Archaeologists unveil 3,500-year-old city in Peru

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07dmx38kyeo

by neversaydie • 1 year ago

182 61 1 year ago

bbc.co.uk

adolph• 1 year ago

Is there something new unveiled that was missed in translation? The quoted researchers Shady and Machacuay doen't seem to have any new publications about Peñico listed in Google Scholar.

  Eight years of research at the site unearthed 18 structures, including ceremonial temples and residential complexes.

dmix2• 1 year ago

Likely a tourism advertising PR push of a place with an existing vistors center. The only thing they mention is some drone footage which probably supplied the aerial footage.

tree_enjoyer• 1 year ago

The 3,500-year-old city, named Peñico, is believed to have served as a key trading hub connecting early Pacific coast communities with those living in the Andes mountains and Amazon basin.

...

Researchers say the discovery sheds light on what became of the Americas' oldest civilisation, the Caral.

Oldest civilization is a bit of a stretch. Earliest surviving structures is a stretch, but it's one we know about, so I guess they have to base it off that. More and more evidence is showing that humans were in the Americas farther back in time. While they weren't the builders of of fine stonework and megalithic structures like the Olmec (that we know of), there were certainly civilizations and cities before humans suddenly started building the massive pyramids and cities we have uncovered so far. There's a lot of secrets still hidden in the South American jungles.

ricksunny• 1 year ago

In context of possible early Peruvian civilizations, definitely don't read the below; it's obviously an undersubstantiated pseudoscientific rabbit-hole not worth your curiosity and that your productive workday can not afford.

https://tridactyls.org/

(maintained by one Gonzalo Chavez https://x.com/gchavez101 )

TSiege2• 1 year ago

This is pseudoscience nonsense spread by some huckster and it's not worth anyones time and is disrespectful to the people of Peru. It's a modern hoax

"They're not extraterrestrials. They're dolls made from animal bones from this planet joined together with modern synthetic glue," said Flavio Estrada, an archeologist with Peru's Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences. "It's totally a made-up story," Estrada added.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/scientists-assert-ali...

mistrial9• 1 year ago

on the other hand, I enjoyed "The Lost World" adventure fantasy book quite a lot as a kid, and now it seems there is science for certain dinosaur era creatures in some places.. so maybe fantastic nonsense has a place in a spectrum, as long as it is identified as "speculative" or whatever

TSiege2• 1 year ago

This site (~1475 BCE) is older than the Olmecs (1200-400BCE) and is associated with another city, Caral, which is even older than them (3000-1800BCE) and both are much farther south than Mexico is compared to the Bering Land Bridge.

Caral at 5000 years old is quite old! For additional context the Pyramids of Giza are ~4600 years old and Stonehenge is ~5100 years old. Given that it's in Peru this does not counter your narrative. But Archaeology is a Science and they cannot definitively say there is an older city without discovering it. It also might be unlikely to find what would be qualified as a "City" that is older. We've certainly found much older human settlements in the Americas, but megalithic building and cities is harder to say. Perhaps we'll find packed earth ones somewhere, but Peru really did have the jump on what would term "complex societies" in the Americas

MangoToupe3• 1 year ago

Archaeology is a Science

Archaeology is a collection of arbitrary-but-largely-agreed-upon definitions. That doesn't make it a science. The entire focus on whether or not this is a civilization (or indeed why such a determination matters) is a great example of why you should abandon consensus at the door.

dmix2• 1 year ago

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.

Oarch• 1 year ago

City is also a bit of a stretch.

varjag• 1 year ago

Capital masonry structures including temples and possibly pools/water communal reservoirs? Yeah no it's a city, as much as it was as thing 5k years ago.

throwup238• 1 year ago

Remember these are archaeologists using the word "civilization" as a term of art within their field. There's no universally agreed upon definition but in general people use the scale model [1] (you can see the scales that different authors have developed at the link).

It's not like we don't know about a bunch of different peoples that existed even earlier (i.e. Toca da Tira Peia is ~22 kYa), but the evidence we have of them is basically a few burial mounds and maybe some domestic structures, and that does not rise to the threshold of a civilization for the intents and purposes of archaeology.

[1] https://www.sociostudies.org/journal/articles/140526/

ErigmolCt2• 1 year ago

I think we're still just scratching the surface of pre-Columbian history

gregsadetsky• 1 year ago

https://www.google.com/maps/place/10%C2%B055'54.5%22S+77%C2%...

via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pe%C3%B1ico

gwbas1c• 1 year ago

I don't understand how this is an "announcement" when there is clearly a visitor's center with a parking lot nearby?

