Pod Insights The Ancients Caral: Oldest City in the Americas? About this episode Long before the age of the Inca and Maya, a remarkable city once flourished on the coast of modern Peru. Founded more than five thousand years ago, the sacred city of Caral is home to monumental pyramids, lavish temples and one of the world's earliest urban societies.
Tristan Hughes is joined by Jason Nesbitt to uncover the story of this remarkable Mesoamerican settlement. How did this ancient city emerge in the arid Supe Valley? What do its pyramids and plazas reveal about life 5,000 years ago? And is Caral truly the oldest city in the Americas?
See photos of the Sacred City of Caral-Supe here https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1269/gallery/
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Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
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0:00 Tristan Hughes? Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:45 Tristan Hughes? In the Supé Valley, modern-day Peru, the pyramids of Caral rise from the desert haze. They're older than the pharaohs, and have been buried for thousands of years beneath the sands. Here, at one of the world's earliest urban centres, people built temples, they traded across valleys, and shaped a prehistoric civilisation. This is the sacred city of Caral Supé. It's found four hours' drive north of Lima, and was first discovered in 1948. But it wasn't until the 1990s, when Peruvian archaeologist Dr Ruth Shadi
1:28 Tristan Hughes? uncovered the site's role as a major urban centre. But what do we know about this astonishing site? Is it the oldest city in the Americas? What do we think went on here some 5,000 years ago? Well, today, I'm talking to Jason Nesbitt, Associate Professor at Tulane University, and an expert on early complex societies in the Central Andes. Together, we travel back some 5,000 years to uncover how Caral emerged, discuss what daily life may have looked like, and delve into the striking art and architecture that defines this prehistoric Andean civilisation.
2:13 Tristan Hughes? Jason, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
2:16 Speaker 01 Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here.
2:18 Tristan Hughes? And it's about time on the ancients we return to South America and its archaeology there. And Corral, big question first and foremost, is this the oldest city in the Americas?
2:31 Speaker 01 Great question. You know, archaeologists actually have debated this for a long time. When does the first city begin in Peru? And in some ways, it depends on how you define a city. For some, it's a large settlement with internal specialization, the population doing different things, farming being one, but also other kinds of activities, you know, producing objects, subsistence specializations, those kinds of things that sometimes define a city. Corral, in some ways, fits those definitions by some estimations, including by Ruth Shadi, the principal excavator of the site. It was a settlement of almost 3,000 people.
3:09 Tristan Hughes? Wow.
3:10 Speaker 01 With large monumental architecture, which I'm sure we're going to get into later. There is evidence, at least to some degree, that there are people doing different activities at the site. So that's one argument for it being a city. Others have argued that it could be something more like a temple in which people are visiting the site more periodically for ritual activities and those kinds of things. Different scholars have different opinions on this matter.
3:38 Tristan Hughes? And just one time, you said estimates around 3,000 people. That might not seem like a lot today, but back, you know, 5,000, 6,000 years ago, that's a big deal.
3:48 Speaker 01 Yeah. Corral dates to about 2,900 B.C. and is occupied to maybe 2,000 B.C. or just after. So at this time, you know, it would have been one of the largest settlements of its time on the Peruvian coast.
4:03 Tristan Hughes? So you mentioned the Peruvian coast there. So whereabouts in Peru, Jason, should we be thinking of with Corral?
4:10 Speaker 01 So Corral is in an area that's referred to as the Norte Chico, which is a collection of four river systems located roughly 200 kilometers north of Lima, so the capital city in central Peru. Corral itself is located inland in a valley called Supe and is actually one of many settlements with monumental architecture in the Norte Chico. By some estimates, there's more than than 30 sites with monumental architecture in these different valleys, potentially more. And they go from right along the Pacific shoreline up into the foothills of the Andes Mountains, which are adjacent just to the east of the Peruvian coast.
4:49 Tristan Hughes? And all dating at roughly the same times, all coexistent with one another, evidence of contact and cooperation?
4:55 Speaker 01 That's a really interesting question. It's very difficult sometimes to assess contemporaneity during this time period, but there are well over 150 radiocarbon dates now that suggest that many of these sites overlapped in time, again, between this 3,000 B.C. to about 1,800 B.C. So probably many of them were coeval, although not all. In terms of contact, there's all kinds of evidence for exchange of, for example, marine products. The Corral is located inland, about 20 kilometers inland from the Pacific coast. There are shellfish and other kinds of mollusks, pardon me, shellfish and fish remains at the site that suggest
5:38 Speaker 01 exchange from some of these coastal settlements inland for, you know, marine products. There are also objects of stone and other materials that seem to come from other areas, potentially parts of the highlands or potentially the tropical forest regions as well.
5:56 Tristan Hughes? Because you've recently been working, Jason, haven't you, at a site really high up in the Highlands? So we're talking about in the Andes, are we, when we're talking about that?
6:04 Speaker 01 Yeah. So the time period that Corral develops in is known as the late pre-ceramic period, sometimes known as the late archaic period, they're different terms. And at this time, actually, a huge swath of the Peruvian coast witnesses the beginnings of monuments, large, I'm sure we'll talk about them later, but large platform pyramidal complexes on the coast. And in the Highlands, there are other kinds of monumental structures that seem to be some platforms, but also chambers with central fire pits in them that are found in the upper elevation regions of the Peruvian Highlands, so upwards of 2,500 metres, all the way up into 4,000 metres. The site that we're working at this summer is close to that elevation and is a large
6:49 Speaker 01 circular kind of monument that also we have some radiocarbon dates that suggest it's around the same time as Corral, but very distinct.
6:57 Tristan Hughes? Distinct, but hopefully we'll revisit that to explore some of the potential connections there.
7:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'd be happy to.
