Caral
Archaeological site in Caral, PeruWikipedia
5
MENTIONS
3
EPISODES
3
PODCASTS
Search complete. 5 mentions across 3 episodes found for "Caral".
Oct 24, 2026
speaker_0NARRATOR
The end of Carole.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Around 1800 BC, The Caral civilisation went into decline, and its great centres were gradually abandoned.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Why this happened is not entirely clear.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Some researchers point to environmental changes, such as a period of drought, or to the effects of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which can bring both devastating floods and disruption to the fishing along the Peruvian coast.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Today, visitors can walk along the paths of the archaeological zone and look up at the restored platforms, the plazas and the sunken amphitheatre against a backdrop of bare desert hills and the green line of the river.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Why Carole matters.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Caral changed the way archaeologists think about the origins of civilization in the Americas.
speaker_0NARRATOR
For a long time, it was assumed that complex societies in the Americas developed much later than those of the Old World, and that they depended on maize agriculture and pottery.
Jorge SalasGUEST
But Peru is one of the cradles of civilization of the world, together with Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Indo Valley.
Jorge SalasGUEST
In the coast of Peru, it's one of the places where the first organized civilizations appeared, in the area of Caral, just three hours from Lima to the north.
Jorge SalasGUEST
So the amount of history of civilizations that we know today, it's over 5,000 years.
Jorge SalasGUEST
The amount of history, it's tremendous.
Mike CollinsGUEST
Um, Peru is a, a place that I think is so full of mystery that it is, um, I think potentially one of the greatest sites in terms of uncovering, um, unknown things about our past, even more so than possibly places like Egypt and stuff.
Mike CollinsGUEST
I mean, you have pyramids in Peru, uh, like Caral, that date back before, um, Egypt.
Mike CollinsGUEST
Um, so, w- you know, what was going on there? I mean, Peru has the potential to rewrite kind of world history, um, if some of these things are followed out to their conclusions and, um, different things are uncovered hopefully, which would be great.
Mike CollinsGUEST
And the...