While workers at Peru’s huge Camisea energy project were busy laying the high-tech gas pipeline from the southern jungle to Lima earlier this year, archaeologists in the area were marveling at something a little less state-of-the-art: ceramics.
The construction of the 454-mile (726-kilometer) pipeline through the jungle and over the Andes to the coast has unearthed 1,000 archaeological sites from a range of civilizations across Peru that trace 9,000 years of history, archaeologists say.
The artifacts, which total 72 tons in weight, include mummies, textiles, jewelry, ceramics and weaponry that time and even the humidity of the jungle have been unable to destroy.
But they proved an obstacle for pipeline builder Argentine-led Transportadora de Gas del Peru, or TGP, which had to add 21 miles (34 kilometers) to its proposed pipeline route to prevent damaging the relics.
“These are important discoveries that fill in the gaps we have about early man in Peru,” said archaeologist Luis Salcedo, hired by TGP to manage the archeological digs.
Relics from lost tribe
One of the most exciting finds are the relics of the little-known Echarate culture, which lived some 3,300 years ago in today’s Cuzco province in southern Peru, home to the fabled Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, South America’s best-known archaeological site.
Until the discovery of 132,000 fragments of stone weaponry, ceramics and drinking vessels in the Cuzco area, the Echarate tribe’s existence was more speculation than fact. But the remains rewrite Peru’s regional anthropology and show that Cuzco was settled earlier than first thought, experts say.
“The Echarate culture is the predecessor of the Marvalle tribe that was until now the oldest in Cuzco,” said Salcedo, whose excavations have been financed by TGP and overseen by Peru’s National Culture Institute.
By comparing the new discoveries with ceramics and relics from other cultures, archaeologists have been able to date their findings in the absence of costly DNA testing.
Among the most important Echarate discoveries, “we have found two crafted pieces of stone with lines and circles that may have been ceremonial stamps or even used to make tattoos,” Salcedo said.
Enemies of the Incas
An entire settlement in the southern Andes once inhabited by the Chanca tribe, arch-enemies of the Incas, dating back to the 1200s, was also unearthed by the gas pipeline construction. The Incas later conquered the Chanca, before being defeated themselves by the Spanish Conquistadors in the early 1500s.
Stretching over a 722-mile-square (1,155-kilometer-square) area, the stone settlement contains an ancient liquor-production plant used to make a corn-based alcoholic drink known as “chica de jora,” according to archaeologist Lucia Balbuena, who helped excavate the site.
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“The humidity and the acidity of the soil have not left organic remains, but we have found stone axes and spears, ceramics and even jewelry,” she said. Much of the work was carried out in driving rains and in intense cold, she added.
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Ancient stone settlements
While such findings are enough to keep experts fascinated and museums filled for years, archaeologists consider the discovery of six stone settlements south of Lima thought to date back some 9,000 years — the oldest accurately dated native American skull dates from the same period — as one of the highlights of the findings.
Conserved by the arid sands of Peru’s desert coast, the remains of five towns and a city have been excavated, and some houses still have their staircases intact, said Slacedo.
Many stone cooking utensils have also been found at the sites, he added. The settlements date from between 7600 B.C. and 2000 B.C., he added.
Although no major burial sites were unearthed by the pipeline, workers did find a communal grave in the Canete coastal valley south of Lima, which contained 57 mummies dating from before the 1300s.
“The mummies are regional lords, and some are well-conserved,” said Salcedo.
The work continues
Salcedo and his team expect to continue their investigations for several more months with funding from TGP, which is led by Argentina’s Techint and includes Argentina’s third-biggest oil group, Pluspetrol, Hunt Oil of the United States and South Korea’s SK Corp.
Salcedo hopes to eventually publish his research and is developing a small museum in the coastal town of Lurin, south of Lima, where some of the relics can be shown.
But whether the discoveries will become as accessible to tourists as Machu Picchu depends largely on future funding, something unfortunately in short supply in Peru, where more than half the population lives on $1 a day.