Caral, Peru

[stan gilliam]

http://www.pbase.com/locozodiac/image/21413413

Here is a link to the best photos and diagrams I have seen of Caral, in the Supe Valley of Peru...only a few hundred miles from Nazca. You can get the scale and feel of the place.
(If you Google "Caral" it is easy to find numerous
articles about it, and the archaeologist, Ruth Shady.)
This city is estimated about 4,700 years old and is being touted as the "mother city" -- the oldest -- in the Americas. Older than the Olmecs. Since the place has been discovered, many artifacts have been uncovered, such as a quipu, figurines, and even some relief sculptures which bear a vague resemblance to familiar American heiroglyphs, about 2400 years older than the earliest maya heiroglyphs.
Seems to me this is a very important find which will lead yet again to the rewriting of history and draws more attention to
the west coast of S.A. for migration ...although I know that was
a long time before this.

[Leona Conner]

The National Geographic site has a couple of good articles about first Americans. One is about the Americas being settle by two groups of early humans and the other is about whether or not they arried by land and/or sea. Got to them through the news section of this site. Both were very interesting and thought provoking.

[Frank Harrist]

What's the latest word on the feud between the Haases and the Peruvian archaeologists? Is work proceeding there now? It's a very exciting site. It's a shame about all the bickering and politics involved in it. Anybody notice the similarity between some of the circular structures and the kivas at Chaco canyon?

[stan]

I think there are about 17 or so ancient settlements in the Supe Valley, and different archaeologists are working on different ones.
It seems that Ruth Shady has won the publicity battle over Caral, but I have the
impression that the other folks may be focusing on other Supe sites. As to Caral being the oldest, I don't know if they have C-14 datings on all the others, or even if they
have dug down deep enough to know if they have reached the bottom layers.
I'll look further into it.

[stan]

Here's a brief summary of current status...maybe the canals
are older than Caral...

http://www.forbes.com/business/services ... 26430.html

[stan]

Here's another overview from the Smithsonian Magazine:

http://www.archaeologychannel.org/caralint.html

[Minimalist]

This is the kind of admission that I am glad to see them make, Stan.

The discovery of Caral’s antiquity pushed back the known origin of civilization in the Americas by some 500 years.

Now...keep digging boys!

[stan]

I really think this Caral site is interesting. For some reason, it
doesn't grab most of you. We have known about Jericho, Mohenjo- Daro, and other early cities for some time, but here is one in the most disputed area of the world (the Americas), which has been discovered in the last few years.
Who were these people?

Everyone wants to argue about the peopling of the new world...but what about this? Here is one of only four or five places in the entire world where a civilization seems to have grown from scratch.


Not only did they develop a planned city which persisted for
about 1500 years, but they invented the quipu system of record keeping, and an art style, and provided the basis of virtually all
of the precolumbian civilizations.

Wikipedia has a good summary, and a link to the following:

http://agutie.homestead.com/files/Quipu_B.htm#caral

[Forester]

I really think this Caral site is interesting. For some reason, it
doesn't grab most of you. We have known about Jericho, Mohenjo- Daro, and other early cities for some time, but here is one in the most disputed area of the world (the Americas), which has been discovered in the last few years.
Who were these people?

Stan, don't worry, you got my attention with it (especially with the photo library site), so much so that I have been spending the last couple of days using all of my free time researching it. Thanks!

Andy

[stan]

Andy:

Good!
Maybe there is just not yet enough information out there on it.
No major cofee-table book or TV special!

The quipu is intriguing....though to call it "writing" is a bit of as stretch.
More like a counting or accounting system? But it must have been
a great thing, since it was used for 4000 years! (2500 bc to 1500 ad).

Kind of reminds me of the abacus, which might be explicable by Asian
input into the new world....

[Guest]

Oh, now you've done it.

The quipu is intriguing....though to call it "writing" is a bit of as stretch.
More like a counting or accounting system? But it must have been
a great thing, since it was used for 4000 years! (2500 bc to 1500 ad).

Kind of reminds me of the abacus, which might be explicable by Asian
input into the new world....

Now I have to look up everything on the quipu. I seem to recall something about it in the press last summer, let me look...

Found it: Experts 'decipher' Inca strings

Researchers in the US believe they have come closer to solving a centuries-old mystery - by deciphering knotted string used by the ancient Incas.

Experts say one bunch of knots appears to identify a city, marking the first intelligible word from the extinct South American civilisation.

The coloured, knotted pieces of string, known as khipu, are believed to have been used for accounting information.

The researchers say the finding could unlock the meaning of other khipu.

Previously I really only concentrated on US Southwest and Mesoamerican prehistory, thanks for shoving me south.

Andy

[Forester]

That last post was me.

[stan]

Ruth Shady says that Caral is an example of a rare phenomenon in
archaeology. Unlike most ancient sitess, it is not built on top of another one. Somebody planned and built it in one fell swoop. Furthermore, after it was abandoned, no one else came along to build on top of it.
How many other ancient cities are like this? (Some of our correspondents know the answer to this, I bet.)

Much later, the Peruvians (Incas) built the Inca Highway, which is in some ways comparable to the Roman roads. It enabled rapid communication throughout the "empire." The Inca highway was something like the pony express, with guarded waystations for changing messengers. They probably carried quipus with them as well as verbal messages.

In Precolumbian America, before the introduction of horses, such communication was accomplished by runners. The culture of running was still alive among the Apaches of the US southwest. Geronimo was the military leader of his tribe, and he trained the young warriors. They learned to run very long distances without water by having to carry mouthfuls of water without swallowing it.

I think of other codes used by the Amerindians. Smoke signals, for example, which I don't understand. Likewise drumming and wampum. They say that the old wampum belts were encoded (patterns of black and white shells).

Here's what Wikipedia says about quipus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu

[Rokcet Scientist]

[...] but here is one in the most disputed area of the world (the Americas) [...]

Oh yeah? You must be in a different world than I am then.

[stan]

stan wrote:
[...] but here is one in the most disputed area of the world (the Americas) [...]
Oh yeah? You must be in a different world than I am then.

I am referring to the ongoing dispute about who settled the Americas.