UJ#5 Paracas

FOCUS OF CIVILISATION
Caral’s largest
pyramid contrasts
with the fertile Supe
Valley.
Clay statues
discovered during
recent excavations.
Christopher Kleihege
When I was 15, a game called Age of Empires
came out. This strategy game allowed the
player to become a protagonist in the birth of
the European, Asian and Middle Eastern civilisations
from the Stone Age through the Iron Age and all leading
up to the creation of the Roman Empire. You could
choose to be part of any of these civilisations and, as
you progressed from mission to mission, you would
make historic discoveries – from the domestication of
plants to the different types of metals – which would
then allow you to evolve and, over the centuries,
develop your sophistication at war. Between mission
and mission, the hours went by.
I remember thinking that Peru would be perfect for
one of the stories in the game. After all, Peru offered
1.2 million square kilometres of inhospitable desert,
jagged Andean peaks, windswept Altiplano plains and
the exotic Amazon Jungle. It was a place where, over
5,000 years, incredible civilisations had been born, and
the experiences of all of them had eventually led to the
creation the Inca Empire.
Though we know that Peru has been home to humans
since at least 20,000 b.c., the first urban settlements
that demonstrate a complex, social organization were
along the country’s central coast, between the Supe
and Casma Valleys. Archaeological sites at Las Aldas,
Sechin, Caral and Aspero are examples of these
cities and all the sites share the common architectural
element of a sunken, circular central plaza. Radiocarbon
dating has put these communities between 3,000 b.c.
and 2,500 b.c., making them co-existent with other
sophisticated societies in Egypt, China and India. While
research shows that all the cities along this coastal
region were communicating regularly and under one
cultural dominion since the Chavin Empire (15,000 b.c.
to 2,000 b.c.), archaeologists continue to study how
that development happened.
The Chavin culture was centred in Chavin de Huantar,
a high Andean area in Ancash, tucked into a valley
between two 6,000-metre peaks. For decades, the
Chavin were known as the mother of Andean civilisation.
In fact, some scientists believe that the basic structures