快猫短视频

THE ancient city of Caral in Peru was built about the same time as the great
pyramids of Egypt, say archaeologists.

New radiocarbon dates reveal that the construction of stone platform mounds
in Caral started about 2600 BC, several hundred years before other large cities
sprang up in the Americas.

The settlement may give us the earliest view yet of the pristine development
of complex society, says Jonathan Haas, an archaeologist at the Field Museum in
Chicago, who did the dating. Although other early cities around the globe show
traces of outside influences, Caral shows no sign of being influenced by
anything earlier or anything bigger, he says. The age and nature of Caral also
challenge established theories of how civilisation emerged.

Discovered in 1905 by archaeologist Max Uhle, Caral is 23 kilometres from the
ocean in central Peru鈥檚 Supe Valley. Early archaeologists recognised mounds at
the site as ancient monuments, but turned their attention elsewhere when they
found no ceramics, which can pinpoint the age of a settlement.

Several years ago, Ruth Shady of the National University of San Marcos in
Lima took a closer look, and her excavations revealed six giant platform mounds
spread over 65 hectares. The largest mound is 160 by 150 metres wide, and 18
metres high.

Although the absence of pottery showed Caral was old, Haas鈥檚 carbon dates
still came as a surprise. 鈥淣obody anticipated these sites could be as big as
they were and as early as they seemed,鈥� he told 快猫短视频. The
dates show Caral was occupied for about 600 years.

The new dates could also turn theories of how civilisation emerged on their
head. Archaeologist Michael Moseley proposed that cities first grew on the
coast, where people made a living from the sea. However, Caral was some distance
from the coast. Residents irrigated land by the river to grow crops such as
squash and beans鈥攂ut no grains, which many archaeologists thought were
another forebear of urbanisation.

鈥淭his is really very exciting,鈥� says Dan Sandweiss, an archaeologist at the
University of Maine in Orono. Caral鈥檚 size and distance inland are 鈥渞eally
startling鈥�, he told 快猫短视频. Sandweiss predicts it will lead to a
rethinking of the origins of complex societies.

Haas thinks Caral was the centre of a larger culture that included smaller
settlements such as Aspero鈥攁 well-known 12-hectare site on the
coast鈥攁nd 16 other monument sites in the lower Supe Valley. All are
believed to be a similar age to Caral.

Household trash found in the city includes shells, showing the residents got
their protein from the sea, probably through Aspero. The sites are 3 to 6
kilometres apart, and again, show no traces of ceramics. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know of
anything like it in the whole world, where you have this density of sites in one
small valley,鈥� said Haas. Only in the last 100 years of the Caral 鈥渄ynasty鈥� did
sites start appearing outside the Supe Valley.

Haas believes Caral was eventually abandoned after improved irrigation
techniques were developed which worked better in larger valleys. Large cultures
never came back to the Supe Valley, so the abandoned sites were left
undisturbed.