![Aspero](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Aspero.jpg)
Caral-Supe (also known as Caral and Norte Chico) was a complex
pre-Columbian-era society that included as many as thirty major population centers in what is now the Caral region of north-central coastal
Peru
, image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg
, image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg
, other_symbol = Great Seal of the State
, other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal
, national_motto = "Fi ...
. The civilization flourished between the fourth and second millennia BC, with the formation of the first city generally dated to around 3500 BC, at
Huaricanga
Huaricanga is the earliest city of the Norte Chico civilization, called Caral or Caral-Supe in Peru and Spanish language sources. "It existed around 3500 BC and was the oldest city in the Americas and one of the earliest cities in the world." Thi ...
, in the
Fortaleza
Fortaleza (, locally , Portuguese for ''Fortress'') is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. It belongs to the Metropolitan mesoregion of Fortaleza and microregion of Fortaleza. It is Brazil's 5th largest city and the t ...
area.
[ It is from 3100 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction become clearly apparent,][ which lasted until a period of decline around 1800 BC.][ Since the early twenty-first century, it has been established as the oldest-known civilization in the ]Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World.
Along with th ...
.
This civilization flourished along three rivers, the Fortaleza
Fortaleza (, locally , Portuguese for ''Fortress'') is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. It belongs to the Metropolitan mesoregion of Fortaleza and microregion of Fortaleza. It is Brazil's 5th largest city and the t ...
, the Pativilca, and the Supe. These river valleys each have large clusters of sites. Farther south, there are several associated sites along the Huaura River. The alternative name, Caral-Supe, is derived from the city of Caral
The Sacred City of Caral-Supe or simply Caral, is an archaeological site where the remains of the main city of the Caral civilization are found. It is located in Peru in the Supe valley, near the current town of Caral, 182 kilometers north of L ...
in the Supe Valley, a large and well-studied Caral-Supe site.
Complex society in Caral-Supe arose a millennium after Sumer
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...
in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
, was contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids
The Egyptian pyramids are ancient masonry structures located in Egypt. Sources cite at least 118 identified "Egyptian" pyramids. Approximately 80 pyramids were built within the Kingdom of Kush, now located in the modern country of Sudan. Of ...
, and predated the Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. W ...
n Olmec
The Olmecs () were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization. Following a progressive development in Soconusco, they occupied the tropical lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. It has been speculated that t ...
by nearly two millennia.
In archaeological
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
nomenclature, Caral-Supe is a pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic
Late may refer to:
* LATE, an acronym which could stand for:
** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia
** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law
** Local average treatment effect, ...
; it completely lacked ceramic
A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...
s and no evidence of visual art has survived. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthwork platform mound
Platform may refer to:
Technology
* Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run
* Platform game, a genre of video games
* Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models
* Weapons platform, a system or ...
s and sunken circular plaza
A town square (or square, plaza, public square, city square, urban square, or ''piazza'') is an open public space, commonly found in the heart of a traditional town but not necessarily a true geometric square, used for community gatherings. ...
s. Archaeological evidence suggests use of textile
Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...
technology and, possibly, the worship of common deity symbols, both of which recur in pre-Columbian Andean
The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the List of mountain ranges#Mountain ranges by length, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range i ...
cultures. Sophisticated government is presumed to have been required to manage the ancient Caral
The Sacred City of Caral-Supe or simply Caral, is an archaeological site where the remains of the main city of the Caral civilization are found. It is located in Peru in the Supe valley, near the current town of Caral, 182 kilometers north of L ...
. Questions remain over its organization, particularly the influence of food resources on politics.
Archaeologists have been aware of ancient sites in the area since at least the 1940s; early work occurred at Aspero
Aspero is a well-studied Late Preceramic site of the ancient Caral-Supe civilization, located at the mouth of the Supe river on the north-central Peruvian coast. The site covers an area of approximately 35 acres and is made up of two large plat ...
on the coast, a site identified as early as 1905,[ "We see the site as a 'peaking' of an essentially non-agricultural economy. Subsistence was still, basically, from the sea. But such subsistence supported a sedentary style of life, with communities of appreciable size."] and later at Caral, farther inland. In the late 1990s, Peruvian archaeologists, led by Ruth Shady
Ruth Martha Shady Solís (born December 29, 1946, Callao, Perú) is a Peruvian anthropologist and archaeologist. She is the founder and director of the archaeological project at Caral.
Career
Throughout her career, she has directed many diffe ...
, provided the first extensive documentation of the civilization with work at Caral. A 2001 paper in ''Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
'', providing a survey of the Caral research, and a 2004 article in ''Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
'', describing fieldwork and radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
The method was dev ...
across a wider area, revealed Caral-Supe's full significance and led to widespread interest.
