Living in Peru : your everyday companion

This week many of us have paid special attention to the fact that October the 8th is a national holiday in Peru. But, do we know why this is? The day is a celebration, and an honoring of, Miguel Grau Seminario, one of Peru's heroes from the Guerra del Pacífico.

Miguel Grau Seminario holds an important place amongst Peru’s heroes. His military accomplishments, as well as his distinguished and courageous disposition earned him the title of Knight of the Seas (“Caballero de los mares”). At the end of the 20th century, he was also named the Peruvian of the Milenium.

(LIP-jl) -- Using the Carbon 14 dating method, it has recently been established that Caral is the largest urban settlement with monumental architecture from the Late Archaic period in Peru. These results confirm that an advanced culture developed in the northern central area of the country, and that the Supe valley was the center of the first state to be founded in Peru.

But the most surprising discovery so far has been that Caral is the oldest city in the Americas, having been built some 2627 before Christ.

Although it has been known for decades that monumental architectural remains exist in the Supe valley, nobody had ever taken the time to establish their precise age. The majority of archaeologists assumed that such buildings must have come from the formative period.

That was also our working hypothesis in 1994, when we were prospecting in the lower and mid sections of the Supe valley, with financial help from the National Culture Institute (INC) and, later, the National Geographic Society. We studied the aerial photos of the area and the archaeological survey made by Carlos Williams and Francisco Merino.

In 1996, when we began to excavate at Caral, our intention was to date the eighteen sites that bear common features and characterize the sociocultural expressions of their builders. We selected the area because it was one of the most extensive known sites and because it showed an ordered design with a variety of monumental architectural styles.

Despite serious economic limitations, although we are being helped by the National University of San Marcos (UNMSM) and the municipalities of Supe Pueblo and Barranca, we continued with our excavations.

In 2000, we sent samples away to be Carbon 14 dated. The results confirmed what we had already established using relative chronology in our first publications in 1997- namely that Caral is the most extensive urban site with monumental architecture from the Late Archaic period in Peru. This establishes that there was advanced cultural development in the central northern area of Peru and that the Supe valley was the centre where a State was founded for the first time in Peruvian history.

(by Wolfy Becker)

Centuries ago the mysterious people of the Chachapoya fought together with the Spanish conquistadores against the Incas, before they were destroyed by epidemic diseases such as the measles and smallpox. A new discovery of ancient ruins could disclose the secret of the "cloud warriors".

Only little is known about the Chachapoya. The first worldwide publication came from the American scientist Gene Savoy in 1965 when he discovered one of their city ruins. The Chachapoya are a civilization that flourished in the upper Amazon, between its Huallaga and the Marañón tributaries, from about the ninth to the fifteenth century AD.

They resisted the Incas and after the arrival of the Spaniards they fought side by side with the colonial rulers against their joint rival. Because the Chachapoya lived in the misty rain forest of present day Peru, they are now referred to as the "cloud people" or "fog warriors" - according to the name's origin which derives from Quechua, Peru's second official language spoken mainly by the indigenous population.

One of the many explosions during the siege

Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of the taking of the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima by the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA).

In the evening of December 17, 1996, fourteen armed Marxist rebels took hostage more than 400 high-level diplomats, government and military officials and business executives who were attending a diplomatic cocktail party held by ambassador Morihisha Aoki in celebration of Emperor Akihito's 63rd birthday.

Most of the hostages were freed in the next few days, including Peru's ex-president Alberto Fujimori's mother and sister.