Caral is one of 20 sites thought to be part of the oldest civilisation in Peru and all of the Americas at over 5000 years old. Along the Supe river valley, 5200 years ago, dozens of roaming family groups surviving day to day on what they could find to eat banded together to form a new kind of social group which began pooling their energies and sharing the burden of gathering food and surviving. Here in South America, at the same time as the peoples in the Nile valley were doing the same, one of the first civilisations was formed.

Caral is located roughly 184 kilometres from Lima, about 23 kilometres in from the coast. It was here that Ruth Shady Solís, a Peruvian archaeologist decided to ignore what others thought about strange but some-what natural looking mounds in the desert, that they were natural, or at best part of the much more modern ruins nearby and thus of little importance. After a huge amount of work, she has proven the existence of a number of large pyramids and possibly the origins of civilisation the Peru.

The video below explains further:

In the next two blogs
– Interview with Ruth Shady
– My visit to the city of Caral and more about the civilisation.

Tags: caral, cerros, lima, pyramids, ruins, ruth shady, supe