History and geography
The dating of the Caral-Supe sites has pushed back the estimated beginning date of complex societies in the Peruvian region by more than one thousand years. The Chavín culture, circa 900 BC, had previously been considered the first civilization of the area. Regularly, it still is cited incorrectly as such in general works.
The discovery of Caral-Supe also has shifted the focus of research away from the highland
Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills. Generally speaking, upland (or uplands) refers to ranges of hills, typically from up to while highland (or highlands) is ...
areas of the Andes and lowlands adjacent to the mountains (where the Chavín, and later Inca
The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, (Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The admin ...
, had their major centers) to the Peruvian littoral
The littoral zone or nearshore is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely inundated), to coastal areas ...
, or coastal regions. Caral is located in a north-central area of the coast, approximately 150 to 200 km north of Lima
Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón River, Chillón, Rímac River, Rímac and Lurín Rivers, in the desert zone of t ...
, roughly bounded by the Lurín Valley on the south and the Casma Valley
The Casma River, which upstream is called Río Grande, is a river that crosses northern Casma province in the Ancash Region of Peru. It originates in the Black Mountain Range and drains into the Pacific Ocean. Major tributaries include the Sechí ...
on the north. It comprises four coastal valleys: the Huaura, Supe, Pativilca
Pativilca is a town in central Peru, capital of the district Pativilca in the province Barranca in the region Lima
Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is l ...
, and Fortaleza
Fortaleza (, locally , Portuguese for ''Fortress'') is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. It belongs to the Metropolitan mesoregion of Fortaleza and microregion of Fortaleza. It is Brazil's 5th largest city and the t ...
. Known sites are concentrated in the latter three, which share a common coastal plain. The three principal valleys cover only 1,800 km², and research has emphasized the density of the population centers.
The Peruvian littoral appears an "improbable, even aberrant" candidate for the "pristine" development of civilization, compared to other world centers. It is extremely arid, bounded by two rain shadow
A rain shadow is an area of significantly reduced rainfall behind a mountainous region, on the side facing away from prevailing winds, known as its leeward side.
Evaporated moisture from water bodies (such as oceans and large lakes) is carrie ...
s (caused by the Andes to the east, and the Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
trade wind
The trade winds or easterlies are the permanent east-to-west prevailing winds that flow in the Earth's equatorial region. The trade winds blow mainly from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisph ...
s to the west). The region is punctuated by more than 50 rivers that carry Andean snowmelt. The development of widespread irrigation
Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow Crop, crops, Landscape plant, landscape plants, and Lawn, lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,00 ...
from these water sources is seen as decisive in the emergence of Caral-Supe;["The claim in this ''Science'' 'News of the Week' column that Caral is the oldest urban center in the Americas is highly uncertain."] since all of the monumental architecture at various sites has been found close to irrigation channels.
The radiocarbon work of Jonathan Haas ''et al.'', found that 10 of 95 samples taken in the Pativilca and Fortaleza areas dated from before 3500 BC. The oldest, dating from 9210 BC, provides "limited indication" of human settlement during the Pre-Columbian Early Archaic era. Two dates of 3700 BC are associated with communal architecture, but are likely to be anomalous. It is from 3200 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction are clearly apparent.[ Mann, in a survey of the literature in 2005, suggests "sometime before 3200 BC, and possibly before 3500 BC" as the beginning date of the Caral-Supe formative period. He notes that the earliest date securely associated with a city is 3500 BC, at ]Huaricanga
Huaricanga is the earliest city of the Norte Chico civilization, called Caral or Caral-Supe in Peru and Spanish language sources. "It existed around 3500 BC and was the oldest city in the Americas and one of the earliest cities in the world." Thi ...
, in the Fortaleza area of the north, based on Haas's dates.[
Haas's early-third-millennium dates suggest that the development of coastal and inland sites occurred in parallel. But, from 2500 to 2000 BC, during the period of greatest expansion, the population and development decisively shifted toward the inland sites. All development apparently occurred at large interior sites such as Caral, although they remained dependent on fish and shellfish from the coast.][ The peak in dates is in keeping with Shady's dates at Caral, which show habitation from 2627 BC to 2020 BC.][ That coastal and inland sites developed in tandem remains disputed, however (see next section).
]
Influence
By around 2200 BC, the influence of Norte Chico civilization spread far along the coast. To the south, it went as far as the Chillon valley, and the site of El Paraiso. To the north, it spread as far as the Santa River
The Santa River ( es, Río Santa) is a river in the South American Andes mountain range in the Ancash Region of northwest central Peru.
River Course
Lake Conococha, at an altitude of 4,050 m above sea level and at , is considered the headwate ...
valley.
