For Immediate Release Media contacts: The Field Museum Greg Borzo 312/665-7106 gborzo@fieldmuseum.org New dates confirm beginnings of civilization in South America Inland culture, with monumental architecture, was based on agriculture CHICAGO— Recent archaeological excavations and a new series of 95 radiocarbon dates confirm the presence of an extraordinary complex of more than 20 major ceremonial and urban centers extending back more than 5,000 years.  These sites in three valleys along the Peruvian coast represent the oldest civilization in the Andes. They are characterized by stone pyramids, large circular ceremonial structures and extensive areas of residential architecture. This group of sites, including the previously reported sites of Aspero and Caral, include the largest settlements and the most massive structures in prehistoric Americas during the 3rd millennium BC. Taken together, they represent the earliest common roots of the Inca Empire. “The scale and sophistication of these sites is unheard of anywhere in the New World at this time, and almost any time,” said Jonathan Haas, PhD, MacArthur Curator of Anthropology at The Field Museum and lead author of the research, which will be published in Nature Dec. 23, 2004. “The cultural pattern that emerged in this small area in the third millennium BC later established a foundation for 4,000 years of cultural florescence in other parts of the Andes.” This emerging civilization was based on agriculture and included social hierarchies, centralized decision-making and formalized religion. It thrived on a multifaceted economy based on inland irrigation of cotton and food plants, diverse marine resources and a well-developed system of regular exchange of goods. The 95 new radiocarbon dates come from 13 of 20 similar sites in two of the Norte Chico’s river valleys, Pativilca and Fortaleza. The new dates establish that the first inland sites with large-scale architecture were occupied by 3100 BC, more than 400 years earlier than any other similar sites in South America. Added to previously published dates from Caral and other sites in the neighboring Supe Valley, 127 radiocarbon dates are now available from the region, firmly establishing a precocious civilization thriving in the Norte Chico for more than 1,200 years. “Equally as important as the dates themselves is the fact that dates between 2000 BC and 3000 BC come from almost every site where we tested and collected samples,” said Winifred Creamer, Ph.D., a co-author of the research, professor at Northern Illinois University and Adjunct Curator at The Field Museum. “This wasn’t a single site where people were doing something really unusual, but a whole region, a whole culture, where people were organized to produce something their world hadn’t seen before. The people who built the first of these pyramids and plazas had no model to go by and no precedent to use in building monuments and organizing labor on a large scale.” Continue>>