7:01 Tristan Hughes? But you mentioned these river valleys and Corral being along the Supé Valley. And Jason, I must admit, I've never been to Peru, I've never had the the chance to go and see Corral. And but looking on Google Maps just before this interview and seeing how you have the fertile land along the river valley and then almost immediately it's arid or it's mountainous either side is quite a striking, at least today, I don't know how it would have been 5,000 years ago, but striking topographically to look at today.
7:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, the Peruvian coast and the Highlands, and actually, you know, maybe later we might talk even about the tropical forest regions. This is the Peruvian environment is a very dynamic one. So you have along the coast, a very arid, warm, but very arid coastline. That's then sort of, if you look at a map, there are a series of green, if you look on a Google image, for example, you'll see these kind of grey areas interspersed with very green, quite verdant areas that come from a series of small river valleys that run more or less east-west, but Have their headwaters in the Andes Mountains and are fed by a rainy season in the highlands
8:13 Speaker 01 that then drain down to the Pacific coast roughly, you know, between November, December, January, February, those months onto the coast and then are the sources for eventually irrigation agriculture or sort of at the beginnings around Corral's time, small canals and things like that, that then develop in much later times into large irrigation systems and so on along the Peruvian coast. And then you have, again, as you said, this high Andes barrier or mountain chain to the east that presents its own sort of challenges for settlement. But in many ways, these are connected ecosystems. The highland rainy season feeds down into the coast and then
8:55 Speaker 01 creates these sort of opportunities for ancient peoples to harness this water for cultivating various kinds of domestic plants, even at this early, late preceramic period.
9:06 Tristan Hughes? It's interesting because we've done quite a bit on ancient Egypt on this podcast, Jason, and then exploring how there's the annual flood there from the heavy rainfall in the Ethiopian mountains and that goes all the way down the River Nile. And as you say, they're kind of making the most of those fertile lands in the river valleys.
9:20 Speaker 01 Right.
9:21 Tristan Hughes? Can you draw a parallel then with the people of Corral and elsewhere along these river valleys?
9:25 Speaker 01 Well, it's that's a, you know, for a long time, people emphasized, you know, early in archaeology's history, the importance of riverine civilizations and so on. What I would say is that there are major differences. And, you know, I remember when I was a student, you know, reading about all of the Moche River Valley or the Soupe River Valley and then finally seeing them. And they're not that impressive at certain times of the year. So they're quite different from, say, the Nile or the Tigris and Euphrates or Indus Valleys or the Yellow River in China. Seasonally, they run strong. They are non navigable, right? You can't run watercraft up them or anything like that. So they're they're much more, in some ways, look like streams and you can cross them if you're on a bus or something and not even know you've
10:08 Speaker 01 you've done it at certain times of the year. At other times, they do flow more strongly. But in so in some ways, they're similar, right? They are the source for irrigation and things like that. But on the other hand, they're different from the Nile, which was also used as a transport system, or the Tigris and Euphrates, which were also used for the early Mesopotamian civilizations.
10:29 Tristan Hughes? So Jason, when you go to somewhere like Corral today, archeologically, just how extensive a site is it?
10:35 Speaker 01 So Corral is about almost 65 hectares in area, so it's quite large. I'm Canadian, I use metric, but 100, maybe 160 acres or something to that effect. So it's a very large settlement and there are others that are from this time period, from different parts of the Peruvian coast that are similar in size. Now, what makes Corral interesting and what has excited sort of archaeologists and I think the public is that it's characterized by a series of large platform or pyramidal structures. There are also circular plazas and monuments and so those kind of constitute the monumental core.
11:15 Speaker 01 Also, within these sites are other kinds of secondary monuments and then also, you know, the excavations by Ruth Chadi and her team have also found some kinds of dwellings or residences of different qualities of construction and so on that also exist around the site, suggesting a population was at least was living there. The debate is how often were they there permanently or not? I'm on the fence about that, but there is a series of characteristics that make these sites quite interesting. So they're not just big mounds, there's lots of other things going on around.
11:50 Tristan Hughes? One last question on the context before we delve into that monumental architecture, Jason. As you mentioned that like the date for the beginning of Corral is around 2900 BC.
12:01 Speaker 01 Thereabouts, yeah.
12:02 Tristan Hughes? There or thereabouts, so some 5000 years ago. Do we know any ideas, are there any theories as to why it emerges at that time? And is that around the similar time that you see a burst in the amount of settlements there are in Peru?
12:17 Speaker 01 There are different opinions about this, so I'll give mine. But I would say that prior to Corral or prior to around 3000 BC, there are many coastal settlements of fishing societies. There are even examples of public architecture, low platforms have been found in parts of the north coast that predate Corral. So say 4000 BC or even a few that may be earlier. So in the Sanya Valley is one example, the Chicama Valley is another, where we have early examples of of public architecture.
12:53 Speaker 01 Corral and the sites around it, and I would say for the late pre-ceramic in general, is you do see something around 3000 B.C., maybe a little earlier in some places and some places a bit later, you do start to see an explosion of monumental architecture. So again, the Norte Chico has at least 30 sites with monumental architecture. And some have, like Corral, multiple platforms and circular structures. And then we also see that elsewhere on the Peruvian coast as well of early monuments. Not in some valleys, not as numerous, but they exist over a wide swath of the Peruvian coast, from almost Lima in the south, right into the north coast of Peru, well north of Corral.
13:37 Speaker 01 And then, as I mentioned earlier, you have other examples of major changes towards ceremonial public architecture that are also occurring in the highlands, right? These chambers I talked about earlier that characterize Highland Peru after about 3000 B.C. So there does seem to be something happening at that time. Possibly, you know, at a base level, it has to do with potentially intensification of food production of different kinds and maybe a concomitant increase in population as well. But there definitely are things that are really ramping up at this time period that makes it so interesting.
