The Luxury Peru Travel Company

Caral is the oldest City yet found in the America’s both North and South.  It dates to 3,000bc so the same time as the Mesopotamians and the Ancient Chinese civilizations. 

 

As such its discovery rewrites our understanding of the development of “civilization” in the America’s.  Caral is however a dusty desert working archeological site.  It is not been developed as a tourist attractions (yet).  It is a Full Day Tour from Lima  07:00 – 19:00.  

 

Caral was discovered in 1948, but received little attention at the time because it appeared to lack many typical artifacts that were sought at archeological sites throughout the Andes at the time. Archaeologists further explored the 5,000 year-old city of pyramids in the Peruvian desert, with its elaborate complex of temples, an amphitheater and ordinary houses. The urban complex is spread out over 150 acres (607,000 m²) and contains plazas and residential buildings. Caral was a thriving metropolis at roughly the same time that Egypt's great pyramids were being built.

 

Main Pyramid

The main pyramid covers an area nearly the size of four football fields and is 60 feet (18 m) tall. Caral is the largest recorded site in the Andean region with dates older than 2000 BCE and appears to be the model for the urban design adopted by Andean civilizations that rose and fell over the span of four millennia. It is believed that Caral may answer questions about the origins of Andean civilizations and the development of the first cities.

 

Among the artifacts found at Caral are a knotted textile piece that the excavators have labeled a quipu. They argue that the artifact is evidence that the quipu record keeping system, a method involving knots tied in rope that was brought to perfection by the Inca, was older than any archaeologist had previously guessed. Evidence has emerged that the quipu may also have recorded logographic information in the same way writing does.