{"it":{"id":"SAM-001","kind":"site","sub":"South America","name":"Caral","place":"Peru","lat":-10.894,"lon":-77.52,"date":"The Caral culture developed between 3000 and 1800 BC (Late Archaic and Lower Formative…","nfacts":13,"tags":["Andes"],"sum":"Caral was building pyramids in Peru's Supe Valley around 5,000 years ago, at the same time Egypt was building its first. The culture lasted from about 3000 to 1800 BCE, and Caral is considered the oldest city in the Americas.","why":"It is the oldest city in the Americas, and so far it shows none of the signs of war that early cities were long expected to have.","src":[292,576],"nsrc":3,"yt":"No weapons have turned up at Caral. Is that enough to say the city ran without force, or does it only show what has not been dug yet?","rel":["GIZ-G1","SAM-002"],"hook":"Outside a sunken plaza at Caral lay 32 flutes of pelican bone, set together on a stone and covered in sand."},"S":{"292":["Wikipedia: Caral","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral"],"576":["UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Sacred City of Caral-Supe","https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1269"]},"rec":{"id":"SAM-001","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"of Peru near the current town of Caral","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"182","u":"km","o":"It is located in the Supe District of Peru, near the current town of Caral, 182 km north of Lima, 23 km from the coast and 350 meters above sea level.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2286"},{"f":"town of Caral 182 km north of Lima","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"23","u":"km","o":"It is located in the Supe District of Peru, near the current town of Caral, 182 km north of Lima, 23 km from the coast and 350 meters above sea level.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2287"},{"f":"of Lima 23 km from the coast and","a":"elevation","v":"350","u":"meters","o":"It is located in the Supe District of Peru, near the current town of Caral, 182 km north of Lima, 23 km from the coast and 350 meters above sea level.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2288"},{"f":"the site includes an area of more than","a":"area","v":"60","u":"ha","o":"Caral was inhabited from around 2600 BC to 2000 BC, REF5 and the site includes an area of more than 60 ha.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2289"},{"f":"Caral temples in the arid Supe Valley some","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"20","u":"km","o":"PeruCaral01.jpg|The Caral temples in the arid Supe Valley, some 20 km from the Pacific coast.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2290"},{"f":"REF13 The urban complex is spread out over","a":"area","v":"150","u":"ha","o":"REF13 The urban complex is spread out over 150 ha and contains plazas and residential buildings.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2291"},{"f":"The main temple complex is","a":"length","v":"150","u":"meters","o":"The main temple complex () is 150 meters long, 110 meters wide and 28 meters high.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2292"},{"f":"The main temple complex is 150 meters long","a":"width","v":"110","u":"meters","o":"The main temple complex () is 150 meters long, 110 meters wide and 28 meters high.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2293"},{"f":"is 150 meters long 110 meters wide and","a":"height","v":"28","u":"meters","o":"The main temple complex () is 150 meters long, 110 meters wide and 28 meters high.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2294"},{"f":"by 19 other temple complexes scattered across the","a":"area","v":"90","u":"km2","o":"Caral was flanked by 19 other temple complexes scattered across the 90 km2 area of the Supe Valley.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2295"},{"f":"thumb center 700px","a":"angle (unspecified)","v":"360","u":"°","o":"thumb|center|700px|360° Panorama of Caral","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2296"},{"f":"site called Cerro Sechín in the Casma Valley","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"240","u":"km","o":"This geoglyph is similar to bleeding figures with a similar gaping mouths found etched onto the stone walls at a site called Cerro Sechín, in the Casma Valley 240 km to the north.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2297"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"REF17 The flutes were radiocarbon dated to 2170±90 BC","u":"","o":"REF17 The flutes were radiocarbon dated to 2170±90 BC.","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1379214244 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M2298"}],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"The Caral culture developed between 3000 and 1800 BC (Late Archaic and Lower Formative periods).","dm":"[see dating_excerpt; method not extracted]","lab":"NO: inference only (style/context/king list/textual)","weak":"no direct lab result on the structure in our records; date from stylistic, contextual or textual inference","unesco":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1269","dens":"CENSUS"},"co":{"lat":"-10.89361111","lon":"-77.52027778","src":"Wikidata P625 + UNESCO WHC list XML (agree ≤0.05°)","agree":"agree (inside OSM feature extent)","b":"V","note":"two independent sources