Caral–Supe civilization
Caral–Supe was a complex pre-Columbian era society that included as many as thirty major population centers in what is now the Caral region of north-central coastal Peru. The civilization flourished between the 4th and 2nd millennia BCE, with the formation of the first city generally dated to around 3500 BCE, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area. From 3100 BCE onward, large-scale human settlement and communal construction become clearly apparent. This lasted until a period of decline around 1800 BCE. Since the early 21st century, it has been recognized as the oldest-known civilization in America, and as one of the six sites where civilization separately originated in the ancient world.
This civilization flourished along three rivers, the Fortaleza, the Pativilca, and the Supe. These river valleys each have large clusters of sites. Farther south, there are several associated sites along the Huaura River. The name Caral–Supe is derived from the city of Caral in the Supe Valley, a large and well-studied Caral–Supe site.
Complex society in the Caral–Supe arose a millennium after Sumer in Mesopotamia, was contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids, and predated the Mesoamerican Olmecs by nearly two millennia.
In archaeological nomenclature, Caral–Supe is a pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic; it completely lacked ceramics and no evidence of visual art has survived. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthwork platform mounds and sunken circular plazas. Archaeological evidence suggests use of textile technology and, possibly, the worship of common deity symbols, both of which recur in pre-Columbian Andean civilizations. Sophisticated government is presumed to have been required to manage the ancient Caral. Questions remain over its organization, particularly the influence of food resources on politics.
Archaeologists have been aware of ancient sites in the area since at least the 1940s; early work occurred at Aspero on the coast, a site identified as early as 1905, and later at Caral, farther inland. In the late 1990s, Peruvian archaeologists, led by Ruth Shady, provided the first extensive documentation of the civilization with work at Caral. A 2001 paper in Science, providing a survey of the Caral research, and a 2004 article in Nature, describing fieldwork and radiocarbon dating across a wider area, revealed Caral–Supe's full significance and led to widespread interest.
History and geography
The dating of the Caral–Supe sites has pushed back the estimated beginning date of complex societies in the Peruvian region by more than one thousand years. The Chavín culture,, had previously been considered the first civilization of the area. Regularly, it still is cited incorrectly as such in general works.The discovery of Caral–Supe has also shifted the focus of research away from the highland areas of the Andes and lowlands adjacent to the mountains to the Peruvian littoral, or coastal regions. Caral is located in a north-central area of the coast, approximately north of Lima, roughly bounded by the Lurín Valley on the south and the Casma Valley on the north. It comprises four coastal valleys: the Huaura, Supe, Pativilca, and Fortaleza. Known sites are concentrated in the latter three, which share a common coastal plain. The three principal valleys cover only, and research has emphasized the density of the population centers.
The Peruvian littoral appears an "improbable, even aberrant" candidate for the "pristine" development of civilization, compared to other world centers. It is extremely arid, bounded by two rain shadows. The region is punctuated by more than 50 rivers that carry Andean snowmelt. The development of widespread irrigation from these water sources is seen as decisive in the emergence of Caral–Supe; since all of the monumental architecture at various sites has been found close to irrigation channels.
The radiocarbon work of Jonathan Haas et al., found that 10 of 95 samples taken in the Pativilca and Fortaleza areas dated from before 3500 BCE. The oldest, dating from 9210 BCE, provides "limited indication" of human settlement during the Pre-Columbian Early Archaic era. Two dates of 3700 BCE are associated with communal architecture, but are likely to be anomalous. It is from 3200 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction are clearly apparent. Mann, in a survey of the literature in 2005, suggests "sometime before 3200 BCE, and possibly before 3500 BCE" as the beginning date of the Caral–Supe formative period. He notes that the earliest date securely associated with a city is 3500 BCE, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area of the north, based on Haas's dates.
Haas's early third millennium dates suggest that the development of coastal and inland sites occurred in parallel. But, from 2500 to 2000 BCE, during the period of greatest expansion, the population and development decisively shifted toward the inland sites. All development apparently occurred at large interior sites such as Caral, although they remained dependent on fish and shellfish from the coast. The peak in dates is in keeping with Shady's dates at Caral, which show habitation from 2627 BCE to 2020 BCE. That coastal and inland sites developed in tandem remains disputed, however.
In 2025, new archaeological work led by Ruth Shady linked the abandonment of Caral to a prolonged drought around 2200 BCE, part of the global 4.2-kiloyear climate event. Excavations at associated sites such as Vichama on the Pacific coast and Peñico inland indicate that populations from the Supe Valley relocated rather than collapsed, rebuilding settlements that preserved Caral–Supe architectural layouts and ceremonial spaces. Temple friezes at Vichama depict scenes of famine, death and later renewal, which researchers interpret as a visual record of the drought and the hoped-for return of rainfall. Archaeologists note a continued lack of fortifications or weaponry at these sites, suggesting that the society adapted to the climatic crisis without widespread warfare.
