The enigma of Caral, the oldest city in America
Interview with archaeologist Pedro Novoa Bellota
To reach the archaeological site of Caral you have to travel from Lima to Huacho, a coastal city located about three hours by bus from the capital. Then, in a bus full of passengers, you arrive at the town of Supe, where you take a collective taxi that finally arrives at Caral, approximately twenty kilometers from the coast, in a narrow valley.
When you drive in the car you see some imposing pyramidal buildings in the distance and you realize that the entire archaeological area is very large and that, in addition, it includes other places that are being studied.
Later, when you walk through the ancient ruins of Caral, you enter a magical atmosphere, impregnated with spirituality and mystery.
During the tour you can see several pyramidal buildings, used for both spiritual and administrative purposes, some remains of buildings that were homes of the high caste of priests, various ceremonial altars and a circular plaza whose level is below the ground, probably used by the priests and by the political elite of the city for ceremonies and celebrations.
From organic archaeological evidence, such as cotton fabrics and shicras (nets made of a type of reed, to contain stones), which were dated with the carbon 14 method, it was concluded that the Caral site was inhabited from from 3000 BC.
The so-called Caral-Supe civilization (to which other archaeological sites in the neighboring valleys belong), is then almost as old as the civilization of the Sumerians (3700 BC).
Archaeologists from the team of Ruth Shady Solís, the person responsible for the Caral-Supe project, verified that the city of Caral was connected with other important urban and ceremonial centers on the coast such as Bandurria and Aspero, some in the mountains such as Huaricoto and La Galgada, of the jungle like Piruro and, in more recent times, with Kotosh with its enigmatic temple.
Therefore, it has been suggested that an agile trade developed between the coast, with its marine products and fruits, the mountains, with its Andean cereals such as quinoa and quihuicha, and the jungle, with its plants such as tutumo and feathers of birds like the páucar.
The total population of Caral may have reached 3,000 inhabitants, although more conservative estimates state that it did not exceed 1,000.
One of the enigmas of Caral consists of the discovery of unbaked clay statues. In this way, the Caral culture belonged to the so-called pre-ceramic period. However, how was it possible that a hierarchical and stratified civilization, capable of building pyramidal structures up to thirty meters high and reigning over a territory of about 87,000 square kilometers, did not know ceramics?
The fact that the Valdivia culture of present-day Ecuador has made wonderful ceramic creations since 4000 BC raises the question of why this type of technology was not developed in Caral. Furthermore, the discovery in Caral of specimens of spondylus, a bivalve mollusk typical of Ecuador, complicates our research.
Another of the mysteries of Caral is that to this day no cemetery has been discovered, since only the skeletal remains of two people were recovered.
The lack of a cemetery in the area would suggest that Caral was only a ceremonial center, but the residential constructions rule out this hypothesis. It is expected that with the next searches in the field, carried out with sophisticated technological methods, the cemetery can be found, which would provide important further information about the life of this ancient town.
In Caral bronze was not used nor was copper or gold. It was a wild society that practiced barter, but was unaware of the use of metals and ceramics. We should not think that one society was less advanced than another because it did not use these later technologies; that type of development was simply not essential for this people, who concentrated rather on perfecting other knowledge, such as the use of medicinal plants and cotton fabrics, although it is said that he did not know the loom and that he used rudimental braiding and ringing techniques for his textile creations.
The power of the Caral culture in the Supe Valley lasted until 1800 BC, when, for reasons still unknown, it slowly declined, with its inhabitants having to emigrate to other lands, probably more fertile and humid.
As soon as I returned to the capital of Peru, I made an appointment with the archaeologist Pedro Novoa Bellota, one of those responsible for the Caral-Supe project, in order to obtain more information about the oldest civilization in America.
Below is the text of the interview:
Yuri Leveratto : Doctor, based on what scientific dating is Caral considered the oldest city in America?
Pedro Novoa Bellota : In the excavations, samples of organic material have been collected, such as fabrics and remains of fibers and shicras (reed bags), whose dating, made with the carbon 14 method, reaches up to 3000 years before Christ. The method, naturally, does not provide a precise dating, but it does not differ much from the true one either.
Yuri Leveratto : How was it possible that a civilization that built large pyramidal buildings did not know ceramics, even considering that it surely had contact with the cultures of current Ecuador, such as Valdivia, which used it since the 4th millennium BC?
Pedro Novoa Bellota : Ceramics were introduced into the societies of the Central Andes starting in 1800 BC. In Caral, which belongs to the pre-ceramic period, anthropomorphic statuettes were made, but of unfired clay. The fact that spondylus objects, a typical Ecuadorian mollusk, were found in Caral suggests that those who carried out commercial exchanges with the populations in northern Peru were able to discover ceramic objects. But Caral society did not incorporate ceramics either as a luxury object for the elites, or as an element for everyday life. There was no social need to do so. For activities that required containers, such as storing water, they relied on dried mate fruits and cooked their food with stones heated over a fire.