14:18 Tristan Hughes? And Jason, you mentioned the words "public architecture" there. Do you mean buildings that are created that you can see the remains of that seem to have had a purpose where people came together?
14:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, basically, I mean monumental architecture. So on the coast, these large platforms that are often stepped, pyramidal structures, you know, so for example, the largest pyramid or platform construction at Corral is almost 30 meters in height. There are others that are of comparable size, some smaller, some larger. So I mean monuments and these circular plazas as well. And when I use the term "public architecture," I also mean it requires, you know, groups well beyond the household, either cooperatively, according to some, or maybe more coercively, according to others that were behind the construction of these monuments.
15:08 Tristan Hughes? Well, let's now explore some of this monumental archaeology at Corral, Jason. And you've mentioned them already, but let's start. Let's start first of all with these really intriguing structures, especially when you look at drone shots of aerial shots of the site today, which are these circular plazas. And they seem to be kind of dug into the ground as well.
15:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, so there are many, so Corral has two circular plaza structures. But as I mentioned, there are many sites in Norte Chico and actually elsewhere where these show up. The Cosma Valley, they actually show up quite early. There are a few examples in the Highlands, but the Norte Chico, you really see a proliferation of them. In most cases, if not all, these circular plazas are associated with large platforms. The circular plazas themselves, as you mentioned, are semi-subterranean, that meaning that they were dug into the ground and then faced with quarried stones, so they have a sort of stone walls around them.
16:09 Speaker 01 And then they usually, always actually, have some kind of staircase that enters into them and then back out, especially if they're connected with platforms to go back up into some of these large platform or pyramidal structures.
16:25 Tristan Hughes? So they're normally connected to another, as you say, kind of a platform. They're normally connected to some other man-made large building.
16:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, we, yeah, we refer to them as platforms or sometimes in the terminology in the Corral project, they refer to them as pyramids, but basically you could think of them as sort of stepped or truncated kind of pyramidal structures that are quite common, you know, throughout the Peruvian past, but they sort of have their real beginning at this time. I was just going to say with the circular plazas, they were probably meant for some kinds of ritual activities associated with the temple. Now, they vary in size, the smallest ones are about 15 meters in diameter or there's thereabouts and dug some three meters into the ground, between one and three meters into the ground. The largest ones can be 45 meters.
17:17 Speaker 01 And so we can start to think about, well, how many people would fit into those areas? What would they be doing? And one thing that seems to be common for early ceremonial architecture for the pre-ceramic period and also for subsequent societies in the second and first millennium B.C. Is that there is some element of emphasis on processions that you're meant to sort of, the people that are participating, however they're defined, are sort of guided through, that they walk into these spaces and then some segment of the population can ascend into these platforms and things like that. So there is a kind of interesting ceremonial behavior, I think, or ceremonial practices that are happening in these circular constructions.
18:00 Tristan Hughes? It makes you think of an arena or something like that, you know, the kind of the circular and all the people gathering. And you mentioned that they're made out of stone, Jason. Should we be presuming local sources of stone?
18:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, so, so, so the most of the architecture at this time period, for the most part, is stone and to some degree adobe, but mainly stone.
18:18 Tristan Hughes? Adobe, did you say?
18:19 Speaker 01 In some cases, they use a sort of a mud brick kind of material, but mostly it's, we're dealing with stone architecture, especially at Corral. The stones seem to be locally quarried, so they're brought from the nearby region. I've worked at sites from just a little bit later than this, dating to the mid second millennium B.C., fifteen hundred B.C., further north. And this is very common, that the sites are built from locally available stone and brought relatively short distances. That's not to say it's not a lot of work, but, but it's not like Stonehenge where some of the blocks are brought from very long distances or something like that.
18:57 Tristan Hughes? I'm trying to think what else we can ask then about these circular structures. So it seems to be a ceremonial people gathering there, the link to the platform next to it. Do we have a clear sense that they were probably, they were open air, that they wouldn't have been a roof or anything above?
19:11 Speaker 01 It doesn't seem like there was a roof and, you know, I imagine some of your listeners might be wondering like what kinds of artifacts are found in the minute. We'll probably get into this later, but most, this is a period prior to pottery. So we don't get a lot of pottery to characterize archaeological sites of later time periods.
19:28 Tristan Hughes? Instead, so as what you said, pre-ceramic?
19:30 Speaker 01 Pre-ceramic, so we're referring, think about it as something like the aceramic Neolithic in Eurasia or something like that, where they're building monuments, but, but prior to pottery.
19:42 Speaker 01 There's not a lot of artifacts that are found in these circular constructions, but there are other kinds of artifacts that have been found at Caral that suggests that ceremony was important. So, for example, there are a set of bone implements that seem to be for musical instruments. They have holes, some of them are incised and decorated with iconography. It suggests that musical instruments were being played, which we would expect. There is, it's not as well published, but there are objects that seem to be inhalers for potentially psychotropic plants. But we don't find a lot of material associated with them. So it's hard to say what activities were specifically occurring in these circular buildings.
20:27 Speaker 01 But we can start to infer from other finds outside of them, what kinds of things might have been happening. So music, maybe using certain kinds of plants for ritual experiences and things like that.
20:38 Tristan Hughes? Amazing to at least kind of theorize and take educated guesses as to what might have happened there. And this idea of musics of 5,000 years ago is a wonderful idea. But shall we then move on also to the other kind of big type of monuments that you've got there, which are these pyramids, Jason? And although they don't survive in their complete form today, they are still absolutely striking and stunning to look at.
21:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, there are many pyramidal structures throughout the coast. In the specific case of Caral, as I mentioned, the largest one is, you know, about 160, 150 meters at its base and almost 30 meters in height. Now, these pyramids are platforms, are sort of step constructions. They, when associated with the circular plazas, in some cases they're connected to them. The platform itself is ascended with a, through a staircase. And then on the summit, this is where they're quite different from Egyptian pyramids and maybe more analogous to Mesopotamian ziggurats and structures like that.
