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Wednesday May 23 12:03 PM ET

Peru Ruins Trace Anthropological Riddle in Sand

Reuters Photo
Reuters Photo

By Daniel Flynn

CARAL, Peru (Reuters) - On a scarp overlooking a lush valley carved
through Peru's dusty Andean foothills, archeologists 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 BC.

``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 archeologist 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, some 120 miles north of Lima in a coastal desert between
the Andes and the Pacific, predate Machu Picchu by three millennia and
are some 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 archeologist Rodolfo Peralta, 31, standing atop the biggest
pyramid, which is some 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.

RIDDLE OF ABANDONMENT

Up to 10,000 people may once have inhabited the 160-acre site at
Caral, archeologists 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 U.S. 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 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 U.S. media had played up his role.

One of the many riddles now confronting archeologists 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 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 Mayans who ruled Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras around AD
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 archeological sites in South America. Eight
more unexplored prehistoric settlements in the once-fertile Supe basin
make it of unique importance.

Researchers discovered these ruins some 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.''

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