Peruvian Pyramids Rival The Pharaohs'

The Times Of London ^ | 8-20-2005 | Norman Hammond

[blam]

August 20, 2005

Peruvian pyramids rival the pharaohs'

By Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent

RUINS on Peru’s desert coast dated to some 4,700 years ago suggest an earlier focus of civilisation than any so far identified in the New World. The site of Caral, in the Supe Valley north of Lima, covers 66 hectares (165 acres) and includes pyramids 21m (70ft) high arranged around a large plaza.

“What really sets Caral apart is its age,” Roger Atwood reports in Archaeology. “Carbon dating has revealed that its pyramids are contemporary with those of Egypt and the ziggurats of Mesopotamia.” These are among the earliest monumental architecture in the Old World. Surveys and excavations in neighbouring valleys, Atwood says, suggest that Caral “stood at the centre of the first society in the Americas to build cities and engage in trade on a large scale”.

Caral has been investigated over the past decade by a Peruvian team headed by Dr Ruth Shady. Other sites in Peru are as early, but the report notes that “none approach the size and scope of its architecture. Caral’s people dedicated themselves to their buildings with civic intensity, constantly making and remaking their stone-and-mortar walls, sunken plazas and densely packed residences”.

The population is thought to have been about 3,000. Much of the construction was done using “shicra bags”, loosely woven containers resembling a horse’s hay-net which were packed with boulders and used as building blocks. Shicra is a long-bladed annual grass, and thus ideal for radiocarbon dating: sample ages were as early as 2727BC, and when the dates were published in 2001 they opened a new debate on the orgins of Peruvian civilisation.

That Caral was not a unique site was shown by surveys carried out by Drs Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer in three neighbouring coastal valleys, which revealed a number of coeval sites: “There is now evidence of an extraordinary complex of more than 20 separate major residential centres with monumental architecture concentrated in just three small valleys,” they reported. The American team disputes Shady’s claim that Caral is the “capital” of this early polity, seeing it rather as an important regional centre.

At Caral, the two unusual circular plazas have been consolidated: at one of them a cache of 32 decorated flutes made from condor and pelican bones was found. Rubbish from nearby houses showed that sardines, anchovies and mussels were dietary staples. Caral was occupied for perhaps a millenium before it was abandoned.

Whether it can truly be seen as a civilisation comparable in attainment with contemporary Egypt and Mesopotamia is doubtful, but it demonstrates that the tradition culminating in the Inca Empire had deeper roots than anyone imagined.

Archaeology Vol 58 No 4:18-25

[Michael Bluth]

"Aliens... Thats gotta be it."

I think you may mean "undocumented day laborers".

[RightWhale]

Seems like when it is pyramid building time the whole planet builds pyramids. Were they in communication through trade? Some think they obviously were. But, what was the point of pyramids? Tombs, it seems not.

[RightWhale]

The Western pioneers were well aware of the mounds everyplace they went, but they were too busy hacking down forests and planting farms to stop and take a good look at the time.

[Publius6961]

Much of the construction was done using “shicra bags”, loosely woven containers resembling a horse’s hay-net which were packed with boulders and used as building blocks.

I don't see this as rivaling the Egyptian pyramids either in scope or quality in any way whatsoever.

The only potential comparison might be age, but one can say that of any random boulder...

[Bernard Marx]

There were mounds and pyramids in several areas of the U.S., mainly the northeast, the Mississippi Valley and along its tributaries. There weren't many at all in the West. Yes, they were disregarded by the European colonists who didn't believe that Native Americans could have built them. Many were destroyed along with much archaeological information.

[little jeremiah]

later read.

[RightWhale]

The Mississippi and Ohio Valleys were known then as the West.

[Surtur]

LOL, I used to travel to Seymour, did business with a printing company there. I was always amused by the high school mascot, painted big and bold on the water tower, looming over the town... Owls. Get it, get it? Owls. See more.

Oh, we get it, but who gives a HOOT?    8^)

[RegulatorCountry]

"Oh, we get it, but who gives a HOOT?"

The WISE citizens of Seymour, Indiana, who are quite proud of their "Owls," maybe?

[muawiyah]

I don't believe there is anything at all on the net. There is, however, some pamphlets concerning the matter in public libraries in Indiana, and the IU or Purdue main libraries probably have several doctoral theses on them.

