Pyramid Found in Peru May be Older than Ancient Egypt
A team of archaeologists and researchers have found something in the valley holding Peru’s, (and South America’s) oldest civilization. A new pyramid has been found in the Supe valley, home to the truly ancient Caral culture, and it may be older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt.
The Caral were among the very first civilizations ever to emerge. Although likely not quite as old as the venerable Sumerians of Mesopotamia, they existed for more than a millennia and can be traced as far back as 3,000 BC. Five hundred years before Khufu raised his Great Pyramid at Giza this culture was flourishing in this one verdant river valley north of Lima.
The team, led by Dr. Ruth Shady, was found in the ancient Chupacigarro settlement roughly a kilometer west of the sacred city of Caral-Supe, a UNESCO world heritage site. The find, reported by the Ministry of Culture for Peru, was at first indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape, hidden under scrub vegetation.
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Once the dried huarango trees and brushwood was cleared away the pyramidal structure became clear. The pyramid is stepped, with at least three platforms, echoing the other Caral pyramids across the valley.
Large stones, known locally as “huancas” mark the four corners of the pyramid and flank a central staircase which rises up the side of the structure. It appears to be part of a network of settlements and temples built by the Caral as they spread out across their landscape, creating this vast urban complex.
Some twelve surrounding Caral structures look down on Chupacigarro, many on vantage points across the Supe valley. Dotting the landscape, they surround an open central space, possibly a plaza. These buildings, and their auxiliary structures were built over more than a thousand years: the Caral inhabited this valley from 3,000 to 1,800 BC
The newly discovered pyramid lies on the route between the sacred city and the coast, following the river at the heart of the valley westwards to the Pacific Ocean. The location of the Chupacigarro settlement, which covers some 38.5 hectares but is not visible from the path leading up to Caral, suggests that it may have been an outlying feature of the sacred city itself.
Caral itself has several pyramids which echo the design of the new discovery. All of them, including the one at Chupacigarro, were build in several phases across the centuries, rising and growing more complex and sophisticated with time.
Chupacigarro already had something unique to offer. An enormous petroglyph designed in the Sechin style (think bubble writing but depicting horrific mutilations and brutal executions) shows a human head. Some 60 meters tall and with blood flowing from its skull, it can only be seen from the settlement.
Today the Supe valley is a dry and dusty place, an arid landscape with encroaching avocado and mango plantations taking the lion’s share of what water in available. For the Caral however it would have been a paradise, a hidden valley of lush vegetation amidst the deserts of the Peruvian coast.
These arid conditions have however acted to preserve perishable items which would otherwise have rotted away in more a humid environment. Evidence still remains at Caral of the reed bags used for transporting stones used in construction of the temples at the site, and bone flutes have been found there that are thousands of years old.
Sadly though this enormous Andean urban complex, the largest and oldest in South America, receives few visitors today, Dr. Shady hopes that the newly discovered pyramid can be restored alongside the sacred city and the unified complex will attract more visitors to this ancient, forgotten world.
Header Image: The newly discovered pyramid in Sector F of the Chupacigarro settlement on the outskirts of the sacred city of Caral-Supe. Source: Ministry of Culture for Peru.
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