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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 |
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New World Culture Old
"Archeologists working in Peru have unearthed stunning evidence that monumental architecture, complex societies and planned developments first appeared and flowered in the New World between 5,000 and 3,500 years ago-- -roughly the same period when the great pyramids were built in Egypt and the Sumerian citystates reached their zenith in Mesopotania."
Among these edifices are great stepped pyramids, U-shaped temples over ten stories high, and broad plazas with adjacent residential areas. Scores of such sites built by an ancient Peruvian civilization are nestled deep in narrow valleys leading from the Andes down to the Pacific. Archeologists date this civilization as thousands of years older than those that arose in Central America. The age and size of the Peruvian remains impelled Yale archeologist R. Burger to remark: "This idea of the Old World being ahead of the New World has to be put on hold." Of course, this Andean culture is not as old as that which developed in the Old World's Fertile Crescent; and those ancient Peruvians did not use the wheel and lacked writing.
(Stevens, William K.; "Andean Culture Found to Be as Old as the Great Pyramids," New York Times, October 3, 1989. Cr. J. Covey.)
Comment. But did they really lack writing? See next item. One has to wonder how these great constructions have es caped the attention of generations of archeologists. We have found virtually nothing in the mainstream archeological literature in the English language.