agree; max delta 0.0192 deg (~2.13 km)","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2430115636"},"src":[{"id":"S0276","t":"no inline ref in article","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caral&oldid=1379214244"},{"id":"S0452","t":"Wikipedia: Caral","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral"},{"id":"S2577","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Sacred City of Caral-Supe","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1269"},{"id":"VSAM-001-4","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Sacred City of Caral-Supe","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1269/"},{"id":"VSAM-001-5","t":"Science: Shady Solis, Haas and Creamer 2001, Dating Caral (DOI 10.1126/science.1059519)","u":"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1059519"},{"id":"VSAM-001-6","t":"BBC Horizon: The Lost Pyramids of Caral","u":"https://www.bbc.com/science/horizon/2001/caral.shtml"},{"id":"VSAM-001-7","t":"Las flautas de Caral-Supe (PDF)","u":"https://www.almendron.com/blog/wp-content/images/2005/01/las-flautas-de-caral-supe.pdf"},{"id":null,"t":"Smithsonian Magazine: First City in the New World? (August 2002)","u":"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-city-in-the-new-world-66643778/"},{"id":null,"t":"Shady Solis, Haas and Creamer 2001, Dating Caral, a Preceramic Site in the Supe Valley (Science), abstract via Crossref","u":"https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1059519"},{"id":null,"t":"Science News: Peru Holds Oldest New World City (Bruce Bower, 2001)","u":"https://www.sciencenews.org/article/peru-holds-oldest-new-world-city"},{"id":null,"t":"ICOMOS: Advisory Body Evaluation, The Sacred City of Caral-Supe (Peru), No 1269 (2009)","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/document/152221"}],"sum":"Whoever buried the flutes did it in a particular order. Thirty-two of them lay together on a cut stone at the south-west corner of a sunken circular plaza, inside a small space edged with worked stones, river cobbles and a faceless human figure modelled in mud, and the whole group had been covered with sand. When the archaeologists lifted them, the flutes decorated with monkeys and human faces came first, then those carved with birds, and last the plain ones. All were made from the wing bones of pelicans: 15 upper-arm bones, 9 ulnas and 8 radii, enough, the team calculated, for eight birds, each giving both wings. Someone had arranged an orchestra and put it to rest.\n\nThe plaza belongs to Caral, in the Supe Valley of Peru, about 182 kilometres north of Lima and 23 kilometres inland from the Pacific, at some 350 metres above sea level. It is considered the oldest city in the Americas, and UNESCO, which inscribed it as the Sacred City of Caral-Supe in 2009, calls it a fully developed state. Its people raised pyramids at about the time Egypt was raising its first. The protected site covers 626 hectares, with a buffer zone of 14,620; the central zone is far smaller, given variously as 50 to 66 hectares, while Wikipedia gives a wider urban spread of 150. It holds six large pyramidal structures, the tallest up to 30 metres, along with temples, plazas including two sunken circular ones, an amphitheatre with tiers of seats, and several kinds of housing. The main temple complex measures 150 by 110 metres and stands 28 metres high. Caral is one of 18 large early settlements in the valley, and the culture as a whole is dated from about 3000 to 1800 BCE.\n\nIts antiquity was slow to be recognised. Max Uhle found it in 1905 but did not see the hills as pyramids. Paul Kosok studied it in 1948, and others doubted his dates, believing the buildings more recent. In 1975 the architect Carlos Williams recorded it among the valley's sites. Then Ruth Shady Solís of San Marcos University arrived in 1994, began digging the largest pyramid in 1996, enlisted Peruvian soldiers to help and often paid for the work herself. Her team dated the reed fibres of the woven bags that workers filled with stones to build the mounds. Reeds live only about a year, so they date the building closely. A 2001 paper in Science placed the start of monumental construction, town life and irrigated farming between 2627 and 1977 BC, which pushed the oldest known dates for a city in the Americas back by more than a thousand years.\n\nWhat the excavations found, as the BBC reported in 2002, was a city without the marks of war: \"not the faintest trace of warfare at Caral; no battlements, no weapons, no mutilated bodies.\" That mattered. An uneasy consensus had held that fear of war was what first pushed people out of small family groups and into cities, and archaeologists had been searching for a \"mother city,\" the first stage of urban life, to test it. Shady's findings, the BBC wrote, suggested instead \"a gentle society, built on commerce and pleasure.\" Her team found traces of drug use, and the remains of a baby wrapped with care and buried with a necklace of stone beads. The people farmed beans and squash in irrigated fields, but not maize, and took most of their protein from the sea; sardine and anchovy bones show food came up from the coast. Because the site held no gold or silver, looters largely left it alone. Among the finds was a knotted textile its excavators call a quipu, the cord record later perfected by the Inca, which would make that system far older than once thought.