Perusing Peru II: The Caral Tour

Pirámide Mayor and Anfiteatro within the Caral Archaeological Site

Caral is older than pyramids in Egypt. Let that sink in.

Today's agenda item was an organized tour of the Caral Archaeological Site. It is about 140 miles north of Lima, but it's a three to four drive because of traffic, Peruano drivers, and terrible road conditions.

While this may be an ancient site, it was discovered only 31 years ago in the barren desert of Northern Peru.

How ancient? The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is believed to be 4,600 years old, dating back to around 2600 B.C. Caral has it beat by the same amount of time between when the Pilgrims stepped on Plymouth Rock and today. Caral is about 5,000 years old. In other words, when ancient astronauts were still whizzing their way to earth with the plans and levitation technology to build the pyramids in the Nile Valley -- hey, do you have a better theory on how the Egyptian pyramids were built? -- Caral was thriving.

And, yet, old as it is, it was discovered only back in A.D. 1994, lost in the dry barren desert of Coastal Peru.

This is a re-creation of how someone imagined Caral looked.

Those bamboo chairs did not survive five millennia.

This is a re-creation of a stone at the center of Caral that is believed to have been a timekeeping sundial. Or maybe not. The people of Caral left no written records of any sort. Not even petroglyphs. And definitely not the sophisticated hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt.

So there's no one to ask.

Five thousands of history discovered only 31 years ago.

Let's walk around the site, But be sure to stay within the well-marked trails. It is an active archaeological site. A very lightly-visited archaeological site.

Noticing a theme with the "31 years" motif?

This is the Fuego Sagrado, believed to be the community hearth maintained by the priestly class of Caral.

It's a hole in the ground with evidence of ancient charring. The sacred hearth thing is an educated guess. Again: no written records and, even if there were, who could read it since the language that was used is likely to be extinct.

This is the main amphitheater, or Anfiteatro in Spanish. There were enough intact stones to make the call on this being an amphitheater a very educated guess.

The expensive seats were believed to be in the back.

The Peruvian desert holds a lot of secrets, only some of which have been revealed in the modern era. The Nazca Lines, for example, weren't really known until manned flight about 100 years ago. And not just Peru's desert coast. Machu Picchu was discovered (re-discovered, to be more accurate) only about 110 years ago. And it's new construction, likely dating back only to the 1450's.

Hey! It's me! I'm in Caral!

Back to our regular programming:

Another of the pyramids of Caral. What's interesting, again comparing these to the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, is the extreme degradation of the only-slightly-older pyramids of Caral compared to the relatively-pristine pyramids of Egypt. So not only were the sloped pyramids of Egypt more advanced technologically, more difficult to build, and more aesthetically pleasing than the stepped pyramids throughout the New World, with those of Caral being far and away the oldest, the more sophisticated Egyptian pyramids have proven to be much much much more durable. That is not to slight Caral. A building surviving 5,000 years in any sort of shape is absolutely amazing. It's just shows how extraordinary and without peer are those pyramids of Egypt. This definitely is moving Egypt up on my list of places I need to go.

Enough about Egypt. This is supposed to be about Caral. Which is impressive and which is older.

More pyramid power.

This is the sundial stone.

It looked decidedly less phallic in person that it does in photo.

This is the Pirámide Menor:

It's smaller than the Pirámide Mayor. Hence the name. Is it smaller because it the last pyramid constructed, abandoned as Caral past its peak, and poverty and famine took hold? Oit was older and the people of Caral were only figuring out pyramid-building by trial-and-error? That was the approach taken in building the Gothic cathedrals of medieval Europe, where kept increasing the size until they built one too big, too tall, and it collapsed. (Beauvais Cathedral in France in 1284, if you're nerdy like me and need to know those things).

And the answer is: We don't know. Yet another something shrouded in mystery.

Above is the Pirámide Mayor:

The Big Kahuna on the Caral Pyramid scene.

It has an amphitheater, but smaller than the main amphitheater from close to the entrance.

These are the middle class residence halls:

The upper crust of Caral society lived in the shadows of the pyramids. That was the prime Caral real estate. The laboring class is believed to have lived closer to the river, which is dry during the dry season and filled with water in the wet season. This is the dry season on the Peruvian Coast which, interestingly enough, is the exact opposite of the Andean highlands of Cusco and Machu Picchu. This is wet season in the Andes.

Interestingly enough, while we know (generally) where people lived in Caral, we don't know where they ended up after they died. That is not a spiritual question, interesting as that may be. They have been no cemeteries or burial plots found yet in the Caral excavations which have been going on for how many years?

Oh, that's right. Thirty-one years.

Did Caral buried its dead? No evidence of that. There is evidence of mummification being practiced in other tribes in Coastal Peru starting in the early years of the A.D. period, but no evidence of it in Caral. Did they cremate their dead? Well, even creation leaves bone fragments. Jaw bones are especially resilient to cremation. No bone fragments consistent with that theory have been found? Were they whisked away by the aliens like what happened to the senior citizens at the end of the movie "Cocoon"? There's as much evidence to support that theory as any other. We simply have no clue as to what happened to the dead in Caral.

We do know what happened to me. I proceeded to lunch in the nearby beach town of Barranca.

One last look at Caral:

Caral. Very fascinating. So old and yet so new. It's only recently been discovered. And it has given up very few of its secrets in those 31 years.