force(s) would cause ancient peoples to congregate in large cities. Same as today maybe, it's where the "good" jobs are? Self defense? Centralized location for trading groups? Farmers co-op?

The fact, apparently, the valley was never occupied again is curious. Must have been some bad mojo for people not to resettle what appears to be an ideal area. An epidemic of some kind might have gotten the place some bad press? In my mind, these discoveries seem to raise more questions than they answer. Progress, eh?

And the priestly elites may have been elected for all we know ;^)

FGS