An outline, era by era

Norte Chico / Caral (Peru)

earliest civilization in the Americas

Bronze Age · ~3300 – ~1200 BCE

Norte Chico, also called the Caral-Supe civilization, arose on the dry central coast of Peru, in the valleys of the Supe, Pativilca, Fortaleza and neighbouring rivers. Its large ceremonial centres, of which Caral is the best known, were occupied from about 3000 BCE to about 1800 BCE. Radiocarbon dates place Caral among the oldest cities or city-like centres in the Americas, so it is usually called the earliest civilization of the continent.

The people built stepped platform mounds, sunken circular plazas and large residential areas without pottery, a feature that long puzzled archaeologists. Their economy combined coastal fishing, especially for anchovies and sardines, with irrigated farming of cotton, squash, beans and other crops. The cotton made nets for the fishermen. Caral was recognised as a major site only in the 1990s, and excavations led by Ruth Shady since 1994 have shown that monumental society in the Andes began long before the Inca. The Norte Chico had no known writing, though it did use knotted cords called quipu, one of which was found at Caral.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. The first civilization of the Americas

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Caral is told as the mother city of the Americas, the oldest civilization in the New World and one of the six cradles of civilization, standing beside Sumer, Egypt, the Indus, China and Mesoamerica. In this telling it was a great city of the Andes, ruled by priests, which taught the arts of civilized life to the peoples who came after it.

    The rest is history

    The claim rests on solid evidence, though it is often stated too simply. In 2001 Haas, Creamer and Ruiz published radiocarbon dates from Caral and nearby sites, based on reed bags used to carry the stone for the platforms. These put monumental building at about 2600 BCE, and some dates are earlier. Other Peruvian sites, such as Sechín Bajo, have older monuments. Whether Norte Chico was a true state or a looser society of ceremonial centres is debated. No direct line of inheritance to later Andean cultures has been proved, so Caral was not demonstrably a mother city. It is, though, one of the world's few independent early centres of complex society.

    Sources

    1. ArticleShady Solís, Ruth, Jonathan Haas, and Winifred Creamer. "Dating Caral, a Preceramic Site in the Supe Valley on the Central Coast of Peru." Science 292, no. 5517 (2001): 723-726.Radiocarbon dates from Caral based on reed carrying bags.
    2. BookMann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.Popular account with a chapter on Caral and the debate over its age and status.
    3. BookMoseley, Michael E. The Incas and Their Ancestors: The Archaeology of Peru. Revised edition. London: Thames & Hudson, 2001.Standard survey of Andean archaeology.

  2. A peaceful city without war

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Caral is described as a peaceful city that lasted for a thousand years without war. Its people are said to have lived without weapons, fortifications or conquest, bound together only by shared religion and trade.

    The rest is history

    Excavations did find no fortifications, no battle scenes and almost no weapons at Caral, and this contrasts with many later Andean sites. Archaeologists such as Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer have noted this absence. But a lack of evidence does not prove that conflict never happened, and the sites have been only partly excavated. Some archaeologists see Norte Chico as ruled by a form of central authority that organised labour and trade. The picture of an entirely peaceful, harmonious society is therefore a simplification of a more cautious conclusion, that there are no signs of warfare so far.

    Sources

    1. BookHaas, Jonathan, and Winifred Creamer. "The Role of Warfare in the Pre-Columbian Cultural Developments of the Andes." In The Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of Raiding and Conquest, edited by Elizabeth N. Arkush and Mark W. Allen. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006.Discusses the lack of evidence for warfare in the early Andes.
    2. BookHaas, Jonathan, and Winifred Creamer. Caral-Supe and the North-Central Andean Coast. Chicago: Field Museum, 2004.
    3. ArticleHaas, Jonathan, Winifred Creamer, and Alvaro Ruiz. "Dating the Late Archaic Occupation of the Norte Chico Region in Peru." Nature 432 (2004): 1020-1023.Dates for a group of sites in the Norte Chico.

  3. The knotted cord that held the secrets of Caral

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Caral's people are said to have kept their records in knotted cords, the quipu, which were later used by the Inca. In this story a quipu found in the ruins holds the lost history of the first city, and if it could be read it would reveal how Caral was ruled.

    The rest is history

    A bundle of knotted cords was found at Caral in 2005 and was presented as the oldest known quipu, from about 2500 BCE. Its identification as a quipu has been questioned, and similar finds have been disputed. Quipus are well known from the Inca, who used them for accounts and perhaps also for narrative, and no one has deciphered them fully. Caral has no writing in the usual sense, and the claim that its cords hold a hidden history goes beyond the evidence. What the find does show is that knotted fibre was important in the region, in keeping with its large cotton industry.

    Sources

    1. BookUrton, Gary. Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.Study of how khipu encode information.
    2. BookShady Solís, Ruth. La ciudad sagrada de Caral-Supe en los albores de la civilización en el Perú. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1997.Early report by the excavator of Caral.

  4. The sea fed the pyramids

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The great monuments of Norte Chico, it is said, were built by farmers growing food in the river valleys, just as in other early civilizations. Grain and farm labour paid for the temples and plazas.

    The rest is history

    Michael Moseley proposed the maritime foundation hypothesis in 1975. It holds that fish, shellfish and other sea foods from the Pacific, among the richest in the world, supported the early monuments, while irrigated farming grew cotton, squash, beans and other plants. No maize staple is needed for the early centres. The hypothesis is still debated, since studies of plant remains show that farm crops were more important than first thought. Cotton nets probably linked the two, as inland farmers exchanged cotton and food for fish. The mix of coast and valley is a distinctive feature of Norte Chico.

    Sources

    1. BookMoseley, Michael E. The Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings Publishing, 1975.Source of the maritime foundation hypothesis.
    2. ArticleHaas, Jonathan, Winifred Creamer, Luis Huamán Mesía, David Goldstein, Karl Reinhard, and Cindy Vergel Rodríguez. "Evidence for Maize (Zea mays) in the Late Archaic (3000-1800 B.C.) in the Norte Chico Region of Peru." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 13 (2013): 4945-4949.Plant remains showing a wider diet than fish alone.

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