[HN Gopher] Archaeologists unveil 3,500-year-old city in Peru
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Archaeologists unveil 3,500-year-old city in Peru
Author : neversaydie
Score : 106 points
Date : 2025-07-07 06:58 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| adolph wrote:
| Is there something new unveiled that was missed in translation?
| The quoted researchers Shady and Machacuay doen't seem to have
| any new publications about Penico listed in Google Scholar.
| Eight years of research at the site unearthed 18 structures,
| including ceremonial temples and residential complexes.
| tree_enjoyer wrote:
| >The 3,500-year-old city, named Penico, is believed to have
| served as a key trading hub connecting early Pacific coast
| communities with those living in the Andes mountains and Amazon
| basin.
|
| ...
|
| >Researchers say the discovery sheds light on what became of the
| Americas' oldest civilisation, the Caral.
|
| Oldest civilization is a bit of a stretch. Earliest surviving
| structures is a stretch, but it's one we know about, so I guess
| they have to base it off that. More and more evidence is showing
| that humans were in the Americas farther back in time. While they
| weren't the builders of of fine stonework and megalithic
| structures like the Olmec (that we know of), there were certainly
| civilizations and cities before humans suddenly started building
| the massive pyramids and cities we have uncovered so far. There's
| a lot of secrets still hidden in the South American jungles.
| ricksunny wrote:
| In context of possible early Peruvian civilizations, definitely
| don't read the below; it's obviously an undersubstantiated
| pseudoscientific rabbit-hole not worth your curiosity and that
| your productive workday can not afford.
|
| https://tridactyls.org/
|
| (maintained by one Gonzalo Chavez https://x.com/gchavez101 )
| TSiege wrote:
| This is pseudoscience nonsense spread by some huckster and
| it's not worth anyones time and is disrespectful to the
| people of Peru. It's a modern hoax
|
| > "They're not extraterrestrials. They're dolls made from
| animal bones from this planet joined together with modern
| synthetic glue," said Flavio Estrada, an archeologist with
| Peru's Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences.
| "It's totally a made-up story," Estrada added.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/scientists-assert-
| ali...
| Rumudiez wrote:
| > Joshua McDowell said: 'The bodies studied by Estrada were
| not related to any specimen that we have studied. They were
| folk dolls made to look like tridactyls confiscated at the
| airport.
| an0malous wrote:
| The dolls in that article were confiscated in the mail and
| are made for tourists. The creator of those dolls has
| explained this already, and they are unrelated to the
| bodies discovered near Ica.
|
| Here's an X-ray comparison between the two where it's very
| obvious that there's a difference between the modern dolls
| and the archaeological discoveries:
|
| https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1805272924640682036
|
| Even if you're incredulous that these bodies were living
| creatures, no one disputes their carbon dating of 500-1500
| years old and this has been confirmed by multiple labs.
| It's not possible to construct bodies from biological
| material that is that old, so if they were constructed it
| would have to have been done by ancient Peruvians. This
| begs the question of why ancient Peruvians were making
| constructions of beings that look remarkably similar to
| modern aliens as described by UFO experiencers:
|
| https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1804973689567326435
|
| The archaeological discoveries are being studied by the
| University of Ica and other South American scientists
| across many disciplines. The South American cultures also
| have a long history of depicting tridactyl beings in their
| artworks, there are hundreds of examples but here's one:
|
| https://x.com/_stranger357/status/1789875845542076808
|
| So it's really quite ridiculous to suggest this is
| disrespectful to Peruvians. Their own culture describes
| these creatures, and their scientists are the ones
| promoting the authenticity of the bodies. You're just
| propagating ignorance.
|
| Skepticism has turned into a religion, the rational
| perspective here is that we have a genuine mystery that
| needs further investigation.
| dunefox wrote:
| You're linking to random twitter posts, with one of them
| mentioning a random reddit user with "throwaway" in his
| name, but "Skepticism has turned into a religion"? Please
| link to any credible source, just one.
| an0malous wrote:
| Here is the breast plate depicting a tridactyl being from
| the "random Reddit user":
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colombia,_quimbay
| a,_...
