First Andes civilisation explored

Archaeologists used radiocarbon dating to chart the rise and fall of the little known culture, which reigned over three valleys north of Lima.

The society, whose heyday ran from 3000 to 1800BC, built ceremonial pyramids and complex irrigation systems.

The find casts doubt on the idea that Andean civilisation began by the sea.

"The scale and sophistication of these sites is unheard of anywhere in the New World at this time," said Jonathan Haas, MacArthur Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum, Chicago.

"The cultural pattern that emerged in this small area in the third millennium BC later established a foundation for 4,000 years of cultural florescence in other parts of the Andes."

BBC

However I doubt about using radiocarbon dating to proof about the age of something, I must say this discovery makes me wonder again how little we know about our history. All the time we build our knowledge upon evidence we have in our hands, and all the time we find something which doesn't fit into our carefully made idea about "how it suppose to be'. Is it a proof that our knowledge might be just a tiny dot hidden in a big box do sand of unknown???

[edit on 23-12-2004 by jazzgul]

Radiocarbon dating is very reliable IF....

1) you use it on something that was alive
2) it's between 500 years old and 50,000 years old (if memory serves me.)

Otherwise you get silly results. It isn't used to date rocks or other things and not all "archaeological dating" is done by radiocarbon dating.

(so dating something that's 10 years old is like using your car's odometer to try and measure the length of a school textbook. It's the wrong measureing tool.)

I'm intrigued by the findings and hope they find out more about the pyramids.

Originally posted by Byrd
I'm intrigued by the findings and hope they find out more about the pyramids.

me too, I feel again some mystery is going to unveil...

I am looking forward to reading more about this as tehy uncover things. Would be a great place to visit in a few years.

I just wished myself this year to go next holliday to Andas...

updated information:

The Norte Chico civilisation differs from all other early civilisations in being based on marine resources rather than the cultivation of grains, says Winifred Creamer at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, US, Haas's wife and colleague.
Their study reveals new complexity, with sites along the rivers growing squash, beans and avocados, and irrigating fields to grow cotton, which they exchanged for fish from the coast.
Refuse shows that inland residents had a diet heavy in small fish such as anchovies, which were abundant along the coast, while the cotton provided the nets needed to catch them, says Creamer.
The sites were permanent communities marked by rectangular stone step pyramids, typically 100 metres by 90 metres at the base. They were built by carefully assembling stones and plastering them to form a smooth floor before adding the next layer. Each site also had a circular sunken plaza, typically 20 m to 40 m in diameter.

from NEW SCIENTIST

This is an interesting one. I'm looking forward to see more information