3000 BC to 1800 BC

Caral, a city as old as the pyramids

Long before any empire, people of the Norte Chico culture build Caral in the Supe Valley north of Lima, around 2600 BC. With its platform mounds and sunken circular plazas it is one of the oldest cities in the Americas, as old as the pyramids of Egypt. Its people live from fishing and from cotton and food grown with irrigation.