Sacred City of Caral-Supe

[The Seeker]

Sacred City of Caral-Supe

Quite an amazing site  it amazes me that, as well known as Puma Punku and Chicen Itza, or Macchu Picu are, there is very little talk about this amazing site...

The 5000-year-old 626-hectare archaeological site of The Sacred City of Caral-Supe is situated on a dry desert terrace overlooking the green valley of the Supe river. It dates back to the Late Archaic Period of the Central Andes and is the oldest centre of civilization in the Americas. Exceptionally well-preserved, the site is impressive in terms of its design and the complexity of its architectural, especially its monumental stone and earthen platform mounts and sunken circular courts. One of 18 urban settlements situated in the same area, Caral features complex and monumental architecture, including six large pyramidal structures. A quipu (the knot system used in Andean civilizations to record information) found on the site testifies to the development and complexity of Caral society. The city's plan and some of its components, including pyramidal structures and residence of the elite, show clear evidence of ceremonial functions, signifying a powerful religious ideology.

There are some very good photos at the gallery link 

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1269/gallery/

Brief Synthesis

The Sacred City of Caral-Supe reflects the rise of civilisation in the Americas. As a fully developed socio-political state, it is remarkable for its complexity and its impact on developing settlements throughout the Supe Valley and beyond. Its early use of the quipu as a recording device is considered of great significance. The design of both the architectural and spatial components of the city is masterful, and the monumental platform mounds and recessed circular courts are powerful and influential expressions of a consolidated state.

Criterion (ii): Caral is the best representation of Late Archaic architecture and town planning in ancient Peruvian civilisation. The platform mounds, sunken circular courts, and urban plan, which developed over centuries, influenced nearby settlements and subsequently a large part of the Peruvian coast.

[The Seeker]

Article written by Phillip Coppens (R.I.P.) for Eye of The Psychic

https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/caral/

Caral: the oldest town in the New World

    Feature Articles –   Caral: the oldest town in the New World
    In 2001, the oldest town in South America was officially announced. Dating to 2600 BC, it pushed back the date for the "first town" with one millennium. What is even more intriguing, is that the town of Caral has pyramids, contemporary with the Egyptian Pyramid Era.
    by Philip Coppens



    Sometime before 3200 BC, if not 3500 BC, something happened in the Norte Chico in Peru, an agronomical no-go area, where hardly anything grows. This, however, is the site where the oldest traces of a "genuine civilisation" – pyramids included – were found in America.



    Here, at least 25 large ceremonial/residential sites have so far been found, of which Caral has become the most famous. The North Chico, roughly 100 km north of the Peruvian capital Lima, consists of four narrow river valleys, from south to north, the Huaura, Supe, Pativilca, and Fortaleza. The ancient pyramids of Caral predate the Inca civilisation by 4000 years, but were flourishing a century before the pyramids of Gizeh. No surprise therefore that they have been identified as the most important archaeological discovery since the discovery of Machu Picchu in 1911.



     The first full-scale archaeological investigation of the region took place in 1941 in Aspero, when Gordon R. Willey and John M. Corbert of Harvard investigated a salt marsh at the mouth of the Supe. They found a big trash heap and a multiroomed building with no pottery and a few maize cobs under the pounded clay floor. They wondered how maize could have been cultivated in a salt marsh and why these people could have agriculture, yet no pottery. Willey and Corbett also found six mounds, some of them nearly five metres tall. They were catalogued as "natural eminences of sand".



    Thirty years later, Willey, in the company of Michael E. Moseley, revisited the site and realised that these "natural eminences" were in fact "temple-type platform mounds". He also realised there might have been as many as seventeen such mounds, all of which Willey had missed on his first exploration of the site. "It is an excellent, if embarrassing, example of not being able to find what you are not looking for", he commented later. As to its age: carbondating revealed that Aspero could go back to 3000 BC, whereby samples from a nearby site even revealed a date of 4900 BC. Those objective findings were nevertheless seen as impossible – far too old with "what was known" and hence not accepted. Caral is located 14 miles inland from Aspero. Even though Caral was discovered in 1905, it was quickly forgotten as the site rendered no gold or even ceramics. It required the arrival of Ruth Shady Solis in Caral in 1994 before a genuine paradigm shift would occur. She is a member of the Archaeological Museum of the National University of San Marcos in Lima.