This is at the Northern edge of one of the Western Hemisphere's primary agricultural development areas ~ all the different kinds of Sunflower and Squash plants were domesticated here in ancient times by the earliest settled Indians ~ that's long before the Adena and Hopewell cultures, and about coincident with the Peruvians.

Squash are, of course, a subtropical plant so the original seeds were brought North to this area by Indians who lived far down on the Gulf Coast, or maybe even South America. Someone may have a date on the introduction of corn in this region, and that would be AFTER the arrival of what may have been a colony of Andean Indians.

[blam]

Voyages Of The Pyramid Builders

Is it a mere coincidence that pyramids are found across our globe?
Did cultures ranging across vast spaces in geography and time, such as the ancient Egyptians, early Buddhists, the Maya, Inca, Toltec, and Aztec civilizations of the Americas; the Celts of the British Isles; and even the Mississippi Indians of pre-Columbus Illinois, simply dream the same dreams and envision the same structures?

Scientist and tenured university professor Robert M. Schoch -- one of the world's preeminent geologists in recasting the date of the Great Sphinx -- believes otherwise. In this dramatic and meticulously reasoned book, Schoch argues that ancient cultures traveled great distances by sea. Indeed, he maintains that primeval sailors traveled from the eastern continent, primarily Southeast Asia, and spread the idea of pyramids across the Earth, involving the human species in a far greater degree of contact and exchange than experts have previously thought possible.

[blam]

Eden In The East

From Kirkus Reviews
In an exhaustively researched and creatively argued reassessment of mankind's origins, British physician Oppenheimer, an expert in tropical pediatrics, contends that the now-submerged area of Southeast Asia was the cradle of ancient civilization.
From time to time, scholars from various disciplines have argued for the existence of a vastly old ``founder civilization.'' Among the most famous was Charles Hapgood, who based his theory of a lost seafaring civilization on his analysis of the famous 16th-century ``Piri Re'is'' maps of the Antarctic land mass.
In this tradition, Oppenheimer blends evidence from geology, genetics, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology to argue persuasively that such a civilization existed on a submerged land mass in Southeast Asia, which geologists call the Sunda shelf.

Pointing to geological evidence for the submersion of the shelf by abrupt rises in the sea level about 8,000 years ago, Oppenheimer contends that the coastal cultures of Southeast Asia were drowned by a great flood, reflected in flood mythologies scattered from the ancient Middle East (such as the biblical story of Noah) to Australia and the Americas.

According to the author, tantalizing archaeological evidence exists of settlements under a ``silt curtain'' left by the sea floods in drowned coastal regions from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, while linguistic markers indicate that languages spread from Southeast Asia to Australia and the Pacific.
The shared flood story is one striking example of similar Eurasian myths according to the author; the ancient Middle East and Asia share other myth typologies, conspicuously including creation and Cain and Abel myths, which point to common origins in a progenitor culture.
Absorbing, meticulously researched, limpidly written, and authoritative: should be regarded as a groundbreaking study of the remote past of Southeast Asia, and of civilization itself. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

[Bernard Marx]

That's true. I was thinking of "pioneers" in a more restricted sense of the word, as the people in Conestoga wagons who mustered around St. Louis on the Mississippi and headed into the interior West in the 1840s and later. Of course the mounds and pyramids you mention were described in the material I posted.

[orionblamblam]

> Is it a mere coincidence that pyramids are found across our globe?

Yeah, pretty much. Pyramids are an easy and obvious shape for early peoples wanting to build big.

[WildTurkey]

You can boil water in a paper cup.

[Mr. K]

do you really believe thousands of slaves hauled MILLIONS of 10 ton stones up the egyptian pyramids? unless they went one at a time they would be wakling all over each other

ALIENS I tell you~!!! no other explanation

[Surtur]

I agree. Any easy geometric structure if you want to increase your view of surrounding plains if there are not any trees around. The extra elevation would be prime locations for lookouts for the community, and the stability of the pyramidal shape is almost predetermined by that need for a stable platform.

[Surtur]

quote The WISE citizens of Seymour, Indiana, who are quite proud of their "Owls," maybe? /quote

Oh, a wise guy, huh. 'hehehe' Good one. WISE indeed.

[Mister Baredog]

Fascinating stuff. If only the ancients had created a permanent record. That's what I love about Egypt, they etched it all in stone and it's still there! Of course the Rosetta Stone has made a big difference.

Thanks for the post, new things to ponder.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam. Been a while since we had a topic about Caral, so I'm going to ping.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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