Yuri Leveratto: What is your opinion about why metals such as copper or gold were not used, which, on the other hand, are found, for example, in the Paracas culture?
Pedro Novoa Bellota : As in the case of ceramics, the use of metal in the Central Andes is much later than Caral: the first sheets that have been found correspond to 1500 years before Christ. This technology was not used because it was not known: in Caral's time, very hard rocks were used to carve stones, and stone hoes, deer antlers and wooden sticks were used to cultivate.
Yuri Leveratto : What do you think about the fact that the Caral cemetery has not yet been discovered?
Pedro Novoa Bellota : Indeed, after 13 years of work in the Sacred City of Caral we have not found at least one cemetery associated with it. In fact, the search presents some difficulties, because the space to be covered is very large. In other places from the time there are residents buried inside the buildings and under the houses, but in Caral nothing like this is observed. If the cemetery was near the city, on the side of a hill, or on a plain, and has not been razed, it could be covered by several meters of earth and stones. Finally, it is possible that at that time there would have been a special place for a cemetery, perhaps near the sea, as seen later in Paracas and Ancón. In any case, we are working to locate it, including with sophisticated technologies, such as underground penetrating radars, to visualize the subsoil without excavating it.
Yuri Leveratto : Were the two human remains found in Caral subjected to morphological anthropology studies? In Brazil, archaeologist Niède Guidon's team subjected the skulls found in Piauí to analyzes of this type and clear African origins (archaic Homo Sapiens) were discovered in them.
Pedro Novoa Bellota : Yes, similar studies were also carried out here and it was concluded that the skulls were of the Amerindian type. Consequently, they are descendants of those groups of Asian origin that populated America more than 12,000 years ago.
Yuri Leveratto : What is known about the language spoken by these ancient Americans?
Pedro Novoa Bellota : Regarding this, the Peruvian linguist Alfredo Torero maintained in the seventies of the last century that Quechua had its place of origin precisely in the valleys of Supe, Pativilca and Fortaleza. Above all from the study of toponymy, the names of places, he came to the conclusion that Quechua originated in that area. After learning about Ruth Shady's research on Caral, he published that the language spoken by the settlers at that time must have been pre-proto-Quechua.
Yuri Leveratto : What do you think of the commercial exchanges between the mountains and the jungle?
Pedro Novoa Bellota : From the archaeological evidence recovered in Caral, and in six other contemporary sites in the Supe and Huaura valley (Chupacigarro, Miraya, Lurihuasi, Allpacoto, Áspero and Vichama), it is deduced that there were numerous exchanges with the mountains and jungle Andean. From the first, some camelid bones and sodalite rock have been recovered; of the second, remains of apes, annatto (Bixa orellana) and the shell of Megalobulimus sp. (called congompe) a huge gastropod from the Amazon.
Yuri Leveratto : Until what period did this ancient civilization prosper and, according to you, what were the causes of its disappearance?
Pedro Novoa Bellota : My opinion is that, unless the population becomes extinct, civilizations do not disappear, they only transform. However, there are times in which conditions come together for societies to enter a period, so to speak, of “flourishing,” as happened with Caral. Regarding the decline of Caral, Ruth Shady and other researchers have shown the occurrence of earthquakes and El Niño phenomena, around 1800 BC, which could have disrupted the productive base of society. This would have forced populations to look for new places to settle or join existing ones. The fact is that, after Caral, the Supe Valley was no longer central. However, Caral's experience was fundamental for future societies, until Inca times.
Yuri Leveratto : What can you tell me about your Caral-Supe archaeological project? I saw that several tourist guides were trained, I think it is a good way to encourage a feeling of belonging to a population that has few economic resources.
Pedro Novoa Bellota : Yes, initially Ruth Shady began her research with a purely scientific purpose, but she soon realized the unavoidable need to contribute to the development of the local population, heirs of a very rich heritage, but with serious socioeconomic difficulties. Therefore, she implemented a series of activities, including the training of tourist guides, boys who now have a job and who became passionate about the History of her land; We created craft and tourist hospitality courses, and promoted the development of a Master Plan to promote comprehensive and sustainable socioeconomic development. By doing this we contribute to making our people proud, who begin to value traditions and history.
Yuri Leveratto : Well, I thank you for granting me this interview, with your work you are contributing to revealing one of the greatest mysteries in the History of Man, the prehistory of the New World.
Pedro Novoa Bellota : Thanks to you and see you later.
YURI LEVERATTO