Circa 1800 BC, the Caral-Supe civilization began to decline, with more powerful centers appearing to the south and north along the coast, and to the east inside the belt of the Andes. The success of irrigation-based agriculture at Caral-Supe may have contributed to its being eclipsed. Anthropologist Professor Winifred Creamer of Northern Illinois University
Northern Illinois University (NIU) is a public research university in DeKalb, Illinois. It was founded as Northern Illinois State Normal School on May 22, 1895, by Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld as part of an expansion of the state's system ...
notes that "when this civilization is in decline, we begin to find extensive canals farther north. People were moving to more fertile ground and taking their knowledge of irrigation with them".[ It would be a thousand years before the rise of the next great Peruvian culture, the Chavín.
]
Geographical links
Cultural links with the highland areas have been noted by archaeologists. Ruth Shady highlights the links with the Kotosh Religious Tradition
The Kotosh Religious Tradition is a term used by archaeologists to refer to the ritual buildings that were constructed in the mountain drainages of the Andes between circa 3000 and c. 1800 BCE, during the Andean preceramic, or Late Archaic perio ...
:
Numerous architectural features found among the settlements of Supe, including subterranean circular courts, stepped pyramids and sequential platforms, as well as material remains and their cultural implications, excavated at Aspero and the valley sites we are digging (Caral, Chupacigarro, Lurihuasi, Miraya), are shared with other settlements of the area that participated in what is known as the Kotosh Religious Tradition. Most specific among these features include rooms with benches and hearths with subterranean ventilation ducts, wall niches, biconvex beads, and musical flutes.
Maritime coast and agricultural interior
Research into Caral-Supe continues, with many unsettled questions. Debate is ongoing regarding two related questions: the degree to which the flourishing of the Caral-Supe was based on maritime food resources, and the exact relationship this implies between the coastal and inland sites.["Interior" and "inland" do not refer here to the mountainous interior of Peru proper. All of the Norte Chico sites are broadly coastal, within of the coast and within the Peruvian littoral (Caral is inland). "Interior" and "inland" are used here to contrast with sites that are literally adjacent to the ocean.]
Confirmed diet
A broad outline of the Caral-Supe diet has been suggested. At Caral, the edible domesticated plants
This is a list of plants that have been domesticated by humans. The list includes individual plant species identified by their common names as well as larger formal and informal botanical categories which include at least some domesticated individ ...
noted by Shady are squash
Squash may refer to:
Sports
* Squash (sport), the high-speed racquet sport also known as squash racquets
* Squash (professional wrestling), an extremely one-sided match in professional wrestling
* Squash tennis, a game similar to squash but pla ...
, bean
A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes th ...
s, lúcuma, guava
Guava () is a common tropical fruit cultivated in many tropical and subtropical regions. The common guava ''Psidium guajava'' (lemon guava, apple guava) is a small tree in the myrtle family ( Myrtaceae), native to Mexico, Central America, the ...
, pacay (''Inga feuilleei
''Inga feuilleei'' (named after Louis Feuillée), commonly known as pacay or ice-cream bean tree, is a tree in the family Fabaceae native to Andes, Andean valleys of northwestern South America. Pacay trees, as is the case with other trees in g ...
''), and sweet potato
The sweet potato or sweetpotato (''Ipomoea batatas'') is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the Convolvulus, bindweed or morning glory family (biology), family, Convolvulaceae. Its large, starchy, sweet-tasting tuberous roots are used as a r ...
.[ Haas ''et al.'' noted the same foods in their survey farther north, while adding ]avocado
The avocado (''Persea americana'') is a medium-sized, evergreen tree in the laurel family (Lauraceae). It is native to the Americas and was first domesticated by Mesoamerican tribes more than 5,000 years ago. Then as now it was prized for i ...
and achira. In 2013, good evidence for maize also was documented by Haas et al. (see below).
There was also a significant seafood
Seafood is any form of sea life regarded as food by humans, prominently including fish and shellfish. Shellfish include various species of molluscs (e.g. bivalve molluscs such as clams, oysters and mussels, and cephalopods such as octopus an ...
component at both coastal and inland sites. Shady notes that "animal remains are almost exclusively marine" at Caral, including clam
Clam is a common name for several kinds of bivalve molluscs. The word is often applied only to those that are edible and live as infauna, spending most of their lives halfway buried in the sand of the seafloor or riverbeds. Clams have two she ...
s and mussel
Mussel () is the common name used for members of several families of bivalve molluscs, from saltwater and Freshwater bivalve, freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other ...
s, and large amounts of anchovies
An anchovy is a small, common forage fish of the family Engraulidae. Most species are found in marine waters, but several will enter brackish water, and some in South America are restricted to fresh water.
More than 140 species are placed in 1 ...
and sardine
"Sardine" and "pilchard" are common names for various species of small, oily forage fish in the herring family Clupeidae. The term "sardine" was first used in English during the early 15th century, a folk etymology says it comes from the Ital ...
s.[ That the anchovy fish reached inland is clear,][ although Haas suggests that "]shellfish
Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater envir ...
hich would include clams and mussels sea mammals
Marine mammals are aquatic mammals that rely on the ocean and other marine ecosystems for their existence. They include animals such as seals, whales, manatees, sea otters and polar bears. They are an informal group, unified only by their reli ...
