Shobhan Saxena's article is interesting, but it's a pity he should be so
ill-informed about the archaeology of his native land. All archaeologists
today agree that the Harappan civilization reached its Mature Phase by 2600
bce. That includes Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and, in today's India, Kalibangan
or Dholavira. Therefore Caral's civilization was contemporary with the
Harappan -- certainly not "hundreds of years before." (By the way, there is
no such thing as a "Harappa Valley".)

Worse, construction of Giza's Great Pyramids began around the same date, and
cities existed in Sumer around 3200 bce. It is silly to speak of a "mother
of all civilizations" -- such concepts are obsolete and largely meaningless.
Civilization emerged in many places independently, and Caral's discovery,
however fascinating, is simply one more confirmation of this
well-established fact.

Regards,

Michel

*******************************************************
The mother of all civilisations
Posted by: "JK" tiptronicus@... tiptronicus
Date: Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:31 am ((PST))

*http://tinyurl.com/2cs9wq*


The mother of all civilisations
16 Dec 2007, 0001 hrs IST,Shobhan Saxena,TNN

SMS NEWS to 58888 for latest updates
The ruins were so magnificent and sprawling that some people believed that
the aliens from a faraway galaxy had built the huge pyramids that stood in
the desert across the Andes.

Some historians believed that the complex society, which existed at that
time, was born out of fear and war. They looked for the telltale signs of
violence that they believed led to the creation of this civilisation. But,
they could not find even a hint of any warfare. It was baffling. Even years
after Ruth Shady Solis found the ancient city of pyramids at Caral in Peru,
it continues to surprise historians around the world. It took Ruth Shady
many years and many rounds of carbon dating to prove that the earliest known
civilisation in South Americas—at 2,627 BC–was much older than the Harappa
Valley towns and the pyramids of Egypt.

Solis, an archaeologist at the National University of San Marcos, Lima, was
looking for the fabled missing link of archaeology— a 'mother city'—when she
stumbled upon the ancient city of Caral in the Supe Valley of Peru a few
years ago. Her findings were stunning.

It showed that a full-fledged urban civilisation existed at the place
around 2700 BC. The archaeologist and her team found a huge compound at
Caral: 65 hectares in the central zone, encompassing six large pyramids,
many smaller pyramids, two circular plazas, temples, amphitheatres and other
architectural features including residential districts spread in the desert,
23 km from the coast.

The discovery of Caral has pushed back the history of the Americas: Caral
is more than 1,000 years older than Machu Picchu of the Incas. They built
huge structures in Caral hundreds of years before the famous drainage system
of Harappa and the pyramids of Egypt were even designed.

But, it was not easy for Ruth Shady to prove this. It was only in 2001 that
the journal Science reported the Peruvian archaeologist's discovery. And,
despite the hard evidence backing her, she is still trying to convince
people that Caral was indeed the oldest urban civilisation in the world.

"There were many problems, many of them in my own country," says Ruth
Shady, on a visit to India to discuss her discovery with other historians.
"The discovery of Caral challenged the accepted beliefs. Some historians
were not ready to believe that an urban civilisation existed in Peru even
before the pyramids were built in Egypt," she says.

Basically, there were two problems. First, for decades archaeologist have
been looking for a 'mother city' to find an answer to the question: why did
humans become civilised?

The historians had been searching for this answer in Egypt, Mesopotamia
(Iraq), India and China. They didn't expect to find the first signs of city
life in a Peruvian desert. Secondly, most historians believed that only the
fear of war could motivate people to form complex societies. And, since
Caral did not show any trace of warfare; no battlements, no weapons, and no
mutilated bodies, they found it hard to accept it as the mother city.

That's when Ruth Shady stepped in with her discovery. "This place is
somewhere between the seat of the gods and the home of man," she says,
adding that Caral was a gentle society, built on trade and pleasure. "This
great civilisation was based on trade in cotton. Caral made the cotton for
the nets, which were sold to the fishermen living near the coast. Caral
became a booming trading centre and the trade spread," she says.

Caral was born in trade and not bloodshed. Warfare came much later. This is
what this mother city shows: great civilisations are born in peace. Ruth
Shady continues to battle for this great truth.

shobhan.saxena@...