Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas.
“What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said.
The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s.
Photo: AFP
Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the nails and hair, and were wrapped in a shroud made of several layers of fabric and a mantle of macaw feathers.
Macaws are colorful birds that belong to the parrot family.
The woman’s funerary trousseau, which was presented to reporters at the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, included a toucan’s beak, a stone bowl and a straw basket.
Preliminary analyses indicate that the remains found in December last year belong to a woman between 20 and 35 years old who was 1.5m tall, and wearing a headdress that represented her elevated social status.
The find showed that while “it was generally thought that rulers were men, or that they had more prominent roles in society,” women had “played a very important role in the Caral civilization,” Palomino said.
Caral society developed between 3000 and 1800BC, about the same time as other great cultures in Mesopotamia, Egypt and China.
The city is situated in the fertile Supe valley, about 180km north of Lima and 20km from the Pacific Ocean.
It was declared a UN World Heritage Site in 2009.
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