\n\nThe mainstream reading is that Caral shows how a complex society can grow from trade and shared belief. UNESCO reads the plan and the elite houses as signs of ceremony and powerful religious conviction, and the platform mounds and sunken circular courts as a model that shaped building along much of the Peruvian coast. Shady sees Caral as the focus of a wider culture, trading with the coast and the interior; with the valley's other sites, the population sharing it may have reached 20,000. a depiction of monkeys, she suggests, may point to contact with the Amazon.\n\nThe turn is that the peaceful picture is not settled. Jonathan Haas of the Field Museum, one of the dating team, proposed that authoritarian leaders compelled their subjects into the heavy labour of building. Others doubted Caral was that authoritarian. Later work found human remains in ceremonial and construction settings that point to deliberate killing; one skeleton, with skull fractures and finger mutilations, is described as the earliest known evidence of human sacrifice in the Andes, around 3000 BC. At nearby Áspero, on the coast, the remains of two children and a newborn were found sacrificed. And the claim to be the oldest city has itself been challenged by other early sites nearby, such as Bandurria.\n\nThe open spaces around Caral hold their own mysteries. Just west of the main site, the excavators Marco Machacuay and Rocío Aramburú found in 2000 a geoglyph laid out among circular stone lines: a human face with long, streaming hair and a gaping mouth. When the city declined, Shady says, its people had time to bury some of their buildings with care, which leaves the question of why they left. She asks who these people were, how they came to control other populations, and what their main god was.\n\nThen there are the flutes. Acoustic tests by engineers at the Catholic University of Peru found that the pelican bones still sound, with fundamental tones around 880 hertz, which the team matched to an A on the modern tempered scale. Thousands of years before the Inca, someone in the Supe Valley chose eight pelicans, carved monkeys, birds and human faces into their bones, and buried the set in order beside a sunken plaza. Was that the work of a society held together by music and shared faith, or by a power strong enough to command both the builders and the song?","qs":["No weapons have turned up at Caral. Is that enough to say the city ran without force, or does it only show what has not been dug yet?","If not fear of war, what could persuade people to haul stone for pyramids: trade, faith, food, or something else?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Mayor_Pyramid_and_circular_enclosure._Caral%2C_Peru.jpg/1280px-Mayor_Pyramid_and_circular_enclosure._Caral%2C_Peru.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mayor_Pyramid_and_circular_enclosure._Caral,_Peru.jpg","title":"Mayor Pyramid and circular enclosure. Caral, Peru.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0","by":"Jon Gudorf Photography","cap":"Caral, or Caral-Chupacigarro was a large settlement in the Supe Valley, near Supe, Barranca Province, Peru, some 200 kilometres north of Lima. Caral is the most"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Caral-panorama1.jpg/1280px-Caral-panorama1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caral-panorama1.jpg","title":"Caral-panorama1.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Mfdutra","cap":"360 Panorama of Caral, a 5000 years old civilization, the oldest one in Americas, discovered in 1994 in Peru, north from Lima."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Caral_1.JPG/1280px-Caral_1.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caral_1.JPG","title":"Caral 1.JPG","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/","by":"KyleThayer","cap":"","alt":"Caral"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Caral_9.jpg/1280px-Caral_9.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caral_9.jpg","title":"Caral 9.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/","by":"KyleThayer","cap":"Wide view of the ruins at Caral, the most excavated ruins of the oldest known civilization in the Americas, the Norte Chico civilization. The Norte Chico Civili"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/PeruCaral01.jpg/1280px-PeruCaral01.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PeruCaral01.jpg","title":"PeruCaral01.jpg","lic":"CC BY 2.5","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5","by":"Håkan Svensson Xauxa","cap":"Pirámides en Caral, Valle de Supe, Region Lima, Peru"}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"2000+ BC","h":"Largest recorded site in the Andes, with dates older than 2000 BC","s":[47]},{"v":"3000 BC","h":"Earliest known evidence of human sacrifice in the Andes","s":[47]},{"v":"1800 BC","h":"The Caral culture developed between 3000 and 1800 BC (Late Archaic and Lower Formative periods)","s":[47]}],"hs":{"47":["Wikipedia: Caral (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/SAM-001.webp","w":1280,"h":701,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Mayor_Pyramid_and_circular_enclosure._Caral%2C_Peru.jpg/1280px-Mayor_Pyramid_and_circular_enclosure._Caral%2C_Peru.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}