First American civilisation sprang up fast
NewScientist.com news service
Jeff Hecht

The first American civilisation sprang up rapidly on the central Peruvian coast more than 5000 years ago, new research has revealed.

In less than 150 years, people went "from small hunter-gatherer bands to great big permanent communities with monumental architectures," says Jonathan Haas of the Field Museum in Chicago, US, whose group carbon-dated samples from 13 of more than 20 sites in the Norte Chico region.

The ancient South American culture began building massive stone structures about the same time Egyptians built their first large step-pyramids. Yet their culture followed a different pattern.

They lacked pottery, which preceded stone monuments in the Middle East. They also lacked writing, art and sculpture, so they left no attractive artifacts to attract the attention of early archaeologists or looters. The main coastal site, Aspero, had been studied before, but the new work is the first to document the ages of inland sites along four river valleys.