Site is window into oldest known society in Americas

A Peruvian site previously reported as the oldest city in the Americas is actually a much larger complex of as many as 20 cities with massive pyramids and sunken circular 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 throughout the world were simple hunters and gatherers, a team from Northern Illinois University and Chicago’s Field Museum reports in Thursday issue of the journal Nature.

The society and its people – with no name other than the Andeans – persisted in virtually the same form for 1,200 years before they were overrun by more war-like 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 researchers’ 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 that people have always thought that the Americas were behind Europe, Africa and Asia in terms of developing civilizations. The new dates for the region show that the two worlds, separated by an impassable ocean, developed more or less simultaneously.

The findings are also 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 a network of fishing villages along the Peruvian coast.

“It’s a unique system,” Haas said. “There wasn’t anything like this in the world as far as I can tell.”

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

It was not until Haas’ team 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 researchers thought possible.

A new series of dates from the Supe River Valley, as well as the nearby Pativilca and Fortaleza valleys, show that construction began even earlier, about 3000 B.C., and spread over more than 700 square miles.

The driving force for this society may well have been the Humboldt Current, a broad band of cold water that sweeps north from Antarctica along the Peruvian coast. The current is rich in marine life, which served as a valuable food source for the first settlers.

But beginning about 3100 B.C., the climate turned much drier, eliminating the naturally growing fruits and vegetables that villagers relied on to supplement their diet of anchovies and fish. Over a period of about 100 years, Haas said, they began looking inland for new food sources.

“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 three valleys of the Norte Chico region, they could do so by hand-digging short canals.

“In any other valleys, canal systems tend to be much more complex,” he said. “Irrigation is easier here than anywhere else.”

They grew guava, beans, peppers – 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 the coastal villagers, who used it to make fishing nets.

“You can’t catch anchovies without nets,” Haas said. Anchovies were the Andeans’ primary food.

The Andeans had a very peaceful society. “They didn’t fight with each other, and nobody else was big enough to fight with them,” Haas said.

Evidence from the site suggests that fishermen came in seasonally to participate in ceremonial activities.

“We see temporary populations, building very ephemeral houses. We see signs of feasting – large communal hearths, food materials and garbage incorporated into the mounds,” he 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. Simultaneously, new, even larger cities began to grow north and south of Norte Chico as some of the people took their knowledge of canal building and sought more fertile soil.

Eventually, warfare began and Norte Chico was conquered and abandoned. Today, the only occupants are scattered farmers.