Caral-Supe: The Oldest City in the Americas

Caral sits in the Supe Valley of Peru, in Barranca Province, about 180 kilometers north of Lima and 23 kilometers from the coast. The site was first noted from the air by Paul Kosok in the 1940s and surveyed on the ground by Frédéric Engel in the 1960s, but systematic excavation only began in 1994, led by Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady Solís, whose decisive results were published in the journal Science in 2001. Radiocarbon dates place Caral's main occupation between roughly 2900 and 1800 BCE, contemporary with the pyramids of Egypt's Old Kingdom and the earliest cities of Mesopotamia, which established it as the oldest known urban center anywhere in the Americas; in 2009 UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site as the "Sacred City of Caral-Supe."