A team of German and Peruvian archeologists said they discovered the oldest known monument in Peru: a 5,500-year-old ceremonial plaza near Peru's north-central coast.
Carbon dating of material discovered at the site revealed it was built between 3500BC and 3000BC, Peter Fuchs, a German archeologist who headed the excavation team, said by telephone on Monday.
The discovery was further evidence that civilization thrived in Peru at about the same time as it did in what is now the Middle East and South Asia, said Ruth Shady, a prominent Peruvian archeologist who led the team that discovered the ancient city of Caral in 2001.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Shady serves as a senior adviser to Peru's National Culture Institute and was not involved in the project.
QUESTIONS
The find also raises questions about what prompted "civilizations to form throughout the planet at more or less the same time," Shady said.
The circular, sunken plaza, built of stones and adobe, is part of the Sechin Bajo archeological complex in Andes foothills, 330km northwest of Lima, where Fuchs and fellow German archeologist Renate Patzschke have been working since 1992.
It predates similar monuments and plazas found in Caral, which nonetheless remains the oldest known city in the Americas dating back to 2627BC.
The plaza served as a social and ritual space where ancient peoples celebrated their "thoughts about the world, their place within it, and images of their world and themselves," Fuchs said.
ICONIC
In an adjacent structure, built around 1800BC, Fuchs' team uncovered a 3,600-year-old adobe frieze -- 2m tall -- depicting the iconic image of a human sacrificer "standing with open arms, holding a ritual knife in one hand and a human head in the other," Fuchs said.
The mythic image was also found in the celebrated Moche Lords of Sipan tombs, discovered on Peru's northern coast in the late 1980s.
Walter Alva, the Peruvian archeologist who uncovered the Lords of Sipan tombs, said the plaza found in Fuchs' dig was probably utilized by an advanced civilization with economic stability, a necessary condition to construct such a ceremonial site.
DIGS
The excavation was the fourth in a series of digs at the Sechin Bajo complex that Fuchs and Patzschke began on behalf of the University of Berlin in 1992.
Deutsche Forschung Gemeinschaft, a German state agency created to sponsor scientific investigations, has financed the most recent three digs.
The find "shows the world that in America too, human beings of the New World had the same capacity to create civilization as those in the Old World," Shady said.
Her discovery, Caral, made headlines in 2001 when researchers carbon-dated material from the city back to 2627BC, proving that a complex urban center in the Americas thrived as a contemporary to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.
This put such activity in the Americas 1,500 years earlier than previously believed.
On the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo, enthusiastic slackers share their tips: Fill up a thermos with whiskey, do planks or stretches in the work pantry at regular intervals, drink liters of water to prompt lots of trips to the toilet on work time, and, once there, spend time on social media or playing games on your phone. “Not working hard is everyone’s basic right,” one commenter wrote. “With or without legal protection, everyone has the right to not work hard.” Young Chinese people are pushing back against an engrained culture of overwork, and embracing a philosophy of laziness known as “touching
‘STUNNED’: With help from an official at the US Department of Justice, Donald Trump reportedly planned to oust the acting attorney general in a bid to overturn the election Former US president Donald Trump was at his Florida resort on Saturday, beginning post-presidency life while US President Joe Biden settled into the White House, but in Washington and beyond, the chaos of the 45th president’s final days in office continued to throw out damaging aftershocks. In yet another earth-shaking report, the New York Times said that Trump plotted with an official at the US Department of Justice to fire the acting attorney general, then force Georgia Republicans to overturn his defeat in that state. Meanwhile, former acting US secretary of defense Christopher Miller made an extraordinary admission, telling Vanity Fair that
The Palauan president-elect has vowed to stand up to Chinese “bullying” in the Pacific, saying that the archipelago nation is set to stand by its alliances with “true friends,” Taiwan and the US. Surangel Whipps Jr, 52, a supermarket owner and two-time senator from a prominent Palauan family, is to be sworn in as the new president tomorrow, succeeding his brother-in-law, Tommy Remengesau Jr. In a forthright interview, Whipps said that the US had demonstrated over the years that it was a reliable friend of Palau, most recently shown by its delivery of 6,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. “It’s important for
Boeing set a target of designing and certifying its jetliners to fly on 100 percent sustainable fuels by 2030, amid rising pressure on planemakers to take climate change seriously. Regulators allow a 50-50 blend of sustainable and conventional fuels, and Boeing on Friday said it would work with authorities to raise the limit. Rival Airbus is considering another tack: a futuristic lineup of hydrogen-powered aircraft that would reach the skies by 2035. The aircraft manufacturers face growing public clamor to cut emissions in the aviation industry, which added more than 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in 2019, according to