|
| Here is a website with the carbon dating reports from
| multiple reputable paleo labs, it includes the PDFs from
| the labs themselves with their names and letterhead:
| https://www.the-alien-project.com/en/results-analysis-
| nasca-...
|
| Here is a 2023 hearing where dozens of South American
| scientists across various relevant specialties present
| their findings and argue for the bodies' authenticity:
| https://youtu.be/MwZkXwuMdsw
|
| Here is the first 2018 hearing conducted by the Peruvian
| Congress where their scientists concluded the bodies are
| authentic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xN41immWE
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> Here is the breast plate depicting a tridactyl being_
|
| Ok, ignoring the fact that various cultures drew all
| sorts of things from lion-headed people to feathered
| dragons so someone drawing little more than a stick
| figure hardly means it's real, but that could easily be a
| three toed sloth which have three very long claws on
| their hands and feet.
|
| Never mind that the Nazca lived like 1500 miles away from
| the Quimbaya.
|
| _> Here is a website with the carbon dating reports_
|
| That shows a large difference in age between body parts
| from one of the mummies. In one of the reports, it shows
| a 6000 year age cap between the skin and the bone.
|
| One DNA analysis says it contains DNA from multiple
| humans and that there isn't evidence the hand and left
| foot from the same mummy belong to the same person.
|
| This all screams hoax. It looks as if someone stitched
| together multiple mummies.
|
| _> 2018 hearing conducted by the Peruvian Congress where
| their scientists_
|
| One of the two only actual scientists, Jose de la Cruz
| Rios Lopez, published a paper saying the skull of one of
| them likely from a llama: https://www.iaras.org/iaras/fil
| edownloads/ijbb/2021/021-0007...
| an0malous wrote:
| Jose de la Cruz believes they are authentic bodies, he is
| in both of the hearings I linked to. He's explained that
| he wrote the paper considering both perspectives because
| he would not have been able to get it published
| otherwise. The topic of the paper is an analysis method,
| not the authenticity of the bodies. From the paper
| itself:
|
| > They are biological in nature. At the available
| resolution of the CT-scanning, no manipulation of
| Josephina's skull can be detected. The density of the
| face bones matches very well the density of the rest of
| the skull. No seams with glues, etc. are obvious, and the
| whole skull forms one unit.
|
| > Based on the above, if one is convinced that the finds
| constitute a fabrication, one has to admit at the same
| time that the finds are constructions of very high
| quality and wonder how these were produced hundreds of
| year ago (based on the C14 test), or even today, with
| primitive technology and poor means available to
| huaqueros, the tomb raiders of Peru.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Show me a peer reviewed paper about these mummies.
|
| It is hard not to be skeptical when all the evidence
| appears to come from the person who "discovered" them and
| who has a long documented history of hoaxes from a
| skinned monkey that was claimed to be an alien to epoxied
| bat remains with eyes painted with phosphorescent paint
| which was claimed to be a "demon fairy."
| an0malous wrote:
| Jaime Maussan did not discover them, a Peruvian grave
| robber and French explorer did.
|
| There is no conclusive peer reviewed paper, but just
| because something that would be the greatest and most
| controversial discovery in the history of mankind hasn't
| met the highest standard of evidence yet doesn't mean
| it's false. I'm arguing against the flippant dismissal of
| this story, I'm not against reasonable skepticism and
| further investigation.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Looking up the grave robber, Leandro Benedicto Rivera
| Sarmiento aka Mario, brings up some very interesting
| articles.
|
| At least according to this news article, Peruvian
| authorities claim the remains and that were modified at
| St. Louis Gonzaga University with university officials
| using various animal parts and charges were made against
| the grave robber for, among other things, fraud.
|
| https://elbuho.pe/2023/07/ica-fiscalia-incautara-falsas-
| momi...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| on the other hand, I enjoyed "The Lost World" adventure
| fantasy book quite a lot as a kid, and now it seems there is
| science for certain dinosaur era creatures in some places..