, and seaweed
Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of '' Rhodophyta'' (red), ''Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ...
do not appear to have been significant portions of the diet in the inland, non-maritime sites".[
]
Theory of a maritime foundation for Andean civilization
The role of seafood in the Caral-Supe diet has aroused debate. Much early fieldwork was conducted in the region of Aspero on the coast, before the full scope and inter-connectedness of the several sites of the civilization were realized. In a 1973 paper, Michael E. Moseley
Michael Edward Moseley is an American anthropologist at the University of Florida.
Early life
Moseley received his Bachelor of Arts in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963, and his Master of Arts and Ph.D. in anthr ...
contended that a maritime subsistence (seafood) economy had been the basis of the society and its remarkably early flourishing,[ a theory later elaborated as a "maritime foundation of Andean civilization" (MFAC). He confirmed a previously observed lack of ceramics at ]Aspero
Aspero is a well-studied Late Preceramic site of the ancient Caral-Supe civilization, located at the mouth of the Supe river on the north-central Peruvian coast. The site covers an area of approximately 35 acres and is made up of two large plat ...
, and he deduced that "hummock
In geology, a hummock is a small knoll or mound above ground.Bates, Robert L. and Julia A. Jackson, ed. (1984). “hummock.” Dictionary of Geological Terms, 3rd Ed. New York: Anchor Books. p. 241. They are typically less than in height and ...
s" on the site constituted the remains of artificial platform mounds
Platform may refer to:
Technology
* Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run
* Platform game, a genre of video games
* Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models
* Weapons platform, a system or ...
.
This thesis of a maritime foundation was contrary to the general scholarly consensus that the rise of civilization was based on intensive agriculture, particularly of at least one cereal
A cereal is any Poaceae, grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis), composed of the endosperm, Cereal germ, germ, and bran. Cereal Grain, grain crops are grown in greater quantit ...
. The production of agricultural surpluses had long been seen as essential in promoting population density and the emergence of complex society. Moseley's ideas would be debated and challenged (that maritime remains and their caloric contribution were overestimated, for example), but have been treated as plausible as late as 2005, when Mann conducted a summary of the literature.[
Concomitant to the maritime subsistence hypothesis was an implied dominance of sites immediately adjacent to the coast over other centers. This idea was shaken by the realization of the magnitude of Caral, an inland site. Supplemental to a 1997 article by Shady dating Caral, a 2001 '']Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
'' news article emphasized the dominance of agriculture and also suggested that Caral was the oldest urban center
An urban area, built-up area or urban agglomeration is a human settlement with a high population density and infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas are created through urbanization and are categorized by urban morphology as cities, t ...
in Peru (and the entire Americas). It rejected the idea that civilization might have begun adjacent to the coast and then moved inland. One archaeologist was quoted as suggesting that "rather than coastal antecedents to monumental inland sites, what we have now are coastal satellite villages to monumental inland sites".[
These assertions were quickly challenged by Sandweiss and Moseley, who observed that Caral, although being the largest and most complex preceramic site, it is not the oldest. They admitted the importance of agriculture to industry and to augment diet, while broadly affirming "the formative role of marine resources in early Andean civilization".] Scholars now agree that the inland sites did have significantly greater populations, and that there were "so many more people along the four rivers than on the shore that they had to have been dominant".[
The remaining question is which of the areas developed first and created a template for subsequent development.] Haas rejects suggestions that maritime development at sites immediately adjacent to the coast was initial, pointing to contemporaneous development based on his dating.[ Moseley remains convinced that coastal Aspero is the oldest site, and that its maritime subsistence served as a basis for the civilization.][
]
Cotton and food sources
The use of cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus ''Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor perce ...
(of the species ''Gossypium barbadense
''Gossypium barbadense'' (''gos-SIP-pee-um bar-ba-DEN-see'') is one of several species of cotton. It is in the mallow family. It has been cultivated since antiquity, but has been especially prized since a form with particularly long fibers was ...
'') played an important economic role in the relationship between the inland and the coastal settlements in this area of Peru. Nevertheless, scholars are still divided over the exact chronology of these developments.[
Although not edible, cotton was the most important product of irrigation in the Caral-Supe culture, vital to the production of ]fishing net
A fishing net is a net used for fishing. Nets are devices made from fibers woven in a grid-like structure. Some fishing nets are also called fish traps, for example fyke nets. Fishing nets are usually meshes formed by knotting a relatively thin ...
s (that in turn provided maritime resources) as well as to textile
Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...
s and textile technology. Haas notes that "control over cotton allows a ruling elite to provide the benefit of cloth for clothing
Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...
, bags, wraps, and adornment".[ He is willing to admit to a mutual dependency dilemma: "The prehistoric residents of the Norte Chico needed the fish resources for their ]protein
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...
and the fishermen
A fisher or fisherman is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish.
Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishers and fish farmers. Fishers may be professional or recreat ...
needed the cotton to make the nets to catch the fish."[ Thus, identifying cotton as a vital resource produced in the inland does not by itself resolve the issue of whether the inland centers were a progenitor for those on the coast, or vice versa. Moseley argues that successful maritime centers would have moved inland to find cotton.][
In a 2018 publication, David G. Beresford-Jones with coauthors have defended Moseley’s (1975) Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization (MFAC) hypothesis.]
The authors modified and refined the Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization hypothesis of Moseley. Thus, according to them, the MFAC hypothesis now “emerges more persuasive than ever”. It was the potential for increased quantities of food production that the cultivation of cotton allowed that was the key in precipitating revolutionary social change and social complexity, according to the authors. Previous to that, the gathering of bast fibers of wild ''Asclepias
''Asclepias'' is a genus of herbaceous, perennial, flowering plants known as milkweeds, named for their latex, a milky substance containing cardiac glycosides termed cardenolides, exuded where cells are damaged. Most species are toxic to humans ...
'' was used for fiber production, which was far less efficient.
Beresford-Jones and others also offered further support for their theories in 2021.
History of research
It was Swiss archaeologist :fr:Frédéric Engel, originally, who coined the term "Cotton Preceramic Stage" in 1957 in order to describe the unusual coastal sites such Norte Chico that had cotton but lacked ceramics and were very ancient. This stage was seen as running for about 1200 years from 3000 to 1800 BC.
The development of Caral-Supe is particularly remarkable for the apparent absence of an agricultural staple food
A staple food, food staple, or simply a staple, is a food that is eaten often and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a standard diet for a given person or group of people, supplying a large fraction of energy needs and ...
. However, recent studies increasingly dispute this and point to maize
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
as a dietary backbone of this and later pre-Columbian civilizations. Moseley found a small number of maize cobs in 1973 at Aspero (also seen in site work in the 1940s and 1950s)[ but has since called the find "problematic".][ However, increasing evidence has emerged about the importance of maize in this period:
For Beresford-Jones, his new research on the two nearby ancient coastal settlements of La Yerba, on the east bank of ]Ica River
The Ica is a 220 kilometer long river in Peru which flows south from highlands in Huancavelica Region to the Pacific Ocean through Ica Region and passing the region's capital, the city of Ica.
The river is normally dry during much of the year, ...
, Peru (''Río Ica'') was very important. This is not far from the southern Peruvian town of Ica. The earlier of these settlement was La Yerba II (7571–6674 Cal BP, or ca 5570-4670 BC). When it was occupied, La Yerba II shell midden was situated rather close to the ancient surf line. This was not a permanently occupied site.
A somewhat later site, La Yerba III, on the other hand, was a permanently occupied settlement, and shows a population that was an order of magnitude greater than earlier. Obsidian
Obsidian () is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extrusive rock, extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. It is an igneous rock.
Obsidian is produced from felsic lava, rich in the lighter elements s ...
debitage
In archaeology, debitage is all the material produced during the process of lithic reduction – the production of stone tools and weapons by knapping stone. This assemblage may include the different kinds of lithic flakes and lithic blades, b ...
was abundant at La Yerba III, as opposed to earlier. This suggests an increasing interaction extending to the highlands where obsidian was procured.
The population of La Yerba III already practiced some floodplain horticulture. They cultivated gourds, Phaseolus
''Phaseolus'' (bean, wild bean) is a genus of herbaceous to woody annual and perennial vines in the family Fabaceae containing about 70 plant species, all native to the Americas, primarily Mesoamerica.
It is one of the most economically importan ...
, and Canavalia
''Canavalia'' is a genus of plants in the legume family ( Fabaceae) that comprises approximately 48 to 50 species of tropical vines. Members of the genus are commonly known as jack-beans. The species of ''Canavalia'' endemic to the Hawaiian Isl ...
beans, and plant fiber production was of great importance for their fishing economy. Therefore, they were “pre-adapted to a Cotton Revolution".
Social organization
Government
The degree of centralized authority is difficult to ascertain, but architectural construction patterns are indicative, at least in certain places at certain times, of an elite population who wielded considerable power: while some of the monumental architecture was constructed incrementally, other buildings, such as the two main platform mounds at Caral,[ appear to have been constructed in one or two intense construction phases.][ As further evidence of centralized control, Haas points to remains of large stone ]warehouse
A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities ...
s found at Upaca, on the Pativilca, as emblematic of authorities able to control vital resources such as cotton.[
Haas suggests that the labour mobilization patterns revealed by the archaeological evidence, point to a unique emergence of human government, one of two alongside ]Sumer
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...
