Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
Are the Olmecs the oldest American civilisation?
SHORT ANSWER Not by about two millennia: the Norte Chico were the real ancients in the Americas
LONG ANSWER The Olmecs certainly were the first major civilisation of Mesoamerica, emerging c1200 BC in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, and laying the groundwork for others like the Maya and Aztec. They were not the oldest in the Americas, though, and if you thought there was still so much we didn’t know about the Olmecs (beyond the huge heads they carved), then get ready to know even less about the Norte Chico.
Radiocarbon dating places this civilisation thousands of years earlier than the Olmecs, appearing from the fourth millennium BC. Their society was based on agriculture, irrigation and fishing between the north and central coast regions of modern Peru and inland along four rivers, the Fortaleza, Pativilca, Huaura and Supe.
Yet these were no ordinary farming and fishing people. The Norte Chico were monumental builders, erecting huge pyramids around the same time as the Egyptians, if not even earlier. The capital city, Caral, featured six of their terraced rectangular pyramids, as well as amphitheatres, plazas and residential buildings – enough to accommodate some 3,000 people.
As archaeological research into the Norte Chico, who declined around 1800 BC, only began in earnest in the 1990s, there is still a great deal more to discover about the oldest civilisation in the Americas.
