Caral: A journey back to 2627 B.C.
(Text and information by CNN Travel)

CARAL, Peru (AP) -- A sudden wind gust blows eerily down from rocky Andean foothills, kicking up a cinnamon-colored cloud over the moonscape of ruins that is the oldest city in the Americas.
The sky is a crisp blue. All around in the Supe River Valley are lush fields of onion and corn.
We are in Caral, three hours and nearly 5,000 years from contemporary Lima, Peru's bustling capital, and we've spent the last half-hour or so on a bumpy drive from the coast, along a dirt road blocked periodically by bleating herds of goats and sheep.
Caral made headlines in 2001 when researchers carbon-dated material from the city back to 2627 B.C.

It is a must-see for archaeology enthusiasts.
Even though the ruins in the dusty, wind-swept Supe River Valley don't approximate in majesty the mountains that surround the famed Inca ruins at Machu Picchu, they are an unforgettable sight under the glow of a fiery sunset.
Dotted with pyramid temples, sunken plazas, housing complexes and an amphitheater, Caral is one of 20 sites attributed to the ancient Caral-Supe culture that run almost linearly from Peru's central coast inland up the Andes.
The ruins changed history when researchers proved that a complex urban center in the Americas thrived as a contemporary to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt -- 1,500 years earlier than previously believed.
But much remains to be discovered about Caral and the Caral-Supe culture that flourished here for more than a thousand years.
Ruth Shady, a Peruvian archaeologist from San Marcos University, discovered Caral in 1994, and was stunned by its size and complexity.
"Caral combined size with construction volume, but also it was a planned city," she says.

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Peru finds ancient burial cave of warrior tribe
By Robin Emmott



LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Archeologists have uncovered a 600-year-old, large underground cemetery belonging to a Peruvian warrior culture, thought to be the first discovery of its kind, an official said on Thursday.

After a tip-off from a farmer in Peru's northern Amazon jungle, archeologists from Peru's National Culture Institute last week found the 820-feet-(250-meter)deep cave that was used for burial and worship by the Chachapoyas tribe.

So far archeologists have found five mummies, two of which are intact with skin and hair, as well as ceramics, textiles and wall paintings, the expedition's leader and regional cultural director Herman Corbera told Reuters.

"This is a discovery of transcendental importance. We have found these five mummies but I believe there could be many more," Corbera said. "We think this is the first time any kind of underground burial site this size has been found belonging to Chachapoyas or other cultures in the region," he added.

The Chachapoyas, a white-skinned tribe known as the "Cloud People" by the Incas because of the cloud forests they inhabited in northern Peru, ruled the area from around 800 AD to around 1475, when they were conquered by the Incas.

GREAT WARRIORS

But their strong resistance to the Incas, who built an empire ranging from northern Ecuador to southern Chile from the 1400s until the Spanish conquest of the 1530s, earned them a reputation as great warriors.

They are best-known today by tourists for their stone citadel Kuelap, near the modern town of Chachapoyas.

In 1996, archeologists found six ancient burial houses containing several mummies, thought to belong to the Chachapoyas.

"The remote site for this cemetery tells us that the Chachapoyas had enormous respect for their ancestors because they hid them away for protection," Corbera said.

"Locals call the cave Iyacyecuj, or Enchanted Water in Quechua, because of its spiritual importance and its underground rivers," he added.

Corbera said the walls in the limestone cave near the mummies were covered with wall paintings of faces and warrior-like figures that may have been drawn to ward off intruders and evil spirits.

"The idea now is to turn this cave into a museum, but we've got a huge amount of research to do first and protecting the site is a big issue," Corbera said, adding that looters had already vandalized a small part of the cave in search of mummies or gold.

Archeologists have uncovered thousands of mummies in Peru in recent years, mostly from the Inca culture five centuries ago, including about 2,000 unearthed from under a shantytown near the capital Lima in 2002.

One of Peru's most famous mummies is "Juanita the Ice Maiden," a girl preserved in ice on a mountain.

Mummified dogs uncovered in Peru
From BBC News, Lima


Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered the mummified remains of more than 40 dogs buried with blankets and food alongside their human masters.

The discovery was made during the excavation of two of the ancient Chiribaya people who lived in southern Peru between AD 900 and AD 1350.

Experts say the dogs' treatment in death indicated the belief that the animals had an afterlife.
Such a status for pets has only previously been seen in ancient Egypt.

Hundreds of years before the European conquest of South America, the Chiribaya civilisation valued its dogs so highly that when one died, it was buried alongside family members.

'Distinct breed'

The dogs, which have been called Chiribaya shepherds for their llama-herding abilities, were not sacrificed as in other ancient cultures, but buried with blankets and food in human cemeteries.

Biological archaeologists have unearthed the remains of more than 40 dogs which were naturally mummified in the desert sand of Peru's southern Ilo Valley. Now they have teamed up with Peru's Kennel Club to try to establish if the dogs represent a new distinct breed indigenous to South America.

The country is full of breeds which arrived in the last few centuries, but they believe some dogs living today in southern Peru share the characteristics of their ancestors.

The Chiribaya dog looked rather like a small golden retriever with a medium-sized snout, beige colouring, and long hair.

The only other indigenous Peruvian canine is the hairless dog, which evolved over more than 2,000 years ago from Asian ancestors brought across the Bering Straits.
It was recognised as a distinct breed just 20 years ago.