Peru may be home to Earth's oldest civilization
An unexpected find in Peru, indicating the presence of people near the famous pyramids in the Chicama Valley 15 thousand years ago, speaks of the ultra-fast pace of civilization in the New World, scientists say in an article published in the journal Science Advances.
“We were able to find many artifacts in Huake Priet, including food remains, stone tools and other traces of the existence of ancient cultures, including baskets and fabrics decorated with patterns. All these findings raise the question of how quickly civilization in this region developed and makes us think about the level of their development and the availability of technologies that allowed them to extract resources from the sea and land,”says James Adovasio of the Atlantic University Florida at Fort Pierce (USA).
First people
Until now, all scientists believed that the New World was the last region of the Earth to be inhabited by humanity. As paleontologists believed, relying on the known traces of the presence of people in America, the ancestors of the Indians or other groups of Cro-Magnons penetrated America about 17-15 thousand years ago, migrating from Siberia to the eastern regions of the United States through a piece of land that existed on the site of the modern Bering Strait.
Earlier dates of colonization of America were not even considered by scientists - this "bridge" between the New World and Eurasia existed only for short periods of time, about 70 thousand years ago and 23-13 thousand years ago, and before that most of Chukotka and Alaska were covered with impassable glaciers. On the other hand, recent genetic studies suggest that America could have been settled from the "south", as a result of the movement of the ancestors of the Indians across the islands of Polynesia.
Adovasio and his colleagues have found large hints that South America or the entire New World may have been inhabited much earlier than we suspect, having discovered entire mountains of artifacts on the Pacific coast at Huaca Prieta. Huaca Prieta, according to scientists, is located in the Chicama Valley, where the most ancient pyramids of Peru were built and where traces of the ancestors of the Indians who inhabited this part of the country about 5-8 thousand years ago are often found.
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While excavating at one of these mounds, scientists have found many primitive tools and grass baskets, whose appearance made them assume that they were dealing with very ancient traces of civilization. In addition, archaeologists have found a large amount of tissue, food remains and other traces of the existence of a relatively advanced civilization.
Ancient mysteries of Peru
They tested this theory by measuring the proportions of radioactive isotopes in the reeds and cotton stalks from which the baskets were woven. This allowed scientists to know that the age of their finds goes far beyond what they expected to see - most of the artifacts were older than 8 thousand years, and some of them stepped over the mark of 15 thousand years.
Such a venerable age of baskets and fabrics decorated with patterns suggests that we underestimated the pace of development of civilization in the New World. The inhabitants of the Chikama Valley, as scientists say, already 15 thousand years ago were able not only to make tissues and vessels, but also to simultaneously get food in the sea and on land, collecting and catching marine fauna with the help of bone hooks and stone harpoons, and growing or collecting avocados, peas, chili and pumpkin on dry land.
“These sophisticated textiles and baskets tell us that there were standardized or 'collective' methods of making them at Huaca Prieta, and that they were not made for just utilitarian purposes. Like many other local artifacts, they indicate the presence of a complex society in the valley and the desire of its inhabitants to demonstrate their social position,”the scientist continues.
The question of how this civilization arose remains open - as the authors of the article emphasize, their discovery is not unambiguous evidence that the ancestors of the Peruvians penetrated into South America along the Pacific migration route. Further excavations at Huaca Prieta and other ancient sites of people in North America will help to understand how the modern Indians actually originated, scientists conclude.
Excavation of the Huaca Prieta mound in Peru, where scientists have found traces of a potentially ancient civilization on Earth. Photo: Tom Dillehay