 |
 |
 |
|
The mother of all civilisations
Posted on Saturday, December 22, 2007 (CST) by Thoth
 The ruins were so magnificent and sprawling that some people believed that the aliens from a faraway galaxy had built the huge pyramids that stood in the desert across the Andes.
Some historians believed that the complex society, which existed at that time, was born out of fear and war. They looked for the telltale signs of violence that they believed led to the creation of this civilisation. But, they could not find even a hint of any warfare. It was baffling. Even years after Ruth Shady Solis found the ancient city of pyramids at Caral in Peru, it continues to surprise historians around the world. It took Ruth Shady many years and many rounds of carbon dating to prove that the earliest known civilisation in South Americas—at 2,627 BC–was much older than the Harappa Valley towns and the pyramids of Egypt.
Solis, an archaeologist at the National University of San Marcos, Lima, was looking for the fabled missing link of archaeology— a ‘mother city’—when she stumbled upon the ancient city of Caral in the Supe Valley of Peru a few years ago. Her findings were stunning.
It showed
that a full-fledged urban civilisation existed at the place around 2700
BC. The archaeologist and her team found a huge compound at Caral: 65
hectares in the central zone, encompassing six large pyramids, many
smaller pyramids, two circular plazas, temples, amphitheatres and other
architectural features including residential districts spread in the
desert, 23 km from the coast.
The discovery of Caral has
pushed back the history of the Americas: Caral is more than 1,000 years
older than Machu Picchu of the Incas. They built huge structures in
Caral hundreds of years before the famous drainage system of Harappa
and the pyramids of Egypt were even designed.
But, it was not easy for
Ruth Shady to prove this. It was only in 2001 that the journal Science
reported the Peruvian archaeologist’s discovery. And, despite the hard
evidence backing her, she is still trying to convince people that Caral
was indeed the oldest urban civilisation in the world.
"There were many problems,
many of them in my own country," says Ruth Shady, on a visit to India
to discuss her discovery with other historians. "The discovery of Caral
challenged the accepted beliefs. Some historians were not ready to
believe that an urban civilisation existed in Peru even before the
pyramids were built in Egypt," she says.
Basically, there were two
problems. First, for decades archaeologist have been looking for a
‘mother city’ to find an answer to the question: why did humans become
civilised?
The historians had been
searching for this answer in Egypt, Mesopotamia (Iraq), India and
China. They didn’t expect to find the first signs of city life in a
Peruvian desert. Secondly, most historians believed that only the fear
of war could motivate people to form complex societies. And, since
Caral did not show any trace of warfare; no battlements, no weapons,
and no mutilated bodies, they found it hard to accept it as the mother
city.
That’s when Ruth Shady
stepped in with her discovery. "This place is somewhere between the
seat of the gods and the home of man," she says, adding that Caral was
a gentle society, built on trade and pleasure. "This great civilisation
was based on trade in cotton. Caral made the cotton for the nets, which
were sold to the fishermen living near the coast. Caral became a
booming trading centre and the trade spread," she says.
Caral was born in trade and
not bloodshed. Warfare came much later. This is what this mother city
shows: great civilisations are born in peace. Ruth Shady continues to
battle for this great truth.
Copyright: The Times of India
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
|
