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1. New world pyramids..................................................................................................................................... 1

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New world pyramids

Author: Begley, Sharon

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Abstract (Abstract): THEY TREKKED FOR HALF A MILE, stuffing some 70 pounds of stones collected from the
riverbed and surrounding hillsides into open-weave bags made of reeds. Returning to the terrace 80 feet above
the river valley, the workers set the rocks, bags and all, inside cut-stone retaining walls that formed the
rectangular base of a pyramid that would eventually rise 60 feet. Then they went back for more; the pyramid's
base, after all, was bigger than four modern-day football fields.

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Scientists have unearthed the oldest known city in the Americas, showing that urban civilization began here
1,500 years earlier than they thought
THEY TREKKED FOR HALF A MILE, stuffing some 70 pounds of stones collected from the riverbed and
surrounding hillsides into open-weave bags made of reeds. Returning to the terrace 80 feet above the river
valley, the workers set the rocks, bags and all, inside cut-stone retaining walls that formed the rectangular base
of a pyramid that would eventually rise 60 feet. Then they went back for more; the pyramid's base, after all, was
bigger than four modern-day football fields. None of this would be particularly remarkable, except for where it
was happening-and when. The site, called Carat, lies not in Egypt, but 120 miles north of Lima, Peru, and 12
miles inland from the Pacific Ocean in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. Last week archeologists announced
that it dates from 2627 B.C., the same era when Egyptian slaves were building the Great Pyramids and a fill
1,500 years before scientists thought urban civilization began in the New World. "This is the oldest human
settlement of any social complexity ever found in the Americas; says archeologist Ruth Shady Solis of San
Marcos National University in Lima, who led the excavation. Caral may therefore be "the birthplace of New
World civilization," says archeologist Winifred Creamer of Northern Illinois University, a member of the team.
Today, Caral is not much to look at. Desert hills covered in sunbaked sand ring a cluster of earthen mounds,
which appear no more notable than a bunch of overgrown prairie-dog hills. But appearances deceive. Beneath
the windblown sands of time each mound is actually a complex, pyramid-shaped structure built more than 4,000
years ago. Although archeologists knew in 1905 that something once stood at Caral, the site was overlooked in
favor of others containing-yes, researchers can he suckers for all that glitters, too-gold.
But when Shady turned to Caral in 1994, she found that it had something even better, as she and her
collaborators report in the journal Science. Six pyramids dot the center of the city, along with two sunken plazas;
eight residential neighborhoods and numerous smaller "platform mounds" sprawl beyond. Along the terraced
sides of the largest pyramid, one eighth the height of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, staircases lead to a flat apex,
site of a suite of rooms and fire pit probably used for religious rituals. The five other pyramids may have been
the equivalent of a modern city's many houses of worship-or clubs. "The people of Carat were beginning to form
social classes, and each stratum of society might have belonged to a different pyramid," says Rocio Aramburu,
who was directing excavations last week. Inside the foundation of one, the archeologists found the remains of
an 18-month-old boy, reflecting the practice of many preIncan peoples of offering a little boy to the gods.
The planning and labor mobilization required to build the pyramids hint that some centralized authority was
calling the shots. Each of the six stands amid formally arranged groups of houses-history's first planned
communities. Smaller pyramids, each with a flight of stairs leading to rooms with a view, probably housed
Canal's elite. A group of adobe homes was probably a middle-class enclave for "craftsmen, people who spun

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cotton, wove textiles, made tools, managed irrigation or worked for the priests and rulers,' Creamer says. On
Caral's periphery, structures made of wooden poles, cane and mud were the homes of servants or peasants
who farmed cotton, beans, guava and squash, or hauled rocks for the latest temple. "The buildings imply an
advanced knowledge of architecture, engineering, geometry-all the mathematical sciences," says Aramburu.
One of Canal's more striking structures is the Temple of the Amphitheater, one of two sunken circular plazas
where residents probably gathered to watch religious ceremonies. The temple also boasts an elevated atrium
that archeologists suspect was a semiprivate space, reserved for ceremonies of maybe 20 people. "The bulk of
the structures are ceremonial," says Aramburu. "If they built something, they did so for religious purposes. We
haven't found warehouses for storing food, for example:' But they have found signs of irrigation, making Canal
one of the first civilizations in the Americas to break free of the whims of the rain gods. Irrigation fed vast fields
of cotton, which supported some 3,000 people. That's undoubtedly how Canal managed to thrive in defiance, as
it were, of anthropologists' belief that Peru's great civilizations began near the sea and were based on a
maritime economy.
You don't live on cotton alone, of course: Carat also cultivated sophisticated trading partnerships. "There was
an exchange of technology, food and other commodities," says Shady. Remains of ishpingo, a wood that grows
only in the jungle, hints at one trading route; snail shells native to the Amazon Basin (and used to store dyes)
reveal another. Bones of anchovies and sardines, as well as clam and mussel shells, show that Carat acquired
fish from the coast, probably in exchange for cotton clothing and fishnets.
Carat and the 17 other centers in the Supe River Valley eventually gave rise to the Incas, who ruled the Andes
when the Europeans arrived four millenniums later. Excavations continue, as the archeologists try to glean
"what these people thought, what they felt, what knowledge they acquired;" says Aramburu. "Excavation is like
reading the human mind"-which, scientists now know, began to create an urban civilization in the Americas
hardly a blink in time after the great cities of Mesopotamia arose in what is now Iraq, and a millennium earlier
than the textbooks say.
AuthorAffiliation
With JOSEPH CONTRERAS in Lima and RACHEL HAYS in Coral

Subject: Archaeology; Cities; Ancient civilizations; Historic buildings & sites; Archaeological sites; History;

Location: Peru, South America, Peru

People: Shady Solis, Ruth

Publication title: Newsweek

Volume: 137

Issue: 19

Pages: 60-61

Number of pages: 2

Publication year: 2001

Publication date: May 7, 2001

Year: 2001

Publisher: IBT Media, Inc., The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC

Place of publication: New York

Country of publication: United States

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Publication subject: General Interest Periodicals--United States, Political Science

ISSN: 00289604

Source type: Magazines

Language of publication: English

Document type: News

Document feature: Illustrations

ProQuest document ID: 214292036

Document URL: http://search.proquest.com/docview/214292036?accountid=1558

Copyright: Copyright Newsweek, Incorporated May 7, 2001

Last updated: 2013-10-12

Database: ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source,ProQuest Research Library

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