The Norte Chico civilization was a complex Pre-Columbian society that included as many as 30 major population centers in what is now the Norte Chico region of north-central coastal Peru. It is the oldest known civilization in the Americas and one of the six sites where civilization separately originated in the ancient world. It flourished between the 30th century BC and the 18th century BC. Complex society in Norte Chico arose a millennium after Sumer in Mesopotamia, was contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids, and predated the Mesoamerican Olmec by nearly two millennia. In archaeological nomenclature, Norte Chico is a Preceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic; it completely lacked ceramics and apparently had almost no art. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthwork platform mounds and sunken circular plazas. Sophisticated government is assumed to have been required to manage the ancient Norte Chico. Archaeologists have been aware of ancient sites in the area since at least the 1940s; early work occurred at Aspero on the coast, a site identified as early as 1905, and later at Caral further inland. (more...)

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