(or three, if Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. W ...
is included as a separate case). While in other cases, the idea of government would have been borrowed or copied, in this small group, government was ''invented''. Other archaeologists have rejected such claims as hyperbolic.[
In exploring the basis of possible government, Haas suggests three broad bases of power for early complex societies:
* economic,
* ideology, and
* physical.
He finds the first two present in ancient Caral-Supe.
]
Economic
Economic authority would have rested on the control of cotton, edible plants, and associated trade relationships, with power centered on the inland sites. Haas tentatively suggests that the scope of this economic power base may have extended widely: there are only two confirmed shore sites in the Caral-Supe (Aspero and Bandurria) and possibly two more, but cotton fishing nets and domesticated plants have been found up and down the Peruvian coast. It is possible that the major inland centers of Caral-Supe, were at the center of a broad regional trade network centered on these resources.[
Citing Shady, a 2005 article in '']Discover
Discover may refer to:
Art, entertainment, and media
* ''Discover'' (album), a Cactus Jack album
* ''Discover'' (magazine), an American science magazine
Businesses and brands
* DISCover, the ''Digital Interactive Systems Corporation''
* Di ...
'' magazine suggests a rich and varied trade life: " aralexported its own products and those of Aspero to distant communities in exchange for exotic imports: ''Spondylus
''Spondylus'' is a genus of bivalve molluscs, the only genus in the family (biology), family Spondylidae.MolluscaBase (2019). MolluscaBase. Spondylus Linnaeus, 1758. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://www.marinespecies ...
'' shells from the coast of Ecuador
Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...
, rich dye
A dye is a colored substance that chemically bonds to the substrate to which it is being applied. This distinguishes dyes from pigments which do not chemically bind to the material they color. Dye is generally applied in an aqueous solution an ...
s from the Andean highlands, hallucinogenic snuff from the Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
." (Given the still limited extent of Caral-Supe research, such claims should be treated circumspectly.) Other reports on Shady's work indicate Caral traded with communities in the jungle farther inland and, possibly, with people from the mountains.
Ideology
Haas postulates that ideological power exercised by leadership was based on apparent access to deities
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greate ...
and the supernatural
Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings si ...
.[ Evidence regarding Caral-Supe religion is limited: in 2003, an image of the ]Staff God
In Andean Iconography front-facing figures are often referred to as Staff Gods and thought to represent deities in Andean cultures. There is no uniform representation of a "Staff God". Dozens of variations of "Staff Gods" exist. Usually a Staff Go ...
, a leering figure with a hood and fangs, was found on a gourd
Gourds include the fruits of some flowering plant species in the family Cucurbitaceae, particularly ''Cucurbita'' and ''Lagenaria''. The term refers to a number of species and subspecies, many with hard shells, and some without. One of the earli ...
that dated to 2250 BC. The Staff God is a major deity of later Andean cultures, and Winifred Creamer suggests the find points to worship of common symbols of deities. As with much other research at Caral-Supe, the nature and significance of the find has been disputed by other researchers.[Krysztof Makowski, as reported by Mann (1491), suggests there is little evidence that the peoples of Andean civilizations worshipped an overarching deity. The figure may have been carved by a later civilization onto an ancient gourd, as it was found in ]strata
In geology and related fields, a stratum ( : strata) is a layer of rock or sediment characterized by certain lithologic properties or attributes that distinguish it from adjacent layers from which it is separated by visible surfaces known as ei ...
dating between 900 and 1300 AD.
Mann postulates that the act of architectural construction and maintenance at Caral-Supe may have been a spiritual or religious experience: a process of communal exaltation and ceremony.[ Shady has called Caral "the sacred city" (''la ciudad sagrada'')][ and reports that socio-economic and political focus was on the temples, which were periodically remodeled, with major burnt offerings associated with the remodeling.
]
Physical
Haas notes the absence of any suggestion of physical bases of power, that is, defensive construction, at Caral-Supe. There is no evidence of warfare "of any kind or at any level during the Preceramic Period".[ Mutilated bodies, burned buildings, and other tell-tale signs of violence are absent and settlement patterns are completely non-defensive.][ The evidence of the development of complex government in the absence of warfare contrasts markedly to archaeological theory, which suggests that human beings move away from kin-based groups to larger units resembling " states" for mutual defense of often scarce resources. In Caral-Supe, a vital resource was present: ]arable land
Arable land (from the la, arabilis, "able to be ploughed") is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "arable, ''adj''. and ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013. Alternatively, for the ...
generally, and the cotton crop specifically, but Mann noted that apparently, the move to greater complexity by the culture was not driven by the need for defense or warfare.[
]
Sites and architecture
Caral-Supe sites are known for their density of large sites with immense architecture. Haas argues that the density of sites in such a small area is globally unique for a nascent civilization. During the third millennium BC, Caral-Supe may have been the most densely populated area of the world (excepting, possibly, Northern China
Northern China () and Southern China () are two approximate regions within China. The exact boundary between these two regions is not precisely defined and only serve to depict where there appears to be regional differences between the climate ...