21:42 Speaker 01 That they are not meant for, they're not giant tombs essentially like Giza or something like, or Saqqara. But rather, they are essentially stages, right? On top of them, there are room complexes that in some cases get increasingly restricted, suggesting that the rituals that are occurring on the top, these are relatively small rooms. They may have been more private ritual activities or ceremonies that were restricted to people who had specialized knowledge, or for some, maybe access for elites or something like that. But these kinds of more private ceremonies versus the public things that may have been happening below, either in the circular plazas or even the spaces, there's lots of open
22:25 Speaker 01 space around the platforms at Karol and these other sites that suggest all kinds of open-air activities. But on the summits, maybe these more kinds of restricted rituals.
22:36 Tristan Hughes? That's interesting, because, I mean, I might inevitably, Jason, think of Mesoamerican pyramids or so on and so forth, you know, climbing to the top and there being an altar or something at the top, being closer to the celestial realm above. But it's interesting to think that if it was something similar at Karol, and it's all theory, I appreciate that, but maybe only the most prestigious or the people who could, the priests or whoever, could go to the top, and then everyone else was congregated in the circle at the bottom and watching up and watching as it all took place above.
23:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, the circles themselves may have also had restricted numbers versus the overall population, but there are these huge open spaces around Karol in which people could have gathered as well. But yeah, I think that that's right, that there is some kind of specialized collective of religious specialists, priests, or some kinds of individuals that have more knowledge or, you know, esoteric knowledge that have access to these kinds of upper structures where other kinds of ceremonies were undoubtedly taking place.
23:38 Tristan Hughes? Can we presume, because it seems to be the case in so many of these early farming societies across the world, that the sun, the sky above, held a lot of spiritual importance to them?
23:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, there is a kind of field of research, I'm sure you've talked about on the show, called archaeoastronomy, and there have been... Corral to some degree, but many other pre-ceramic sites that suggest, not just Corral, by the way, just to be clear, but other sites as well that seem to have different kinds of alignments to potentially constellations. There's been a claim that some of them have orientations towards the sun is another possibility. Different moments, the June solstice has been one claim that's been made, for example. So there is some kinds of designs to these that may be referencing sun, the stars. I would also say many of the monuments point up valley to the source waters,
24:31 Speaker 01 where their crops are coming, or the waters that would feed their crops are coming from. So there are many possibilities for, you know, the way that these were oriented. Maybe all of these are true, right? That there's there's sort of a multi-dimensional kind of referencing to different kinds of features on the landscape and the cosmos.
24:50 Tristan Hughes? So Jason, given that we're talking about pyramids, about these massive monuments, we can't not talk about the building of them, like how they were built. I mean, it goes without saying, the monumental building must have been a massive task to oversee the constructions of these. Do we have any insights into the building of them?
25:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it comes from not just Corral, it comes from several different archaeological sites, actually from Mima in the south, all the way up into the north of Chico, where excavations have actually found, well, maybe just to step back, the platforms themselves are solid constructions, right? So they are essentially, think of it as a kind of rubble fill that's then faced with stone terracing to create the step pyramid structure. And then they're capped, the terraces themselves are often covered in a plasters of different kinds. The interior fills are largely rubble, as I just said, and what archaeologists have actually found are a kind of net bag made from said local reeds and things like that that create these kinds
25:53 Speaker 01 of loop bags that contain stones, basically bags of stones of different weights that range from about
26:01 Speaker 01 Seventeen to thirty kilograms. There's been studies of them from from different sites, actually further south in Lima that suggest that kind of weight range, suggesting that these bags were being built maybe by different kinds of communities that are, you know, bringing stones from from different areas and doing labor tasks to both build the platform. And also, we also know that at least some of the platforms were constructed in different stages of architecture. So the size you see today isn't necessarily, it's its final, it's you're seeing it in its final form, but in some cases, they're built over two, three, four construction stages in which the platform is raised in in height. Earlier
26:43 Speaker 01 buildings are covered and new ones are built over top. And in these construction phases, you find these net bags, which are referred to locally as chicra.
26:52 Tristan Hughes? Wow.
26:53 Speaker 01 And so these have been found very commonly at sites in Norte Chico, but but other archaeological sites of this time period along the Peruvian coast.
27:02 Tristan Hughes? So the theory is that the people who were coming to build the pyramid, they were bringing a sack full of stones with them and depositing it at the site.
27:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, and and there would have been many, many of these sacks of stones.
27:13 Tristan Hughes? Yeah, I'm trying to imagine that, yeah.
27:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, and and it's just the the lack of, you know, the Peruvian coast is so arid that these kinds of bags preserve. I live in, now I live in Louisiana, and, you know, our earthen monuments here were also built from basketry. We find basket loads of sediment and so on, but those baskets don't preserve. So in Peru, we actually, because it's so dry, we actually get these bags. If people are curious, you can you can Google them and you can find all kinds of images of these of these chicra bags.
27:45 Tristan Hughes? Oh, that's an amazing archaeological discovery to survive, to give you an insight. And do we get a, maybe it's too difficult to to learn just from archaeology alone, but whether it's forced to labor, or do you think people are all coming together and helping to build these monumental structures?
28:01 Speaker 01 Well, so there are many different interpretations, right? So, for example, Ruth Schadi, who's the primary excavator of Corral, has long argued that the Corral is an urban center and maybe the center of some kind of state-like quality, right? Something analogous to Mesopotamia. That's one argument.
