Exploring Caral: The Oldest City in the Americas
In the heart of the Supe Valley, between the desert and the Pacific, lies one of the most extraordinary places on Earth. Caral is not only the oldest city in the Americas, but one of the oldest in the entire world. It stands as silent proof that civilization did not begin only in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or China, but also here, on the dry coast of Peru. Long before the Incas, long before the rise of pyramids elsewhere, the people of Caral were already building monumental architecture, trading across vast distances, and living within a complex social order. The Discovery Caral was not lost in the sense that Machu Picchu was. Its ruins were always visible, rising gently from the desert floor, but for centuries no one truly understood their significance. Local farmers called them huacas, sacred mounds, assuming they were natural hills or burial sites left by forgotten ancestors. It was not until the late 1990s that archaeologist Ruth Shady Solís and her team from the National University of Sa...