Where is the evidence of Cities and Buildings – Part II

Continuing from the previous post regarding the lack of evidence of wide-spread occupation and its evidence of building and streets on the magnitude of Mormon’s many descriptions of Nephites being on “all the face of the land.”

Top: Huaca Prieta; Bottom: Las Haldas

 

Huaca Prieta in the Chicama River valley is a Preceramic shoreline village with its major monument a pyramidal mound 490 feet by 410 feet by 40 feet high, built with rounded cobbles. The closest similarity to, and greatest continuity with, the Aspero site, is Las Haldas (Las Aldas).This site is a large archaeological complex located on the coast, 100 yards from the ocean, approximately 190 miles north of Lima and about 12½ miles south of the Casma River valley.

For most of its history Las Haldas, part of the extensive ruins of the Casma-Sechin culture, is a coastal community that coexisted with the inland agricultural communities in the Casma River Valley.

Distinguishing characteristics of Las Haldas are both its size and age as one of the earliest ruins of the ceramic period, its dependence upon maritime resources for subsistence, the lack of agriculture, and its distance from any source of fresh water. This coastal area in which are found the oldest known civilizations of the Americas. The Casma valley archaeological sites are a few miles north and theNorte Chico civilization is about 60 miles to the south.

The Cerro Sechín, near the Casma River, also had successive occupation and monument enlargement after the Preceramic period. Mural art, painted felines, and other polychrome painting on clay plaster relief carving are associated with the earliest construction, an approximately 110 feet square and 15 feet high, triple-stepped platform (L.E. Samaniego, et al., “New Evidence on Cerro Sechín, Casma Valley, Perú [In Early Ceremonial Architecture in the Andes], edited by C. B. Donnan, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D. C., 1985, pp173-176).

El Paraíso is comprised of thirteen or fourteen mounds spaced over a 148-acre area with a nuclear group—the central or most important part—is a group of seven mounds. The two largest structures are parallel, 1,310 feet in length and 590 feet apart, suggesting a 17.8 acre plaza. Though the central monument is not the largest, this U-shaped form may be the prototype of later U-shaped Initial period complexes (Jeffrey B. Quilter, “Architecture and Chronology at El Paraíso,” Journal of Field Archaeology, vol.12, 1985, p281).

El Paraíso

 

El Paraíso is considered a residential complex; the two large mounds were used for habitation. It resembles later residential architecture, and no artifacts vary from what are known elsewhere in the area. The architecture includes courts and rooms interconnected by corridors. At the same time the site manifests a high degree of planning and is uniformly oriented 25° east of north—perpendicular to the 1500 BC solstice sunrise, as is the Piedra Parada site, located two miles inland from Aspero

El Paraíso's three-feet-thick stone walls were plastered with clay. Stone was quarried from nearby hills and roughly trimmed. It was constructed entirely of monumental masonry, the mounds exceed 100,000 tons in gross weight, with filling superposition on previous constructs.

At the site of Áspero a female skeleton was found decorated with shells of the genus Spondylus, which come from hundreds of miles away in far northern Peru and were a sign of authority for centuries in Andean cultures. About 45 years old when she died, the woman had clothing accessories made of bone carved in the form of seabirds and Amazonian monkeys, also status symbols.

Inland from Aspero, and along the Supe River, is Huaricanga archaeological site, known as Caral or Caral Supe in Peru. Here, around 2500 BC, the Norte Chico region gave rise to the first civilization in the Americas, on Peru’s north central Pacific coast, which contains four river valleys: Fortaleza, Pativilca, Supe and Huaura. In this area, archaeological surveys have uncovered 30 Late Archaic sites, ranging from 25to 495 acres in area. These sites are characterized by large, pyramid-like structures, sunken ceremonial plazas, and other assorted temples and housing. 

Huaricanga, called Caral or Caral-Supe in Peru: Left: Drawing, white arrow showing (Right) view up the steps from the Plaza toward the site

 

This site of Huaricanga is the earliest city of the Norte Chico civilization. "It was the oldest city in the Americas and one of the earliest cities in the world” (Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus Vintage Books Publishers, Random House, New York, 2006).

This Late Archaic site is located in the arid Fortaleza Valley on Peru’s north central coast, 14 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. The site is the largest Late Archaic construction in the Norte Chico region.

The three earthwork mounds on the large site are the remains of pyramidal-shaped structures. Two standing stone structures (huancas) also exist. There is a structure believed to be a temple, of a design similar to, but predating, the Mito architectural tradition seen in the Peruvian highlands. 

The Fortaleza Valley with the Fortaleza River through it

 

In addition, later research in the Fortaleza and Pativilca valleys has found evidence of maize cultivation, as well as fourteen other domesticated species of fruits and vegetables, suggesting that agriculture may have been more important to the development of Caral-Supe civilization than previously thought.

The Nephites “were scattered upon much of the face of the land” (Jarom 1:6); and they continued to grow in number: “The people began to be very numerous, and began to scatter abroad upon the face of the earth, yea, on the north and on the south, on the east and on the west, building large cities and villages in all quarters of the land“ (Mosiah 27:6), and also, “They did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea west to the sea east” (Helaman 3:8).

The Nephites “Began to build up their waste places, and to multiply and spread, even until they did cover the whole face of the land, both on the northward and on the southward, from the sea west to the sea east” Helaman 11:20)

“All the people upon the face of the whole earth from the west to the east, both in the land north and in the land south, were so exceedingly astonished that they fell to the earth” (3 Nephi 1:17).

It was Nephi, that saw in a vision the numerous cities in the Land of Promise: “I beheld many generations pass away, after the manner of wars and contentions in the land; and I beheld many cities, yea, even that I did not number them” (1 Nephi 12:3, emphasis added).

It seems obvious that any Land of Promise site or model should have the remains of such a wide coverage of ancient people, buildings, foundations, and other evidence of such extensive occupation and building throughout the entire land. Without it, the location is simply not the site of the Land of Promise.