Marked Caral, Peru

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Caral and the first cities of the Andes

In the Supe valley of Peru, people built pyramids and sunken plazas at about the same time as the pyramids of Egypt. Caral had no pottery and no sign of war; it traded cotton and fish.

Date
About 3000 to 1800 BCIV · First cities and the Bronze Age
Place
Caral, Peru · Áspero, PeruThe Americas
Laid out as
A cityOne city, district by district, from its centre outwards.
Lessons
5 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IPyramids in the desert
  2. IIA city without war?
  3. IIICotton and anchovies
  4. IVFlutes of condor bone
  5. VThe khipu at Caral?

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Ruth Shady Solís

Objects

  • Condor-bone flutes
  • A possible early khipu

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

3000 BC to 1800 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?