Visiting the Oldest City in the Americas
The Sacred City of Caral-Supe in Peru
The Sacred City of Caral-Supe isn’t a major tourist attraction in Peru. It’s remote, minimally developed with tourism infrastructure, and doesn’t offer the sort of “fun and photos” visitor experience that travelers flock to. That said, it’s a special place. The lack of crowds, the minimalist presentation of the ruins, and the challenges in reaching the destination all make the visit more rewarding.
Here are the basic facts: Caral-Supe is an archaeological site in the coastal desert of central Peru. The site contains the magnificently well-preserved remains of an ancient city, built by the Caral-Supe people. The city was built around 5,000 years ago. It contains some of the world’s earliest pyramids and is considered the oldest city in the Americas. Very few sites in the world present such a grand array of ruins from such an early era. (If you want to learn more about the history of the ancient city and its builders, here’s a write-up by Prateek Dasgupta.)
To reach Caral-Supe from Lima, we drove north into the desert for three hours, then headed down a long dirt road through small farms. The drive includes bouncing over a rocky, mostly dry river bed. In the rainy season, vehicles can’t access the site.