Perhaps something got lost in translation?

dboreham• 1 year ago

Stealth visitor center?

jccalhoun• 1 year ago

Street view has images from January: https://maps.app.goo.gl/zeiDS3vUpwdsKj419

Looking at a couple other articles I gather that it was announced as open to the public? Another article mentioned that they have been working on the site for over 8 years: https://www.reuters.com/science/archaeologists-peru-unveil-3...

TuringTourist• 1 year ago

Echoes of Terry Pratchett:

Archaeologists are excited for this find because it comes with a visitor's center and a parking lot.

OJFord• 1 year ago

If it's announced now after eight years' work there 'visitor' may mean more like academic visitors, visiting archaeologists, even those working there full time need somewhere to park, etc.

jaza• 1 year ago

Because now it has been "unveiled"! I guess it was wrapped in cellophane before...

Probably timed to coincide with the peak of the tourist season in Peru. Dry season is May-Oct (not at all advisable to visit Machu Picchu in the wet season). Jul-Aug is summer holidays for Europeans, who are the biggest cohort of international tourists in Peru (and summer holidays for North Americans). And Peru's independence day is 28 Jul, so locals take an (often extended) long weekend, so a bit of a spike in domestic tourism coming up too.

Aspos2• 1 year ago

I feel irrational hatred towards people who think "decimated" is a synonym of "destroyed".

foobarian• 1 year ago

This wasn't on my radar until... now! I will take up your banner with glee

Aspos2• 1 year ago

I'll sacrifice a goat in Jupiter's temple for you.

BobAliceInATree• 1 year ago

That ship has long since sailed.

OED dates the first known use of "to reduce drastically or severely; to destroy, ruin, devastate" to 1660.

lampiaio• 1 year ago

Honest advice: free yourself from that and live a happier life. And I don't mean it in an "ignorance is bliss" kind of way, on the contrary really. Otherwise, to be consistent, you'd need to

- demand your salary be paid in salt

- have all arenas be covered in sand

- calculate only with pebbles

- only allow xylophones made of wood

And so on. It's a tiring journey to embark on -- oops, one can only embark on ships...

adfm• 1 year ago

I take decimate to mean reduced by 10% and annihilate to destroy utterly.

spookie• 1 year ago

All my memory arenas are covered in sand though

alberto_ol• 1 year ago

And December is the tenth month of the year

thaumasiotes• 1 year ago

All xylophones are made of wood. If they're made of metal (or if they're made of wood and have sounding tubes), you call them something else.

https://www.savagechickens.com/2007/08/public-service-announ...

seizethecheese• 1 year ago

Very irrational, yes, considering one definition of “decimate” is actually roughly “destroyed”.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate

samplatt• 1 year ago

There was an old Tenant-era Dr Who episode where The Master says "shall we decimate them? yes, let's decimate them. REMOVE ONE TENTH."

I instantly howled with anguish. Surely decimating them should mean removing NINE tenths. The Master was a small-minded coward.

DrBazza• 1 year ago

I'd bet 'learnings' gets you going as well, and if it doesn't, it should, and I apologise for introducing you to some new modern idiocy.

Seriously though, languages change.

globular-toast• 1 year ago

I'm mildly annoyed that the word "alternate" has come to mean the same thing as "alternative". I'm annoyed because "alternate" is actually a useful word that I'd like to use sometimes to express myself concisely and unambiguously.

But "decimate"? How often do you feel the need to refer to reducing the size of something by one tenth? This is bizarrely specific and I highly doubt it ever has any real applications unless you invent one.

Tallain• 1 year ago

Language changes over time. Release your hate. Get with the times.

slimebot80• 1 year ago

So they've spent 8 years unearthing it, I assume? It's pretty obvious to see from those photos, but 8 years ago it was buried?

ErigmolCt2• 1 year ago

Kind of humbling to realize that while Mesopotamia and Egypt were building empires, folks in Peru were constructing circular temples, making seashell jewelry, and setting up complex trade networks completely independently

undebuggable• 1 year ago

They were akin to extraterrestrial life to each other, although at comparable level of civilizational development.

louis_saglio• 1 year ago

In fact, when this Peruvian city was built, Egypt had been an empire for 2,000 years and the first pyramid was around 1,000 years old.

Archaeologists unveil 3,500-year-old city in Peru

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