| so maybe fantastic nonsense has a place in a spectrum, as
| long as it is identified as "speculative" or whatever
| TSiege wrote:
| This site (~1475 BCE) is older than the Olmecs (1200-400BCE)
| and is associated with another city, Caral, which is even older
| than them (3000-1800BCE) and both are much farther south than
| Mexico is compared to the Bering Land Bridge.
|
| Caral at 5000 years old is quite old! For additional context
| the Pyramids of Giza are ~4600 years old and Stonehenge is
| ~5100 years old. Given that it's in Peru this does not counter
| your narrative. But Archaeology is a Science and they cannot
| definitively say there is an older city without discovering it.
| It also might be unlikely to find what would be qualified as a
| "City" that is older. We've certainly found much older human
| settlements in the Americas, but megalithic building and cities
| is harder to say. Perhaps we'll find packed earth ones
| somewhere, but Peru really did have the jump on what would term
| "complex societies" in the Americas
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > Archaeology is a Science
|
| Archaeology is a collection of arbitrary-but-largely-agreed-
| upon definitions. That doesn't make it a science. The entire
| focus on whether or not this is a civilization (or indeed why
| such a determination matters) is a great example of why you
| should abandon consensus at the door.
| oneshtein wrote:
| I was very surprised when I saw ancient cement kiln in
| Peru, very similar in size and technique to freshly built
| one (20 years ago) near to my parents town, but labeled as
| <<a religious structure fit with stones>>.
|
| As I see here[0], cement stucko on top of natural stone was
| pretty popular technique back then.
|
| [0]: https://odysee.com/@hiddenincatours:3/megalithic-
| saqsaywaman...
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Ah, but that's _ritual_ cement
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| For fertility.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I'm not sure you've ever seen multiple archaeologists in a
| room together if you think they agree on definitions, or
| that agreeing on definitions is sufficient to end their
| arguments.
|
| Usually we say archaeology is a "big tent" field, where
| anything that's useful can find a place rather than relying
| on prescriptive definitions of what should and shouldn't be
| used. If this gives you flashbacks to Feyerabend's
| epistemological anarchism, you've got the idea.
|
| There are definitely scientific things within archaeology
| and many archaeologists who spend their days doing
| activities indistinguishable from what goes on in adjacent
| geology and biology labs. It's not uncommon for
| archaeologists to hop back and forth from the biology and
| anthropology departments either. There was even a movement
| called processualism in the 50s-70s to fit archaeology
| within the scope of a traditional science that's widely
| regarded as a failure.
|
| Of course we would also have to ask what a science is. The
| traditional hypothesis->experiment "scientific method" is
| used in archaeology, but doesn't really apply to historical
| events. We can generalize that a bit to the Cleland's
| "smoking gun" idea for historical sciences (so we don't
| need to fully throw out popper) and indeed it's quite a
| popular perspective today for the "best" way to do
| archaeology. It's just not the the totality of methods used
| by the people we call archaeologists.
| Oarch wrote:
| City is also a bit of a stretch.
| varjag wrote:
| Capital masonry structures including temples and possibly
| pools/water communal reservoirs? Yeah no it's a city, as much
| as it was as thing 5k years ago.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Remember these are archaeologists using the word "civilization"
| as a term of art within their field. There's no universally
| agreed upon definition but in general people use the scale
| model [1] (you can see the scales that different authors have
| developed at the link).
|
| It's not like we don't know about a bunch of different peoples
| that existed even earlier (i.e. Toca da Tira Peia is ~22 kYa),
| but the evidence we have of them is basically a few burial
| mounds and maybe some domestic structures, and that does not
| rise to the threshold of a civilization for the intents and
| purposes of archaeology.
|
| [1] https://www.sociostudies.org/journal/articles/140526/
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/10%C2%B055'54.5%22S+77%C2%...
|
| via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pe%C3%B1ico
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I don't understand how this is an "announcement" when there is
| clearly a visitor's center with a parking lot nearby?
|
| Perhaps something got lost in translation?
| dboreham wrote:
| Stealth visitor center?
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