Society
Recent archaeological work led by Ruth Shady indicates that around 4,200 years ago a severe drought forced the inhabitants of Caral to abandon the city and resettle at nearby sites such as Vichama and Peñico. Excavations at these settlements show continuity in architectural planning and ceremonial spaces but no clear evidence of warfare or fortifications, leading researchers to argue that the society adapted to climatic stress through migration and reorganisation rather than violent conflict.Influence
By around 2200 BCE, the influence of Norte Chico civilization spread far along the coast. To the south, it went as far as the Chillon valley, and the site of El Paraiso. To the north, it spread as far as the Santa River valley.The Caral–Supe civilization began to decline, with more powerful centers appearing to the south and north along the coast, and to the east inside the belt of the Andes. The success of irrigation-based agriculture at Caral–Supe may have contributed to its being eclipsed. Anthropologist Professor Winifred Creamer of Northern Illinois University notes that "when this civilization is in decline, we begin to find extensive canals farther north. People were moving to more fertile ground and taking their knowledge of irrigation with them". It would be 1,000 years before the rise of the next great Peruvian culture, the Chavín.
Geographical links
Cultural links with the highland areas have been noted by archaeologists. Ruth Shady highlights the links with the Kotosh Religious Tradition:Numerous architectural features found among the settlements of Supe, including subterranean circular courts, stepped pyramids and sequential platforms, as well as material remains and their cultural implications, excavated at Aspero and the valley sites we are digging, are shared with other settlements of the area that participated in what is known as the Kotosh Religious Tradition. Most specific among these features include rooms with benches and hearths with subterranean ventilation ducts, wall niches, biconvex beads, and musical flutes.
The inland site of Peñico, in the Supe valley east of Caral, has been interpreted as a strategic hub linking coastal, highland and jungle regions. Excavations have revealed at least 18 Caral style structures and evidence of long distance exchange, including Amazonian monkey and macaw remains and Ecuadorian seashells, leading archaeologists to describe Peñico as a “city of social integration.”
Maritime coast and agricultural interior
Research into Caral–Supe continues, with many unsettled questions. Debate is ongoing regarding two related questions: the degree to which the flourishing of the Caral–Supe was based on maritime food resources, and the exact relationship this implies between the coastal and inland sites.Confirmed diet
A broad outline of the Caral–Supe diet has been suggested. At Caral, the edible domesticated plants noted by Shady are squash, beans, lúcuma, guava, pacay, and sweet potato. Haas et al. noted the same foods in their survey farther north, while adding avocado and achira. In 2013, evidence for maize also was documented by Haas et al..There was also a significant seafood component at both coastal and inland sites. Shady notes that "animal remains are almost exclusively marine" at Caral, including clams and mussels, and large amounts of anchovies and sardines. That the anchovy fish reached inland is clear, although Haas suggests that "shellfish , sea mammals, and seaweed do not appear to have been significant portions of the diet in the inland, non-maritime sites".
Theory of a maritime foundation for Andean civilization
The role of seafood in the Caral–Supe diet has aroused debate. Much early fieldwork was conducted in the region of Aspero on the coast, before the full scope and inter-connectedness of the several sites of the civilization were realized. In a 1973 paper, Michael E. Moseley contended that a maritime subsistence economy had been the basis of the society and its remarkably early flourishing, a theory later elaborated as a "maritime foundation of Andean civilization". He confirmed a previously observed lack of ceramics at Aspero, and he deduced that "hummocks" on the site constituted the remains of artificial platform mounds.This thesis of a maritime foundation was contrary to the general scholarly consensus that the rise of civilization was based on intensive agriculture, particularly of at least one cereal. The production of agricultural surpluses had long been seen as essential in promoting population density and the emergence of complex society. Moseley's ideas would be debated and challenged, but have been treated as plausible as late as 2005, when Mann conducted a summary of the literature.
Concomitant to the maritime subsistence hypothesis was an implied dominance of sites immediately adjacent to the coast over other centers. This idea was shaken by the realization of the magnitude of Caral, an inland site. Supplemental to a 1997 article by Shady dating Caral, a 2001 Science news article emphasized the dominance of agriculture and also suggested that Caral was the oldest urban center in Peru. It rejected the idea that civilization might have begun adjacent to the coast and then moved inland. One archaeologist was quoted as suggesting that "rather than coastal antecedents to monumental inland sites, what we have now are coastal satellite villages to monumental inland sites".
These assertions were quickly challenged by Sandweiss and Moseley, who observed that Caral, although being the largest and most complex preceramic site, it is not the oldest. They admitted the importance of agriculture to industry and to augment diet, while broadly affirming "the formative role of marine resources in early Andean civilization". Scholars now agree that the inland sites did have significantly greater populations, and that there were "so many more people along the four rivers than on the shore that they had to have been dominant".
The remaining question is which of the areas developed first and created a template for subsequent development. Haas rejects suggestions that maritime development at sites immediately adjacent to the coast was initial, pointing to contemporaneous development based on his dating. Moseley remains convinced that coastal Aspero is the oldest site, and that its maritime subsistence served as a basis for the civilization.
However, Moseley wrote in 2004 that his hypothesis could be tested upon whether "the residents of Caral obtained more than 50% of their nutrition from the sea," using a dietary analysis of their bone chemistry. A 2022 study sought to address this very question. Forensic archaeologists examined the remains of 52 individuals from Aspero and Caral. Their analysis revealed that while seafood consumption was higher at Aspero compared to Caral, plant-based foods dominated the diets in both locations—making up 55%–68% at Aspero and over 70% at Caral, even during early settlement phases. Over time, seafood consumption at Caral appears to have decreased as advancements in agriculture and improved crop domestication provided a more scalable food source for the growing population compared to relying on wild fisheries. Based on Moseley’s criteria, marine resources, while significant, likely didn’t meet the proposed threshold.