A team of anthropologists from the University of Wyoming, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of New Hampshire has discovered a 4,750-year-old megalithic rotunda measuring 18 meters (60 feet) in diameter at Calakpuma in America's Cajamarca Basin. Peru. It is one of the oldest known monuments and megalithic structures in the northern Andes of Peru, and one of the earliest examples in the Western Hemisphere.

Monumental architecture is central to many aspects of the development of human social organization and social complexity, but the drivers of its origin remain poorly understood.

This form of architecture is intentionally built to be larger and, in some cases, more elaborate than necessary given the desired functionality.

The world's oldest ceremonial monumental architecture, whether represented by megalithic arrangements, large platforms or buildings, or bounded plazas, were larger than immediate households and were often larger than the population of the local area. was the result of a collective or corporate activity by a larger group.

Early well-known examples of this type of ceremonial architecture include Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, Stonehenge in England, and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, which were built in 9,000 BC, 2,900 BC, and 2,900 BC, respectively. It was built by 2,650 AD.

Göbekli Tepe is of particular importance here, as it was built during the pre-Pottery Age, during the Neolithic period, by hunter-gatherer-forager tribes who were at the pinnacle of sedentary living and food production.

Early examples of monuments in the Western Hemisphere include Watson Brake and Poverty Point, which date to 3400 BC and 1700 BC, respectively.

The newly discovered megalithic square is Late preceramicIt dates back to 2850 BC.

The structure is located at the Calapuma archaeological site in the Cajamarca Basin in the northern Peruvian Andes and is built of large, free-standing, vertically placed megaliths.

This construction method has never been reported in the Andes and is different from other monumental rotunda in the region.

“This structure was built about 100 years before the Great Pyramids of Egypt, around the same time as Stonehenge,” said Dr. Jason Toohey, an anthropologist at the University of Wyoming.

“It was probably a meeting place and a ceremonial place for the early people who lived in this part of the Cajamarca Valley.”

“These people were primarily hunter-gatherers, and may have only recently begun growing crops and domesticating animals.”

Kalakpuma Square is formed by two concentric walls, approximately 18 meters in diameter.

“The Late Preceramic Period, during which Plaza Calapuma was constructed, was a period of socio-economic transition in the Andes,” the researchers said.

“On the central coast, the communities that came together to build giant mounds in places like Caral were not yet full-time farmers, but engaged in complex systems of exchange with coastal fishing villages.”

“Inland communities grew some food and industrial crops, but also relied on hunting and trading seafood.”

“In the northern highlands of Peru, the people who built the plazas of Calapuma may have begun experimenting with food production, but they were also probably still relatively mobile hunter-gatherers.”

“Like Nanchoc centuries earlier, groups in Cajamarca may have engaged in the construction of enterprises in Calapuma's plaza and subsequently repeatedly negotiated group identity there through the integration of events and perhaps feasts.”

“The construction of Late Pre-Peraque monumental ceremonial buildings in the coastal and highlands of the central Andes probably originated from small groups, as was the case with earlier monumental mass buildings outside the Andean region of South America, such as Göbekli Tepe. It represented a change in the social world with changes in the associated belief systems into more collective and locally focused beliefs and actions.”

of findings It was published in the magazine scientific progress.

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Jason L. Twohey other. 2024. A monumental stone plaza located at an altitude of 4750 meters in the Cajamarca Valley in Peru. scientific progress 10(7); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adl0572