Caral, Peru

[Rokcet Scientist]

ALL of them did.

[Minimalist]

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.)

I don't know that there is a formula for that, Stan. In the Middle East, where this phenomenon is almost universal (almost) it is because people built and re-built in specific places for obvious reasons such as the availability of water and/or arable land. In the case of a place like Megiddo, it was on a rise dominating the road to Egypt and while not terribly well sited for defense (given the number of times it was sacked and burned!) the overall importance of controlling the trade route must have made up for an occasional sacking and burning.

Similarly, Troy dominated the Hellespont, another obvious trade route which was repeatedly conquered.

One which was not rebuilt was the Omride site of Samaria in Isael.

[Rokcet Scientist]

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.)

I don't know that there is a formula for that, Stan. In the Middle East, where this phenomenon is almost universal (almost) it is because people built and re-built in specific places for obvious reasons such as the availability of water and/or arable land. In the case of a place like Megiddo, it was on a rise dominating the road to Egypt and while not terribly well sited for defense (given the number of times it was sacked and burned!) the overall importance of controlling the trade route must have made up for an occasional sacking and burning.

Similarly, Troy dominated the Hellespont, another obvious trade route which was repeatedly conquered.

One which was not rebuilt was the Omride site of Samaria in Isael.

The availability of building material from the old cities also was a great incentive to build the new cities on top of the old ones. It saved quite a few backs.
So why didn't they rebuild Caral?

[Minimalist]

Now that you mention it, R/S, I don't know how common the practice of rebuilding on a destroyed/abandoned site may have in the Americas. It seems as if it was not done at all or not very much. The Maya had a tendency to abandon a city an not look back.

Bad karma about the site, maybe?

[Rokcet Scientist]

Now that you mention it, R/S, I don't know how common the practice of rebuilding on a destroyed/abandoned site may have in the Americas. It seems as if it was not done at all or not very much. The Maya had a tendency to abandon a city an not look back.

Bad karma about the site, maybe?

I've understood the Maya's abandoned their city sites because the immediately surrounding region's agricultural production capacity had been exhausted (by their stupid, OOPS! I mean 'ignorant' of course, agricultural 'techniques') and so could not support a city populace anymore.
Also, the Maya cities – afaik – were really abandoned. Left to nature/the jungle. The Maya cities were not razed to the ground by an enemy. Like Troy, Megiddo and countless others.

[stan]

Another reason Caral is significant:

The interesting thing about Caral and the rest of the Supe Valley sites, is that it illustrates the problems archaeologists have dealing with so-called "urban settlements" and "state societies." Building monumental architecture such as pyramids and irrigation canals and cities takes planning, pretty sophisticated planning, in fact. When archaeologists first stumbled across the cities of our ancient pasts, we began developing our theories of why states rise. One of the most prevalent theories was that it takes a combination of factors to create the political climate that creates public works; and that usually means full scale agriculture, craft specialization, a writing system, ceramic production, social stratification, even metallurgy.
But the Supe Valley sites, and other early urban settlements such as Catalhoyuk in Turkey [6300-5500 BC], apparently arose without all of these elements. Although we can't know the political structure of the people who built Caral, we know that they did not have ceramics or metallurgy or writing. The investigations of Caral and the other Supe Valley sites promise to teach us how people choose to become urban dwellers.

from About --Archaeology, by K. Kris Hirst


http://archaeology.about.com/od/southam ... /caral.htm

[Minimalist]

I've understood the Maya's abandoned their city sites because the immediately surrounding region's agricultural production capacity had been exhausted

Yeah, that's a theory but, as demonstrated by the fact that many of their cities are overgrown by the jungle, nature recovers if man leaves it alone for a while. But the Maya never went back.

[Sam Salmon]

I've understood the Maya's abandoned their city sites because the immediately surrounding region's agricultural production capacity had been exhausted

Yeah, that's a theory but, as demonstrated by the fact that many of their cities are overgrown by the jungle, nature recovers if man leaves it alone for a while. But the Maya never went back.