28:19 Speaker 01 And going along with that argument is potentially the presence of elites and potentially more coercive kinds of of labor forces. That's one idea. There is an alternative view that these may have been more communal structures that were built to create the monuments, the pyramids themselves as symbols of community identity, and may have been done less coercively and potentially with more cooperative spirit. Now, we, the argument for that is the sort of relative lack of evidence, at least for some, of an elite social class, right? We don't find, we find some unique burials during this time, but we don't find anything
29:01 Speaker 01 that clearly separates out, say, the interment burial of a, of an elite or a king or something like that. Those haven't been found. Again, there are some special graves. I don't want to say that, I don't want to totally discount the possibility, but to, at least in my view, we haven't found those kinds of elite tombs that would, you know, like are, are found in Mesopotamia or frankly, later time periods in, in Peru, Moche tombs, for example, that have all kinds of gold and, and, and individualized wealth in these tombs. We don't find that to the same degree. So there is another view that suggests that these are community kinds of building projects. Now, one last thing, that's something I've been thinking a lot about in my own research
29:44 Speaker 01 is, we might also ask, if Corral was a city, it doesn't seem to be, that there are many such settlements, some thirty, so, and many of them being occupied at the same time. It seems like there are many of these temple-based settlements that are occurring that suggest that maybe, at least potentially, Corral is one center or one very large settlement of many, of different sizes. Corral seems to stand out in some ways, but, but there are so many that one wonders if there may be another kind of system going on where these temple complexes are linked in different kinds of ways that might speak to more religious or other kinds of mechanisms that are holding them together.
30:25 Tristan Hughes? I know I'm oversimplifying it, but it's kind of the rough line in the debate, therefore, whether Corral is a city, as you say, like a Babylon or a Rukk or somewhere like that, or a communal centre, dare I say, something a bit more like a Stonehenge or a Ring of Brodgar or a Tyranarch or something.
30:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, there are different arguments, but basically I would say that it is something like that, that there are these arguments that it is urban, and then there are other arguments that suggest that these may have been more ceremonial centres or ceremonial locations and a more dispersed population. To be honest, I have to admit that my personal, I'm somewhere in the middle, that there is something very unique about these settlements in this time period, but I can't get away from some of the observations, you know, there are so many of them, I think is one, that there doesn't seem to be a, that they don't, at least in my view, sort of fit within what I would think of as an urban society. But archaeology is changing quite a bit as well, and notions of urbanism are also
31:24 Speaker 01 kind of becoming a little more flexible and so on. But if you accept that there are 3,000 people at Corral, that's a much larger settlement than most that existed at that time period.
31:34 Tristan Hughes? Exactly, and completely understand going in the middle as well. Sometimes we love to say it's either one thing or the other, but more often than not, as I found on this podcast, it's normally sometimes a mix of both. And at the end of the day, before we move into kind of the lives of the people who would have gone to somewhere like Corral, Jason, is there any other particular types of architecture that we should highlight now? I mean, I have in my notes the plazas, but they seem, from what you are saying, it's not as if they're particularly buildings, they're just large, open spaces.
32:05 Speaker 01 Well, so there are these circular plazas that are sunken and those are completely built, there are other spaces that seem to be just more open spaces around it. The other thing we talked about, and maybe segues into your question about daily life, is there does seem to be, you know, Ruth Shoddy's project has found settlements, residential buildings around Corral that suggest people are at least living there at certain times, there's been really important work by another Peruvian archaeologist. Luis Flores and then an American team Jonathan Haas and Winifred Kramer have also found some of these structures at other sites in the Norte Chico. So there is something that people are living around them. So that would be another kind of of architecture and
32:49 Speaker 01 one that, you know, I find really fascinating. I'm very interested in people's daily lives in my own research.
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33:53 Tristan Hughes? So the people themselves, Jason, are they overwhelmingly some 5,000 years ago, you know, all the way up until the end of Corral and other places? Are they primarily, are they almost always farmers?
34:04 Speaker 01 Really interesting question. You know, when these sites, I don't know if just to step back to contextualize these sites, archaeologists started to recognize sites that we now know as pre-ceramic in the mid 20th century, in the 1940s, and even a little bit before that. And the original excavators, they found these huge monuments like Aspero, which is located on the coast of Soupe, not far from Corral, but right along the coastline. And when they excavated it, they couldn't accept that they had this giant monument, but had no pottery, right? The assumptions of those times were sort of like a Gordon Child view that farming, pottery, monuments sort of go together. And when they found that these sites didn't have pottery, they sort of challenged their assumptions. Subsequent
34:49 Speaker 01 research at these sites then found that there was lots of marine products, fish, anchovies, sardines, shellfish, and argued that maybe the basis wasn't farming, but fishing.
35:03 Speaker 01 And this was an idea popularized by an archaeologist named Michael Mosley, who passed away a few years ago, who called this the maritime foundations of Andean civilization. So he argued that that these were essentially foraging populations that also domesticated plants, but mainly cotton and things like that, that they used for textiles and so on. More recently, and partly as a result of Ruth Shoddy's work and other work that archaeologists had done, Jeffrey Quilter on the central coast and other scholars, found actually when you look at the macro botanical remains, the plants that you find at archaeological sites, especially these inland sites, is you do find lucuma, a kind of fruit, guava, avocados, chili peppers, squash,
35:48 Speaker 01 beans, small amounts of maize, at least in a few sites, manioc, which is a kind of root crop, sweet potato and other root crops that suggest that they were intensively cultivating crops. Corral, as I mentioned, is some 23 kilometers inland and seems to be positioned possibly for to take advantage of canal intakes, to have simple kinds of gravity canals that would have run off the river valley during the,
36:21 Speaker 01 say, February, sort of months when the river runs strongly, that would then redirect the water for some kind of agricultural system. At the same time, Corral has also anchovies, sardines, shellfish, as we talked about at the beginning, suggesting there are sort of also a big part of their protein diet, or a lot of it, comes from fish. There are no domesticated animals on the Peruvian coast at this time, yamas and alpacas, that's all, guinea pigs, that's all later mostly in time. So they are subsisting for the protein component on resources of the sea. And then they also have all of these domesticated crops.
