/his/ bros, I read something last night that fucked me up and I'm checking in to see if I'm a retard.I hadn't heard about the Norte Chico civilization in Peru, on the Pacific coast under the littoral. Temple complexes. Very dense semi-urban development, megalithic earthwork architecture. And it's from 4000 years ago, roughly the same as urbanization in North China and the Indus River.This is blowing my shit up, how come we are not talking about this? Spontaneous civilization developing in South America about as early as the Akkadians??https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral%E2%80%93Supe_civilization
>>17440208>how come we are not talking about this? Because even if it had any survivors, all of them were wiped out by the spanish in the 1700s. Peru's history started when it converted to catholicism, and most Peruvians (like all hispanics) start their family history with the first convert. What came before doesn't matter because they rejected god (jesus) and go to hell permanently because of it. Most Peruvians know more Spanish history than the average Spaniard because of this, since Spanish history had significantly more influence on modern Peru than any other culture. Which is why they speak Spanish as European admixture grows every generation.
>>17440208It gets talked about on occasion, the issue is that because they had no written system or contact with any nearby literate society it's really hard to figure out a lot about them. We're not even sure how their society was organized because they didn't really leave behind any art even suggesting much about it. Plenty of art but nothing suggesting social organization. They're literally less-understood than whatever form of society the Indus River Valley Civilization was.
>>17440208take the Hancokpill !
My area is more Mesoamerica then the Andes, but as I understand it there's at least some archeologists, if not most, who don't believe that Caral or other very early monumental sites in the Andes were proper urban settlements or even population centers, and they were instead ceremonial sites that housed maybe a small group of priests but were otherwise really only used for gatherings by broader populations at specific times of yearLike, the Caral culture lacked ceramics (though they did have some visual art contrary to what some people say) as well, even. It's probably something closer to Göbekli Tepe then say Uruk, though I think some argue Göbekli Tepe was an actual population center and not just a ceremonial site now?Anyways, the reason why people call Caral a city under the above interpretation, beyond just because it has big monuments, is because it's in the interests of Peruvian goverment to call it a city because that attracts attention and allows them to present Andean civilization as early as Mesopotamian civilization. To be clear this is not /pol/ or /x/ denialism trying to assert that archeologists are making shit up like >>17440913, this is what i've seen some actual Andean archeologists say (individual Archeologists don't typically have an incentive to make shit up, state/national archeology and anthropology organizations have a bit more of a reason to do so)That doesn't mean that Norte Chico, Caral etc weren't important in the development of Andean civilization, it just means that it represents a pre urban and pre state milestone (apparently, the first or one of the first sites to pick up a proper permanent urban population and class specialists was Chavin de Huantar around 500BC after it previously also was mostly a ceremonial site, and then formal state goverment organization arises sometime over the next millenium with either Moche city-states or the Wari depending on if you think the Moche were city-states or relatively urbanized chiefdoms)