).[ The Supe, ]Pativilca
Pativilca is a town in central Peru, capital of the district Pativilca in the province Barranca in the region Lima
Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is l ...
, Fortaleza, and Huaura River valleys of Caral-Supe each have several related sites.
Evidence from the ground-breaking work during 1973 at Aspero
Aspero is a well-studied Late Preceramic site of the ancient Caral-Supe civilization, located at the mouth of the Supe river on the north-central Peruvian coast. The site covers an area of approximately 35 acres and is made up of two large plat ...
, at the mouth of the Supe Valley, suggested a site of approximately . Surveying of the midden
A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...
suggested extensive prehistoric construction activity. Small-scale terracing was noted, along with more sophisticated platform mound masonry
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term ''masonry'' can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are bricks, building ...
. As many as eleven artificial mounds were estimated to exist at the site. Moseley calls these "Corporate Labor Platforms", given that their size, layout, and construction materials and techniques would have required an organized workforce.[
The survey of the northern rivers found sites between ; between one and seven large ]platform mound
Platform may refer to:
Technology
* Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run
* Platform game, a genre of video games
* Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models
* Weapons platform, a system or ...
s—rectangular, terraced
In agriculture, a terrace is a piece of sloped plane that has been cut into a series of successively receding flat surfaces or platforms, which resemble steps, for the purposes of more effective farming. This type of landscaping is therefore ...
pyramid
A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...
s—were discovered, ranging in size from to more than .[ Shady notes that the central zone of Caral, with monumental architecture, covers an area of just greater than . Also, six platform mounds, numerous smaller mounds, two sunken circular plazas, and a variety of residential architecture were discovered at this site.][
The monumental architecture was constructed with ]quarried
A quarry is a type of open-pit mining, open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock (geology), rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some juri ...
stone and river cobbles. Using reed
Reed or Reeds may refer to:
Science, technology, biology, and medicine
* Reed bird (disambiguation)
* Reed pen, writing implement in use since ancient times
* Reed (plant), one of several tall, grass-like wetland plants of the order Poales
* Re ...
"shicra-bags", some of which have been preserved, laborers would have hauled the material to sites by hand. Roger Atwood of ''Archaeology'' magazine describes the process:
Armies of workers would gather a long, durable grass known as '' shicra'' in the highlands above the city, tie the grass strands into loosely meshed bags, fill the bags with boulders, and then pack the trenches behind each successive retaining wall
Retaining walls are relatively rigid walls used for supporting soil laterally so that it can be retained at different levels on the two sides.
Retaining walls are structures designed to restrain soil to a slope that it would not naturally keep to ...
of the step pyramid
A step pyramid or stepped pyramid is an architectural structure that uses flat platforms, or steps, receding from the ground up, to achieve a completed shape similar to a geometric pyramid. Step pyramids are structures which characterized several ...
s with the stone-filled bags.
In this way, the people of Norte Chico achieved formidable architectural success. The largest of the platforms mounds at Caral, the '' Piramide Mayor'', measures and rises high.[ In its summation of the 2001 Shady paper, the ]BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
suggests workers would have been "paid or compelled" to work on centralized projects of this sort, with dried anchovies
An anchovy is a small, common forage fish of the family Engraulidae. Most species are found in marine waters, but several will enter brackish water, and some in South America are restricted to fresh water.
More than 140 species are placed in 1 ...
possibly serving as a form of currency. Mann points to "ideology, charisma, and skilfully timed reinforcement" from leaders.[
]
Development and absent technologies
When compared to the common Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago a ...
n models of the development of civilization, Caral-Supe's differences are striking. In Caral-Supe, a total lack of ceramics persists across the period. Crops were cooked by roasting.[ The lack of pottery was accompanied by a lack of archaeologically apparent art. In conversation with Mann, Alvaro Ruiz observes: "In the Norte Chico we see almost no ]visual art
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts ...
s. No sculpture, no carving or bas-relief
Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the ...
, almost no painting or drawing—the interiors are completely bare. What we do see are these huge mounds—and textiles."[
While the absence of ceramics appears anomalous, Mann notes that the presence of textiles is intriguing. '']Quipu
''Quipu'' (also spelled ''khipu'') are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America.
A ''quipu'' usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings. The Inca people u ...
'' (or khipu), string-based recording devices, have been found at Caral, suggesting a writing, or proto-writing
Proto-writing consists of visible marks communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in Eastern Europe and China. They used ideograph ...
, system at Caral-Supe. (The discovery was reported by Mann in ''Science'' in 2005, but has not been formally published or described by Shady.) The exact use of quipu in this and later Andean cultures has been widely debated. Originally, it was believed to be a simple mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
technique used to record numeric information, such as a count of items bought and sold. Evidence has emerged, however, that the quipu also may have recorded logographic
In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, a ...
information in the same way writing does. Research has focused on the much larger sample of a few hundred quipu dating to Inca times. The Caral-Supe discovery remains singular and undeciphered.
