Illegal squatters have invaded the ruins of the oldest city in the Americas and have caused death threats against Ruth Shady, the famous Peruvian archaeologist who discovered the 5,000-year-old civilization.
The threats came through phone calls and messages to several workers at the archaeological site, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Peru. The reports to the police and prosecutors on the invasions of the ancient ruins of Caral followed.
“They called the local lawyer and said that if he continued to protect me, they would kill him, along with me, and bury us five feet below the ground,” Shady, 73, said.
“Then they killed our dog as a warning. They poisoned her, as if to say, look what will happen to you, ”he said.
It’s not the first time Shady has been threatened or attacked. In 2003 he was shot in the chest during an assault on the 626-hectare (1,546-acre) archaeological complex that was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 2009.
After nine invasions of the sacred city during the pandemic period, Shady and his team repeatedly called on the authorities to intervene.
“There is a feeling that there is no authority dedicated to the protection and defense of our heritage. It’s a huge concern, “he said.
Map of Caral
In July, squatters using a heavy excavator tore down adobe walls and tore off the ground destroying ancient pottery, tombs containing mummies, textiles and household remains, before police and local staff could stop them.
As a result of Shady’s pleas, a police car is now patrolling the archeological site day and night, but nothing has been done to punish or expel the invaders from the land.
The squatters are believed to belong to a single extended family and claim that the land was ceded to them in the 1970s during Peru’s controversial agrarian agrarian reform, driven by a left-wing military dictatorship.
Shady denies the claim: “They don’t have a single land title. The owner of the land is the Peruvian state.
The planned eviction of one of the squatters was thwarted in December when a local prosecutor and official did not give the order to proceed despite having the support of police officers, Shady said.
Land prices in the area have risen from about $ 5,000 per hectare to up to $ 50,000 per hectare as outsiders rush to buy land around the prestigious archeological site that is surrounded by a buffer zone of 56 square miles.
Shady, who was named to the BBC’s list of 100 women last year, first visited Caral in 1978. But it wasn’t until 1994 that she discovered the old town and began digging properly. the site, located on a dry desert terrace overlooking the Supe River Valley nearly 200 km (124 miles) north of Lima.
What he discovered was the “oldest center of civilization in the Americas” that Unesco describes as “exceptionally well-preserved” with a complex architectural design with “monumental stone and earth montages and sunken circular tracks.” The organic material found at the site dates back to carbon in 2627 BC
Shady and his team continue to research and excavate a dozen ancient settlements, half of the 24 located in the Supe Valley that are part of the Caral-Supe civilization. Their findings have revealed musical instruments such as flutes made from animal and bird bones and evidence of the multicolored cotton crop used in fabrics.
“We can’t allow archeological sites to continue to be invaded and destroyed because it’s an unwritten story and we retrieve that story through our research,” Shady said. “If we can’t do it it’s like burning a book that no one will ever read.”
“I hope we can continue to research and retrieve our history because it has such an interesting message,” he added. “It was a very, very peaceful society. We have not found a single walled settlement. “
“There’s a message there that we humans should live in harmony between ourselves and nature,” Shady concluded. “We are living this pandemic, in part, because of our mistreatment in nature.”