    Since 1996, she has co-operated with Jonathan Haas, of the American Field Museum. Together, they have found a 150-acre array of earthworks, which includes six large platform mounds, one twenty metres high and more than one hundred on a side. But Shady Solis did not make the same mistake Willey had made: she felt that the "pyramids" were just that: they were not natural hills, as some of her predecessor had catalogued the structures of Caral. Her subsequent research led to the announcement, in the magazine Science on April 27, 2001, of the carbon dating of the site, which revealed that Caral had been founded before 2600 BC. The "impossible" carbondating results of Aspero now seemed more likely... and Caral had become the oldest city in the "New" World, older than the Gizeh pyramids. What is Caral like? The site is in fact so old that it predates the ceramic period, the reason why no pottery was found. Its importance resides in its domestication of plants, especially cotton, but also beans, squashes and guava.

Full article at the link

[ArMaP]

Quite an amazing site  it amazes me that, as well known as Puma Punku and Chicen Itza, or Macchu Picu are, there is very little talk about this amazing site...

It's no surprise, many people complain about main stream science, but the alternative works in the same way, they choose a few topics and promote them to death, ignoring others that can be more interesting.

[The Seeker]

It's no surprise, many people complain about main stream science, but the alternative works in the same way, they choose a few topics and promote them to death, ignoring others that can be more interesting.

Ah, yes, they usually are very selective in what they let the plebes delve into; anything sticking out of the box gets pruned

For I have to agree, Caral is far more interesting and intriguing, plus seems to predate the other megalithic sites in all of the Americas...

[The Seeker]

From Ancient Origins 

http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/5000-year-old-pyramid-city-caral-002016

The 5,000-year-old Pyramid City of Caral

t is widely taught in the field of ancient history that Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and India, gave rise to the first civilizations of mankind. However, few are aware that at the same time, and in some cases before some of these societies emerged, another great civilization had sprouted - the Norte Chico civilization of Supe, Peru – the first known civilization of the Americas. Their capital was the Sacred City of Caral – a 5,000-year-old metropolis complete with complex agricultural practices, rich culture, and monumental architecture, including six large pyramidal structures, stone and earthen platform mounds, temples, amphitheatre,  sunken circular plazas, and residential areas.

The Supe Valley, which lies 200 miles north of Lima on the Peruvian Pacific coast, was  surveyed in 1905 by the German archaeologist Max Uhle, who revealed the first archaeological discoveries in the area. However, it was not until several decades later that  full-scale excavations took place, revealing the tip of a very large iceberg. In the 1970s, archaeologists discovered that the hills originally identified as natural formations were actually stepped pyramids, and by the 1990s the full extent of the great city of Caral had emerged. But another great surprise was yet to come – in the year 2000, radiocarbon dating carried out on reed carrying bags found at the site revealed that Caral dated back to the Late Archaic period beginning around 3,000 BC.  Caral had now provided the most extensive evidence of an early complex society in the Americas.

The complete article is at the link

[fansongecho]

Another city I had not heard of, thanks Seeker

worth a fast forward to 53 mins..  if you have not seen this before but the whole interview is interesting anyway



Cheers!

Fans'

[A51Watcher]

Good finds.

Here's a few more that are less well known.




https://whc.unesco.org/en/events/767/


Mountain Shoria Russia






DoChara




Ollantaytambo




Greece




Torre d'en Galmés, Minorca, Balearic Islands / Spain





Saksayhuaman "fortress" Peru





Pipestone, Montana