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>The 3,500-year-old city, named Peñico, is believed to have served as a key trading hub connecting early Pacific coast communities with those living in the Ande

>The 3,500-year-old city, named Peñico, is believed to have served as a key trading hub connecting early Pacific coast communities with those living in the Andes mountains and Amazon basin. ... >Researchers say the discovery sheds light on what became of the Americas' oldest civilisation, the Caral. Oldest civilization is a bit of a stretch. Earliest surviving structures is a stretch, but it's one we know about, so I guess they have to base it off that. More and more evidence is showing that humans were in the Americas farther back in time. While they weren't the builders of of fine stonework and megalithic structures like the Olmec (that we know of), there were certainly civilizations and cities before humans suddenly started building the massive pyramids and cities we have uncovered so far. There's a lot of secrets still hidden in the South American jungles.

ricksunny 1y ago
In context of possible early Peruvian civilizations, definitely don't read the below; it's obviously an undersubstantiated pseudoscientific rabbit-hole not worth your curiosity and that your productive workday can not afford. https://tridactyls.org/ https://tridactyls.org/ (maintained by one Gonzalo Chavez https://x.com/gchavez101 https://x.com/gchavez101 )
- TSiege 1y ago
  This is pseudoscience nonsense spread by some huckster and it's not worth anyones time and is disrespectful to the people of Peru. It's a modern hoax > "They're not extraterrestrials. They're dolls made from animal bones from this planet joined together with modern synthetic glue," said Flavio Estrada, an archeologist with Peru's Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences. "It's totally a made-up story," Estrada added. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/scientists-assert-alien-mummies-peru-are-really-dolls-made-earthly-bones-2024-01-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/scientists-assert-ali...
  - Rumudiez 1y ago
    > Joshua McDowell said: 'The bodies studied by Estrada were not related to any specimen that we have studied. They were folk dolls made to look like tridactyls confiscated at the airport.
  - an0malous 1y ago
    The dolls in that article were confiscated in the mail and are made for tourists. The creator of those dolls has explained this already, and they are unrelated to the bodies discovered near Ica. Here’s an X-ray comparison between the two where it’s very obvious that there’s a difference between the modern dolls and the archaeological discoveries: https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1805272924640682036 https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1805272924640682036 Even if you’re incredulous that these bodies were living creatures, no one disputes their carbon dating of 500-1500 years old and this has been confirmed by multiple labs. It’s not possible to construct bodies from biological material that is that old, so if they were constructed it would have to have been done by ancient Peruvians. This begs the question of why ancient Peruvians were making constructions of beings that look remarkably similar to modern aliens as described by UFO experiencers: https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1804973689567326435 https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1804973689567326435 The archaeological discoveries are being studied by the University of Ica and other South American scientists across many disciplines. The South American cultures also have a long history of depicting tridactyl beings in their artworks, there are hundreds of examples but here’s one: https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1789875845542076808 https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1789875845542076808 So it’s really quite ridiculous to suggest this is disrespectful to Peruvians. Their own culture describes these creatures, and their scientists are the ones promoting the authenticity of the bodies. You’re just propagating ignorance. Skepticism has turned into a religion, the rational perspective here is that we have a genuine mystery that needs further investigation.
    - dunefox 1y ago
      You're linking to random twitter posts, with one of them mentioning a random reddit user with "throwaway" in his name, but "Skepticism has turned into a religion"? Please link to any credible source, just one.
      - an0malous 1y ago