37:02 Speaker 01 If I can say one other thing, there's been a really interesting recent studies by a guy named Marco Isecchi, who's a colleague of Ruth Shaddis, they've published a number of things that have looked at some of the burials at Caral and Ospero, where they found in the dental calculus different starches, a kind of plant part that can be identified to species, and they found many of these domesticates on the teeth of these individuals. They've also done studies of bone chemistry, which suggests a heavy reliance on plant resources and then supplemented or with also an important component of a marine diet. And this has been verified by lots of studies
37:44 Speaker 01 on the Peruvian coast, and actually I've collaborated in my own work in the Highlands on dietary studies as well, that show very similar pattern in the Highlands. In the Highlands, more of a mix of agriculture and other wild resources. So there does seem to be a pattern here. Now, the last point that a lot of archaeologists debate is that there isn't very much corn at this time period. And this can also be determined by the studies of isotopes that suggest that maize or corn was actually a relatively limited crop. So we don't have a dietary, one single dietary staple, but a very mixed plant diet. Manioc would provide all kinds of carbohydrates, beans, squash,
38:28 Speaker 01 sweet potatoes, all of these would have been pretty calorically rich, in some cases carbohydrate or protein-rich components of the diet. So they had a pretty, pretty good diet and that was centered. The emerging consensus, I think, is far more intensive farming than we used to think.
38:46 Tristan Hughes? Because I do, even if there is more intensive farming than originally thought, I still like the idea, Jason, that, you know, fish is still a big part of the diet. And you mentioned that these rivers, like the Suez, they aren't navigable, the fact that, I don't know if they're wheels at the time, or people just gonna have to carry basket loads of fish up to a place like Caral.
39:05 Speaker 01 So it's probably mainly people transporting this. These products on foot.
39:09 Tristan Hughes? Wow.
39:10 Speaker 01 As an aside, you know, you mentioned fishing. The Peruvian coast, especially at this time period, was one of the richest fisheries in the world. It's sort of fed by the Humboldt Current. So there's this constant upwelling of cold waters that creates, you know, millions and millions of phytoplankton that forms the basis of a very rich food chain. There have been excavations, many, the most famous is at a site called Wakaprieta, where they have found cotton seine nets, some that may be almost thirty meters across. So these kinds of long nets, they found gourd floats, which would have held them up. They found fish hooks and so on. So these sites that are close to the coast, they are, you know, very oriented towards fishing and then also farming.
39:55 Speaker 01 But they're probably the ones, the people living on these coastal settlements are probably involved in sort of inland exchange relationships, bringing these marine products into the, you know, more interior sites. Or you may have a pattern of people sort of constantly moving. The people that lived at Karol at part of the year may have lived on the coast at part of the year. The distances aren't that huge, twenty-three kilometers, you know, if you're in good shape is a, you know, a long walk, but one that's doable. And so those seem to be the patterns that are happening. So coastal orientation.
40:28 Tristan Hughes? And of course, you know, we're doing this from our chairs in the twenty-first century. But back then, you know, they'd be much mobile, they'd be much fitter because they're doing all of this walking naturally. So it's all fascinating. And you mentioned there, Jason, that other commodity, that other resource that we have to talk about when covering this topic, which is of course, the farming of cotton. Just how extensive do we think the cotton farming was for people living at Karol and elsewhere at that time?
40:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, so cotton is domesticated earlier than the late preceramic period, but becomes a real important part of their technology. Actually, in the old days, this time period used to be called the cotton preceramic.
41:10 Speaker 01 So if you read things from the 60s and 70s, you'll see this term show it's not used very much anymore. But cotton textiles were a very important element of their economy. Many, most of the cotton that we find, you know, they could have used it, they did use it for clothing. They used it in some burials as a kind of offering or a wrap. They were used for nets and those kinds of things, potentially anyway, in some places. And then we also have textiles that are more ornate. That were dyed or took advantage of the colors to create very elaborate designs. The most famous examples are probably from a site called Wacaprieta, which is a bit further north from the Norte Chico,
41:53 Speaker 01 where there's a current project there led by Thomas Dillahay. But, but before that, Junius Bird, who did pioneering work at the site, found textiles and was able to reconstruct or, or show a number of different images, all of which seemed to have religious significance. So you have anthropomorphic entities, you have depictions of bisphallic or two-headed serpents. You have depictions of, of raptors and these show up in other media in the preceramic as well. That seem to be deities or supernatural entities that, that were venerated. And also a lot of these animals, raptors or predatory birds, serpents,
42:35 Speaker 01 anthropomorphic individuals with feline attributes, all of these continue into something called Chavín civilization. And it seems to have its, some of these icons seem to have their roots in the late preceramic. So these continue in some cases in different forms, but for, for millennia, you know, into the, the first millennium B.C., when Chavín emerges or late second.
42:57 Tristan Hughes? Glad you mentioned Tom Dillahay there. We know Tom well. He did the first South Americans for us. Wonderful guy, Monte Verde.
43:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:03 Tristan Hughes? And keeping on those textiles and that cotton clothing and the dyes and the colour, could we therefore be imagining people at Corral, let's say, at one of those ceremonies, gathered in one of those circular plazas? And can we imagine maybe the wealthier or almost as a show of status, some people having more colourful cotton clothing than others?
43:25 Speaker 01 It could be that these are prestigious objects that are restricted to certain people much, much, much later in time. I don't want to do one of these like huge jumps through time, but we know that textiles, for example, in Inca times were a major source of value. And I suspect that textile production of different kinds in this time period in cotton with these icons, at least some of it was probably something that was somehow reserved for people that had access to these, these kinds of materials. And in terms of clothing, we don't have, you know, we have figurines that show people wearing some cotton cloth,
44:05 Speaker 01 the Corral, Aspero, many of these late preceramic sites have unbaked, so they're not making pottery per se, but unbaked clay figurines that show people wearing headdresses. In some cases where there's exceptional preservation, we do find elements of clothing, hats, things like that, but, but and cap, or caps, better put. And we see these also in these figurines of people wearing them and so on. So cotton and other kinds of materials, reeds, things like that were important kinds of products for all kinds of reasons. Yeah.