The Maya never went back to live true.
However there are sacred religious sites-such as the one I saw @ Yaxchilan-where Maya still visit to perform certain rites.
Some info on this-IIRC-in Ronald Wright's Time Among The Maya.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I've understood the Maya's abandoned their city sites because the immediately surrounding region's agricultural production capacity had been exhausted

Yeah, that's a theory but, as demonstrated by the fact that many of their cities are overgrown by the jungle, nature recovers if man leaves it alone for a while. But the Maya never went back.

1) you can't eat jungle...
2) it probably took nature well over a century – if not longer – to reclaim the Maya lands, whereupon people might again be able to raise some crops. Not nearly sufficient to support whole cities. So it doesn't suprise me the Maya didn't rebuild them.

Didn't something similar happen to Angkor Wat in Cambodia/'Kampuchea'? Afaik, Angkor Wat was a temple city with a vast population (some estimate up to 500,000!) that 'ticked' because of a large, intricate system of waterways and lakes. When those were drained (climate? enemy?) the city wasn't viable anymore and the population left.
They never rebuilt Angkor Wat either.

[Frank Harrist]

Because of the type of warfare conducted in meso-america the cities were never raized like in the old world. Therefore cities tended to last longer without the need to be rebuilt. Therefore no "tels" or mounds exist, only overgrown cities. When they adandoned them after a few centuries and didn't return they were reclaimed by the jungle. The reasons for their departure are still up for debate, but to me the over-use of the land and deforestation are the prime candidates. Maybe an extended drought.

Having said all that, the pyramids and temple structures were, most of them added to and rebuilt over time, but they seldom tore down the existing structure. Instead they simply built over the old with the new so that there are several versions of temples inside each of the remaining ones. Archaeologists love this, because they show the evolution of the culture over time. Just like the layers of a tel.

[stan]

It is suggested that the Caral people learned how to irrigate crops with canals from the Supe river, then outgrew their resources and moved elswhere where the soil was more fertile. In addition to overfarming the soil, a drought may have been the reason they left as well as the reason no one else moved in.

On another note, there are apparently even older small villages that had
small "mound" structures..that later morphed into the large "pyramid" structures at big population centers in ancient america.

[Katherine Reece]

There is *some* Initial period occupation at Caral but by this time Dr Shady believes that the center of power in the Supe valley had transferred to Era de Pando (a site about half way between Caral and the ocean).

http://www.caralperu.gob.pe/principal_ing.htm

That's a link to the English language version of the Caral website

[marduk]

Now that you mention it, R/S, I don't know how common the practice of rebuilding on a destroyed/abandoned site may have in the Americas. It seems as if it was not done at all or not very much

it was done constantly
many of the more famous temples have been discovered to have been rebuilt over and over again
inlcuding the perrenial favourite at chichen Itza


this is especially true of the Maya
"When new buildings were to be constructed, the Maya performed elaborate rituals both to terminate the old structure and contain its accumulated energy. The new structure was then built atop the old and, when it was ready for use, they conducted elaborate dedication rituals to bring it alive....So powerful were the effects of these rituals that the objects, people, buildings, and places in the landscape in which the supernatural materialized accumulated energy and became more sacred with repeated use. Thus, as kings built and rebuilt temples on the same spot over centuries, the sanctums within them became ever more sacred. "
http://www.sacredsites.com/americas/mex ... _itza.html

[stan]

There is *some* Initial period occupation at Caral but by this time Dr Shady believes that the center of power in the Supe valley had transferred to Era de Pando (a site about half way between Caral and the ocean).

http://www.caralperu.gob.pe/principal_ing.htm

That's a link to the English language version of the Caral website

Thanks, Katherine. Nice to hear from you again.

[Minimalist]

It seems to me that early South/Central American cultures developed in different spots and, when replaced, (which may be a poor choice of words) the center shifted elsewhere. For example, nothing I've seen has the Maya building on Olmec ruins. When the Maya abandoned their cities and pulled out (for whatever reason!) they did not head back a century later and re-build the city, as was repeatedly done in the Middle East. The cities remained empty and the successor civilizations (Aztec, for example) built elsewhere.

I'm not talking about re-furbishing a temple or something. Tikal, for example, was simply abandoned and while there are lots of theories about the reason, I haven't seen any definitive answer. In any case, the Maya are still living there so I suppose that some day they could decide to go back to Tikal....maybe build a casino on top of one of the pyramids?