Gordon R. Willey Lecture
Four Thousand Years Ago in Coastal Peru: America's First Civilization?
Listen to the lecture: "Four Thousand Years Ago in Coastal Peru" (mp3) 1:08:00
(Cambridge, March 8, 2010) Could the ancient city of Caral in Peru be the oldest city in the Western Hemisphere?
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology presents the Gordon R. Willey lecture, Four Thousand Years Ago in Coastal Peru: America’s First Civilization? by Dr. Michael E. Moseley, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
In 1943 and again in 1971, Harvard archaeologist Gordon Willey investigated the monumental site Aspero in Peru’s Supe desert valley. Later, Peruvian scholars identified 16 more early monumental centers, including Caral, in the Supe desert valley. Covering more than 130 acres, Caral was an urban center with large temple mounds that predate Giza’s famed pyramids. In this illustrated talk, archaeologist Michael Moseley will discuss the four-thousand year-old architectural monuments in the Supe desert valley that are the focus of claims for the earliest civilization in the Americas.