Norte Chico culture
The Norte Chico culture (also Caral Supe culture ) in Peru was the oldest known (first beginnings around 9000 BC) pre-ceramic stone age culture in South America with the main phase from 3500 to approx. 1800 BC. Chr.
The people lived in at least 25 large cult and settlement centers north of Lima , the culture has nothing to do with the natural area in Chile, also called Norte Chico (little north) .
Caral and Áspero
In 1905, the Caral excavation site , which was declared a World Heritage Site in 2009 , was discovered in the river valley of the Río Supe , but initially it did not meet with much interest due to the lack of jewelry and ceramics. Its importance as the oldest known city in the New World (pre-ceramic with around 1000 inhabitants between 2600 BC and 2000 BC, then abandoned for the time being) was not recognized until the mid-1990s when the Peruvian anthropologist and archaeologist Ruth Shady Solis largely exposed them. Shady Solis explains the location of the settlements in the rather barren area by the fact that the coast was repeatedly hit by floods due to the El Niño phenomenon and the inhabitants therefore sought their residential areas at a higher elevation 25 km from the sea in the desert area. There are several quite flat pyramids about 18 meters high. Another archaeological site, also located on the Supe, is called Áspero . The 1800–1000 BC BC following the Norte Chico culture introduced ceramics.
Sechin Bajo
In the valley of the Río Casma , around 200 kilometers further north, large-scale excavations have been carried out in Sechín Bajo in Ancash since 1992. From 2005 , German researchers from the Latin America Institute of the Free University of Berlin under Peter Fuchs uncovered the remains of a large pyramid, the original estimated height of which was 70 to 100 meters and, at 5200 years, the oldest stone structure in America. Sechin was established from around 3500 BC. BC (Sechin Bajo), it is on the one hand even older than Caral, on the other hand it was only a place of worship and not a city. A more recent (approx. 1600 BC) construction stage is called Sechin Alto.
Sometimes a distinction is made between the Sechin culture and the Caral culture.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ FU Berlin: Important archaeological find in Peru.
- ↑ German researchers find a huge pyramid in Peru. In: The world. 2008.
- ↑ Armchair prehistory