        Here is the breast plate depicting a tridactyl being from the “random Reddit user”: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colombia,_quimbaya,_pettorale_in_lega_tumbaga,_300-1600_dc_ca.,_da_antioquia_01.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colombia,_quimbaya,_... Here is a website with the carbon dating reports from multiple reputable paleo labs, it includes the PDFs from the labs themselves with their names and letterhead: https://www.the-alien-project.com/en/results-analysis-nasca-mummies/ https://www.the-alien-project.com/en/results-analysis-nasca-... Here is a 2023 hearing where dozens of South American scientists across various relevant specialties present their findings and argue for the bodies’ authenticity: https://youtu.be/MwZkXwuMdsw https://youtu.be/MwZkXwuMdsw Here is the first 2018 hearing conducted by the Peruvian Congress where their scientists concluded the bodies are authentic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xN41immWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xN41immWE
- mistrial9 1y ago
  on the other hand, I enjoyed "The Lost World" adventure fantasy book quite a lot as a kid, and now it seems there is science for certain dinosaur era creatures in some places.. so maybe fantastic nonsense has a place in a spectrum, as long as it is identified as "speculative" or whatever
TSiege 1y ago
This site (~1475 BCE) is older than the Olmecs (1200-400BCE) and is associated with another city, Caral, which is even older than them (3000-1800BCE) and both are much farther south than Mexico is compared to the Bering Land Bridge. Caral at 5000 years old is quite old! For additional context the Pyramids of Giza are ~4600 years old and Stonehenge is ~5100 years old. Given that it's in Peru this does not counter your narrative. But Archaeology is a Science and they cannot definitively say there is an older city without discovering it. It also might be unlikely to find what would be qualified as a "City" that is older. We've certainly found much older human settlements in the Americas, but megalithic building and cities is harder to say. Perhaps we'll find packed earth ones somewhere, but Peru really did have the jump on what would term "complex societies" in the Americas
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  > Archaeology is a Science Archaeology is a collection of arbitrary-but-largely-agreed-upon definitions. That doesn't make it a science. The entire focus on whether or not this is a civilization (or indeed why such a determination matters) is a great example of why you should abandon consensus at the door.
  - oneshtein 1y ago
    I was very surprised when I saw ancient cement kiln in Peru, very similar in size and technique to freshly built one (20 years ago) near to my parents town, but labeled as «a religious structure fit with stones». As I see here[0], cement stucko on top of natural stone was pretty popular technique back then. [0]: https://odysee.com/@hiddenincatours:3/megalithic-saqsaywaman-in-peru-4:4 https://odysee.com/@hiddenincatours:3/megalithic-saqsaywaman...
    - madaxe_again 1y ago
      Ah, but that’s ritual cement
      - kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
Oarch 1y ago
City is also a bit of a stretch.
- varjag 1y ago
  Capital masonry structures including temples and possibly pools/water communal reservoirs? Yeah no it's a city, as much as it was as thing 5k years ago.
  - detourdog 1y ago
    They mention an irrigation system which implies a certain amount of organization. Does anyone know of a catalog of ancient irrigation systems. I’m curious about the variety of geographically dispersed irrigation techniques of the ancient world.
    - o11c 1y ago
      Wikipedia has some examples in [1], though it's prose, annoyingly. The earliest dates it has are 6000 BC for Mesopotamia, 4500 BC in India. But what I find more interesting is rice in China, for which irrigating is radically different both in form and in economic impact. Rice scales largely by manpower rather than land as most crops do. The oldest date Wikipedia gives is 4330 BC (seems too precise) in [2], though I expect paddies are less likely to be preserved in the first place than other kinds of irrigation. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation#Ancient_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation#Ancient_history [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_field
throwup238 1y ago
Remember these are archaeologists using the word "civilization" as a term of art within their field. There's no universally agreed upon definition but in general people use the scale model [1] (you can see the scales that different authors have developed at the link). It's not like we don't know about a bunch of different peoples that existed even earlier (i.e. Toca da Tira Peia is ~22 kYa), but the evidence we have of them is basically a few burial mounds and maybe some domestic structures, and that does not rise to the threshold of a civilization for the intents and purposes of archaeology. [1] https://www.sociostudies.org/journal/articles/140526/ https://www.sociostudies.org/journal/articles/140526/
ErigmolCt 1y ago
I think we're still just scratching the surface of pre-Columbian history