Other finds at Caral-Supe have proved suggestive. While visual arts appear absent, the people may have played instrumental music: thirty-two flutes, crafted from pelican
Pelicans (genus ''Pelecanus'') are a genus of large water birds that make up the family Pelecanidae. They are characterized by a long beak and a large throat pouch used for catching prey and draining water from the scooped-up contents before s ...
bone, have been discovered.[
The oldest known depiction of the ]Staff God
In Andean Iconography front-facing figures are often referred to as Staff Gods and thought to represent deities in Andean cultures. There is no uniform representation of a "Staff God". Dozens of variations of "Staff Gods" exist. Usually a Staff Go ...
was found in 2003 on some broken gourd fragments in a burial site in the Pativilca River
Pativilca is a town in central Peru, capital of the district Pativilca in the province Barranca in the region Lima
Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is l ...
valley and the gourd was carbon dated to 2250 BCE. While still fragmentary, such archaeological evidence corresponds to the patterns of later Andean civilization and may indicate that Caral-Supe served as a template. Along with the specific finds, Mann highlights
"the primacy of exchange over a wide area, the penchant for collective, festive civic work projects, ndthe high valuation of textiles and textile technology" within Norte Chico as patterns that would recur later in the Peruvian cradle of civilization."
Academic disputes
The magnitude of the Caral-Supe discovery has generated academic controversy among researchers. The "monumental feud", as described by ''Archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
'', has included "public insults, a charge of plagiarism, ethics inquiries in both Peru and the United States, and complaints by Peruvian officials to the U.S. government".[ The lead author of the seminal paper of April 2001 ][ was a Peruvian, ]Ruth Shady
Ruth Martha Shady Solís (born December 29, 1946, Callao, Perú) is a Peruvian anthropologist and archaeologist. She is the founder and director of the archaeological project at Caral.
Career
Throughout her career, she has directed many diffe ...
, with co-authors Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer, a married United States team; the coauthoring was reportedly suggested by Haas, in the hopes that the involvement of United States researchers would help secure funds for carbon dating as well as future research funding. Later, Shady charged the couple with plagiarism
Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...
and insufficient attribution, suggesting the pair had received credit for her research, which had begun in 1994.[
At issue is credit for the discovery of the civilization, naming it, and developing the theoretical models to explain it. In 1997, Shady described a civilization located on the Supe River, with Caral at its center, although she suggested a larger geographic base for the society.][Fro]
summary three
Shady (1997): ''El número de centros urbanos (17), identificado en el valle de Supe, y su magnitud, requirieron de una gran cantidad de mano de obra y de los excedentes, para su edificación, mantenimiento, remodelación y enterramiento. Si consideramos exclusivamente la capacidad productiva de este pequeño valle, esa inversión no habría podido ser realizada sin la participación de las comunidades de los valles vecinos.'' The number of urban centers (17) identified in the Supe Valley, and their magnitude, requires a great quantity of surplus labor for their construction, maintenance, remodeling and burial. If we consider exclusively the productive capacity of this small valley, this investment could not have been realized without the participation of the communities of neighboring valleys.
In 2004, Haas ''et al.'' wrote that "Our recent work in the neighboring Pativilca and Fortaleza has revealed that Caral and Aspero were but two of a much larger number of major Late Archaic sites in the Norte Chico", while noting Shady only in footnotes.[ Attribution of this type is what has angered Shady and her supporters. Shady's position has been hampered by a lack of funding for archaeological research in her native Peru, as well as the media advantages of North American researchers in disputes of this type.][
Haas and Creamer were cleared of the plagiarism charge by their institutions. The science advisory council of the Chicago ]Field Museum of Natural History
The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...
rebuked Haas for press releases and web pages that gave too little credit to Shady and inflated the American couple's role as discoverers.[
]
See also
* Andean preceramic
The Andean preceramic refers to the early period of human occupation in the Andean area of South America that preceded the introduction of ceramics. This period is also called pre-ceramic or aceramic.
Earliest human occupations
The earliest huma ...
* Iperú
Iperú Tourist Information and Assistance, or simply Iperú (with lower-case ''p'') ) is the Perú tourism office provided since 1994 by the Peruvian government through the Commission for the Promotion of Exports and Tourism of Perú ( es, Com ...
, Peru tourist information
* List of Norte Chico archaeological sites
* Supe Puerto
Notes
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
Caral-Supe at Google Maps
Press kit photos and video of Caral
{{Authority control
4th-millennium BC establishments
2nd-millennium BC disestablishments
Andean civilizations
Andean preceramic
Archaeology of Peru
Indigenous peoples in Peru
Pre-Columbian cultures