| Harald
Franzen
Scientific American
The
archaeological site of Caral, located in central Peru's Supe Valley, may represent
the oldest complex society in the Americas, according to a study published today
in the journal Science. Carbon dating indicates that large-scale stone
structures at the site are as much as 1,000 years older than other comparable
remains. "What we're learning from Caral is going to rewrite the way we think
about the development of early Andean civilization," asserts co-author Jonathan
Haas of the Field Museum in Chicago.
Caral's elaborate stony remains include
an array of architectural forms: two sunken circular plazas, numerous residential
buildings, and platform mounds, the largest of which measures 160 meters long
and 18 meters high. Monumental stone structures like those found at Caral are
usually associated with civilizations dated to after 1500 B.C., but the new dates
place the Caral remains somewhere between 2627 and 1977 B.C. "The size of a structure
is really an indication of power," Haas remarks. "It means that leaders of the
society were able to get their followers to do lots of work. People don't just
say 'Hey, let's build a great big monument,' they do it because they're told to
and because the consequences of not doing so are significant."
The finding
calls two established archaeological theories into question. One of these holds
that complex civilization didn't arise until the so-called ceramic period, around
1500 B.C. The other posits that civilization first evolved in coastal areas, not
inland, where Caral is located. Another puzzle is how a civilization such as Caral
could have evolved without some kind of cultivatable grain. In most other complex
societies, grain, which can be stored in large amounts, was given in exchange
for labor. "There wasn't a product like corn in the Supe Valley," team member
Winifred Creamer of Northern Illinois University observes, "but they still managed
to develop in this complex way." She suspects that the people of Caral, within
traveling distance of the ocean, may have resorted to another currency: dried
fish.
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