ricksunny 1y ago

In context of possible early Peruvian civilizations, definitely don't read the below; it's obviously an undersubstantiated pseudoscientific rabbit-hole not worth your curiosity and that your productive workday can not afford. https://tridactyls.org/ https://tridactyls.org/ (maintained by one Gonzalo Chavez https://x.com/gchavez101 https://x.com/gchavez101 )

TSiege 1y ago
This is pseudoscience nonsense spread by some huckster and it's not worth anyones time and is disrespectful to the people of Peru. It's a modern hoax > "They're not extraterrestrials. They're dolls made from animal bones from this planet joined together with modern synthetic glue," said Flavio Estrada, an archeologist with Peru's Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences. "It's totally a made-up story," Estrada added. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/scientists-assert-alien-mummies-peru-are-really-dolls-made-earthly-bones-2024-01-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/scientists-assert-ali...
- Rumudiez 1y ago
  > Joshua McDowell said: 'The bodies studied by Estrada were not related to any specimen that we have studied. They were folk dolls made to look like tridactyls confiscated at the airport.
- an0malous 1y ago
  The dolls in that article were confiscated in the mail and are made for tourists. The creator of those dolls has explained this already, and they are unrelated to the bodies discovered near Ica. Here’s an X-ray comparison between the two where it’s very obvious that there’s a difference between the modern dolls and the archaeological discoveries: https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1805272924640682036 https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1805272924640682036 Even if you’re incredulous that these bodies were living creatures, no one disputes their carbon dating of 500-1500 years old and this has been confirmed by multiple labs. It’s not possible to construct bodies from biological material that is that old, so if they were constructed it would have to have been done by ancient Peruvians. This begs the question of why ancient Peruvians were making constructions of beings that look remarkably similar to modern aliens as described by UFO experiencers: https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1804973689567326435 https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1804973689567326435 The archaeological discoveries are being studied by the University of Ica and other South American scientists across many disciplines. The South American cultures also have a long history of depicting tridactyl beings in their artworks, there are hundreds of examples but here’s one: https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1789875845542076808 https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1789875845542076808 So it’s really quite ridiculous to suggest this is disrespectful to Peruvians. Their own culture describes these creatures, and their scientists are the ones promoting the authenticity of the bodies. You’re just propagating ignorance. Skepticism has turned into a religion, the rational perspective here is that we have a genuine mystery that needs further investigation.
  - dunefox 1y ago
    You're linking to random twitter posts, with one of them mentioning a random reddit user with "throwaway" in his name, but "Skepticism has turned into a religion"? Please link to any credible source, just one.
    - an0malous 1y ago
      Here is the breast plate depicting a tridactyl being from the “random Reddit user”: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colombia,_quimbaya,_pettorale_in_lega_tumbaga,_300-1600_dc_ca.,_da_antioquia_01.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colombia,_quimbaya,_... Here is a website with the carbon dating reports from multiple reputable paleo labs, it includes the PDFs from the labs themselves with their names and letterhead: https://www.the-alien-project.com/en/results-analysis-nasca-mummies/ https://www.the-alien-project.com/en/results-analysis-nasca-... Here is a 2023 hearing where dozens of South American scientists across various relevant specialties present their findings and argue for the bodies’ authenticity: https://youtu.be/MwZkXwuMdsw https://youtu.be/MwZkXwuMdsw Here is the first 2018 hearing conducted by the Peruvian Congress where their scientists concluded the bodies are authentic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xN41immWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xN41immWE
mistrial9 1y ago
on the other hand, I enjoyed "The Lost World" adventure fantasy book quite a lot as a kid, and now it seems there is science for certain dinosaur era creatures in some places.. so maybe fantastic nonsense has a place in a spectrum, as long as it is identified as "speculative" or whatever

TSiege 1y ago

This site (~1475 BCE) is older than the Olmecs (1200-400BCE) and is associated with another city, Caral, which is even older than them (3000-1800BCE) and both are much farther south than Mexico is compared to the Bering Land Bridge. Caral at 5000 years old is quite old! For additional context the Pyramids of Giza are ~4600 years old and Stonehenge is ~5100 years old. Given that it's in Peru this does not counter your narrative. But Archaeology is a Science and they cannot definitively say there is an older city without discovering it. It also might be unlikely to find what would be qualified as a "City" that is older. We've certainly found much older human settlements in the Americas, but megalithic building and cities is harder to say. Perhaps we'll find packed earth ones somewhere, but Peru really did have the jump on what would term "complex societies" in the Americas

MangoToupe 1y ago
> Archaeology is a Science Archaeology is a collection of arbitrary-but-largely-agreed-upon definitions. That doesn't make it a science. The entire focus on whether or not this is a civilization (or indeed why such a determination matters) is a great example of why you should abandon consensus at the door.
- oneshtein 1y ago
  I was very surprised when I saw ancient cement kiln in Peru, very similar in size and technique to freshly built one (20 years ago) near to my parents town, but labeled as «a religious structure fit with stones». As I see here[0], cement stucko on top of natural stone was pretty popular technique back then. [0]: https://odysee.com/@hiddenincatours:3/megalithic-saqsaywaman-in-peru-4:4 https://odysee.com/@hiddenincatours:3/megalithic-saqsaywaman...
  - madaxe_again 1y ago
    Ah, but that’s ritual cement
    - kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

Oarch 1y ago

City is also a bit of a stretch.

varjag 1y ago
Capital masonry structures including temples and possibly pools/water communal reservoirs? Yeah no it's a city, as much as it was as thing 5k years ago.
- detourdog 1y ago
  They mention an irrigation system which implies a certain amount of organization. Does anyone know of a catalog of ancient irrigation systems. I’m curious about the variety of geographically dispersed irrigation techniques of the ancient world.
  - o11c 1y ago
    Wikipedia has some examples in [1], though it's prose, annoyingly. The earliest dates it has are 6000 BC for Mesopotamia, 4500 BC in India. But what I find more interesting is rice in China, for which irrigating is radically different both in form and in economic impact. Rice scales largely by manpower rather than land as most crops do. The oldest date Wikipedia gives is 4330 BC (seems too precise) in [2], though I expect paddies are less likely to be preserved in the first place than other kinds of irrigation. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation#Ancient_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation#Ancient_history [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_field

throwup238 1y ago

Remember these are archaeologists using the word "civilization" as a term of art within their field. There's no universally agreed upon definition but in general people use the scale model [1] (you can see the scales that different authors have developed at the link). It's not like we don't know about a bunch of different peoples that existed even earlier (i.e. Toca da Tira Peia is ~22 kYa), but the evidence we have of them is basically a few burial mounds and maybe some domestic structures, and that does not rise to the threshold of a civilization for the intents and purposes of archaeology. [1] https://www.sociostudies.org/journal/articles/140526/ https://www.sociostudies.org/journal/articles/140526/

ErigmolCt 1y ago

I think we're still just scratching the surface of pre-Columbian history