While riding a motorcycle from Alaska to Terra Del Fuego, I turned off onto a dirt road in northern Peru in the middle of a desert. There I found one of the most important archeological sites in the western hemisphere. Caral, in the Supe river valley north of Lima, was founded by the Norte Chico Civilization, one of six sites in the world where a civilization formed independently. It also pushed the start date for civilization in the Americas back by more than a thousand years. The Norte Chico were building pyramids about the same time the Egyptians were putting up theirs on the Giza Plain.
Caral was discovered in 1948, but didn’t attract a great deal of notice at first due to the lack of artifacts being sought at the time. This didn’t last and the site, some 60 hectares, was soon being explored. In 1994 the radiocarbon dates were officially published by Peruvian Anthropologist and Archeologist Ruth Shady establishing it as the oldest civilization in the western hemisphere, 5000 years old.
At the visitor center you are greeted with booths selling local crafts and snacks. There is also a booth selling tickets, but it blends in. Look near the far end. Individuals aren’t allowed to wander the area unescorted, so you will be assigned to a group. There are occasional English speaking guides, but don’t expect it. The signs are almost all bi-lingual, and frequently bi-lingual members of the groups are to help with translation.
The main pyramid, or Piramide Major, is as large as four football fields and sixty feet high. There are several other pyramids, plazas and residential areas scattered around. The paths are firm, and even with the translation problems the information is interesting. The site is still active, and you can see archeologists working on walls or in small holes under shades. The Norte Chico were pre-ceramic, seemed to have little or no art, but they also seemed to have no warfare. There are no weapons, walls or defenses around Caral. One exciting find was quipu, which are bits of corded rope and string used to record information, the same method of record keeping used the by the Inca a few thousand years later. One thing they have amazingly not found is maize, know to most people as corn. The Chavin, the civilization that rose a thousand years after the Norte Chico civilization fell, relied on Maize, as did the Inca who practically worshiped it (driving around Peru now still finds massive monuments to corn on the sides of the road). So the lack of it for the Norte Chico has developed a controversy over they they did eat.
The tour is about two hours, and hot. Bottled water is allowed, as well as snacks, and there are places to put your garbage. Just dropping it is obviously frowned on. Once the tour is over you can enjoy the local crafts and eat in a covered seating area before heading back to the cooler coast.
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1269
http://www.zonacaral.gob.pe/