44:39 Tristan Hughes? And you mentioned the importance of certain animals earlier, Jason, and now how there is art from this period of actual figures. So do we know how regularly they depicted artwork of actual people or did they like portraying particular animals? What do we know about that?
44:55 Speaker 01 Well, it's interesting. I mean, I, if we, if you asked me this a couple of years ago, I'd say it's primarily anthropomorphic entities and things like that. So meaning humans in transformation or human animal kinds of hybrids or just the animals themselves. And if people are interested, you could just Google textiles, wakaprieta, and you'll find all kinds of these, these images, which are really quite beautiful. That said, there are friezes at some pre-ceramic sites or such as Buena Vista on the central coast that show human faces and also depictions of foxes. And more recently, in the Norte Chico region, they have found slightly later than Corral,
45:37 Speaker 01 sometime maybe after 1800 B.C. thereabouts, there's a site called Vicchama located in Waurua, just to the south of the Supé Valley, where they've found friezes that show images of seemingly humans executed in clay on some of these temple walls, and then also images of probably a toad or emerging out of the seemingly emerging out of a rock or out of the earth that are shown. So there's a, there are depictions of people and they're, but often seemingly in some kinds of supernatural kinds of, of scenes. So it may be that what you're seeing on the textiles is more widespread, that we could see it in other kinds of art, including potentially monumental art.
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47:20 Tristan Hughes? Well, keeping on how widespread these things were, Jason, a bit longer. Because I love the idea, first of all, of cotton going down these river valleys and almost fish coming up the other way. But obviously not just that, but showing how interconnected these various places were, including Corral. Just how extensive do we think these trade routes were? You mentioned earlier, because I want to bring it back to this before we finish.
47:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:44 Tristan Hughes? Your work up in the Highlands. I mean, how far away is that? Is there evidence of contact between these different groups at that time, some five, four thousand years ago?
47:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's lots of evidence. It's it comes from a lot of different sites. Maybe to just say a couple of words on, you know, what we're talking about are many cultures, you know, in this 3000 to 1800 B.C. adapting to different kinds of environments. At Corral itself, there seems to be materials that are coming from the Highlands and maybe the tropical forests. There there were old reports from a site called Aspero of finding bird feathers. They never identified the birds, but mentioned that they have colorful feathers. It was speculated that these could have been coming from the tropical forest. As an aside, there was a recent study from much later sites in Peru. It showed that tropical forest birds were were moving into the coast.
48:37 Speaker 01 There's reports from Shadi's work also of of tropical forest birds coming all the way across the Andes and down into the coast. Corral and other sites like Wakaprieta have gourd containers that have icono. So there's no pottery at this time, but they have gourd containers, some of which are engraved with images that are seen in ceramic motifs from Ecuador, a culture called Valdivia. That that developed ceramics well before Peru, the Ecuadorian coast and Colombia pottery and Brazil, actually. Pottery appears much earlier. But the sites, the Valdivia sites that do overlap with Corral and and the pre-ceramic period, we do see some of their imagery,
49:21 Speaker 01 just not in pottery, we see it in gourds. So there does seem to be some kinds of movements of of iconography or ideas from the Ecuadorian coast down south into the north coastal and maybe central coastal valleys.
49:37 Speaker 01 In the Highlands itself, we'd also see, as I said, a kind of distinct kind of monumental architecture called, sometimes called the Cattosh religious tradition, which consists of different kinds of chambers with the, the, the most elaborate ones are sort of square chambers, plastered stone with sunken hearths in them, but meant for maybe more private rituals. Some of these Cattosh buildings show up in varied forms on, on the coast, including the Norte Chico, suggesting that some of these religious ideas sort of travel. And then we also see, if you look at some of the figurines at Corral, or pardon me,
50:18 Speaker 01 at Aspero, these unbaked clay figurines, we see these necklaces with beads, these kinds of square beads that, that have also been found archaeologically at a variety of sites that are drilled. They're very distinct and they show up at pre-ceramic sites on the coast and they also show up at different sites in the Highlands as well, suggesting these beads may be exchanged, or at least the idea of, of them being something important are, are exchanged. So, and then shellfish, actually, we find in relatively rare examples, but shellfish from the coast showing up in the Highlands. And just one more thing I should have mentioned when I said, talked about Valdivia. Some of the sites in the pre-ceramic, it's, they're relatively rare, but we do find a very distinctive kind of
51:02 Speaker 01 shell called Spondylus, which is a kind of pink, sometimes called a thorny oyster. Those are restricted in their habitat and often come from either the very, very far north coast of Peru or coastal Ecuador. So they're not native to the cold waters off the central coast. Now, those also show up at some of these pre-ceramic sites well outside of their habitat, suggesting, you know, prestigious objects are, are being exchanged. So there's lots of, of things that are, are moving around at that time.
51:32 Tristan Hughes? And there's no llamas or alpacas, as you said earlier, so it's on foot even between the Highlands and the coast.
51:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, the, the domestication of camelids is still up a little bit for debate, but at this time, at least in the areas that we're talking about, were probably not a major factor. It's sort of a little bit, in some cases, a long way before their, their domestication or, or spread into this region. Yeah, they're domesticated far earlier in the southern parts of Peru.
51:57 Tristan Hughes? Last two questions before completely wrapping up, Jason, and I'm afraid it's going to be quite brief, but. I want to just quickly ask about the burials at Caral, because you mentioned that there aren't many, but there are examples of burials at Caral.
