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Dec 30, 2020

Is Caral, Peru the Oldest City in the Americas?

Posted by in category: education

On a high, dry terrace overlooking a green river valley in the Andes Mountains of Peru, sits a complex of American pyramids that may be older than the pyramids of Egypt. These structures are remnants of the ancient city of Caral, which some have called the oldest society in the Americas. Caral was built around 5000 years ago, give or take a few centuries, according to groundbreaking research published in Science back in 2001. That origin date places it before the Egyptian pyramids in Africa and roughly 4000 years before the Incan Empire rose to power on the South American continent. That history, and the shear scope of the site, prompted UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, to dub it a World Heritage Site in 2009.


These pyramids in Peru are older than the ones in Egypt, and predate the Incan Empire by roughly 4000 years.

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