52:11 Speaker 01 There are some burials at Caral, they're relatively rare. And then there's also a very famous burial at a site called Aspero. Now, the burials, at least to my knowledge, and I'm happy to be corrected on this, but to my knowledge, they're mainly associated with the temples. We don't have on the coast a real late pre-ceramic period cemetery. At Aspero, there's a burial of an infant that has some grave goods found with them. So there are some burials, but they're not that common for that this time period. And there are are no cemeteries, but we don't find, at least the consensus view is that we don't find burials of necessarily elites per se. Although some people I'm sure would would differ with that view, but we don't find people that are really,
52:54 Speaker 01 to my mind, sort of standing apart. There are these unique burials, but they're relatively rare.
52:59 Tristan Hughes? Sure, that could be a podcast episode in its own in its own right, exploring burials from 5,000 years ago. But you do a lot of work, Jason, on the end of the period of Caral and what happens next. And you mentioned this place called Chavín. Once again, this is for its own separate episode, the story of Chavín. But do we know what happens to Caral? What is the end point for this place and other settlements nearby?
53:29 Speaker 01 This is a subject that's been a topic of relatively recent research by various archaeologists. The Ruth Shoddy's team has been at the, I think, the forefront of this. So there was a recent study. There are a series of recent studies that have suggested a series of events that may have happened that Caral seems to go into some, the whole Norte Chico, that this kind of proliferation of monuments transforms after 2000 B.C. The dating is still a bit murky. There are different ideas out there. One is that studies of Caral and Aspero have shown that these sites were at least affected, I'm not saying this was the cause, but were affected by tectonic events. Peru, the Peruvian coast is part of this, you know, area that's that's struck by.
54:13 Speaker 01 Earthquakes with some frequency. We also have, and this is probably its own podcast, the El Nino phenomena also seems to have affected some of these sites. So there's that kind of claim that El Nino causes these kinds of floods that make agricultural production unsustainable potentially, right? That's one argument. Another one that's sort of coming out that I'm still digesting a bit myself is the idea that there was a period of drought sometime in this this time period. And this has been shown by Marco Iseki, who's looked at plant remains, who's a member of Rishadi's team, who's at least made the argument that there is some kinds of arid periods after
54:54 Speaker 01 about 1800 B.C. And that these at least one idea is that some of these climatic upheavals might be shown in some of the, not just in plants, but also shown in some of the freezes that have been found at at Vichama and other sites that are settled after this time period that seem to be showing emaciated figures, or this is one claim, that maybe some kind of story that's being told about the effects or the results of some kind of environmental disaster. People can Google freezes of Vichama. They're they're quite interesting to to look at there. Some of them show people with their ribs exposed, which has been interpreted
55:34 Speaker 01 at least as as starvation, although I would say there are other possibilities there. And then showing an image of a toad emerging from the ground and toads have this association with water and rain. So it may be that we are seeing some kinds of images or one interpretation that the Shadi team has put forward of these kinds of images as as telling us something about what was happening. And as I said, there are other sites that sort of postdate Corral. Vichama is one. And there's another site called Enrico, which are located in Supé and Wauru that seem to postdate Corral, but have many of the same architectural attributes. So sunken circular plazas, platforms with rooms on top and so on. And at least one
56:19 Speaker 01 claim has been that this is where people maybe moved afterwards. Another interpretation is that this tradition just continues longer than we thought. So this is something I think that's really up for debate. One thing maybe last to close that maybe connects it to things your your listeners have heard about is there is I haven't been able to find too much on this, but there is a claim when you see some of the popular press on these discoveries is there is a worldwide climatic event called the 4.2K BP event. So refers to an event that happened 4,200 before present or roughly 2,200 B.C. of a kind of global drying trend. And some people have tried to connect possibly
57:03 Speaker 01 a Highland drought that occurred in this at this time period is affecting the waters that come down to Supe. So that and the Norte Chico in general that affect agricultural production. And as I said, there is some botanical evidence that suggests arid periods during this time period. I am not as much of a environmental, I work on some of these issues in my own professional life. I'm less of an environmental determinist. I think there's a variety of factors that are happening. But, but you cannot absolutely cannot deny that these climatic events are happening.
57:38 Tristan Hughes? Well, Jason, this has been absolutely fantastic. I've got on my other screen the Vichara freezes now, and they are also incredible. Love the toad that you can see.
57:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, these are really unique. Yeah.
57:47 Tristan Hughes? They really are unique. And this has been a wonderful introduction to Caral and the Norte Chico culture. Of course, I said you work on Chavin as well. So we'll have to have you back in time to explore what happens next. But it just goes to me to say, Jason, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.
58:03 Speaker 01 Thank you for having me. I'm a big fan of the show myself. So, thank you.
58:11 Tristan Hughes? Well, there you go. There was Dr. Jason Nesbitt talking all things Caral and the wider Norte Chico civilization, one of the most extraordinary and earliest cultures of the ancient Andes. I really do hope you enjoyed this episode. It's about time we returned to cover the archaeology of South America and Caral. That is certainly one of those key archaeological sites high up on my bucket list of places to visit in the future. So I hope you enjoyed this episode just as much as I did recording it. Thank you, Jason, for being a great guest. Want to learn more about South American archaeology? Well, we have done a few episodes in the past on the ancients on particular topics. We have done an episode,
58:54 Tristan Hughes? for instance, on the ancient Amazon and how we're now learning more about ancient peoples, cultures that lived in the Amazon thousands of years ago. We also have done an episode on the Molche, another of Peru's ancient cultures, and we'll put a link in the show notes to both of those episodes too. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you are enjoying the ancients, please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Finally, don't forget, you can also subscribe to History Hit for hundreds of hours of documentaries
59:34 Tristan Hughes? with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.
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