Illegal squatters have attacked the ruins of America’s oldest city, and made death threats against Ruth Shady, the famous Peruvian archaeologist who discovered the 5,000-year-old civilization age.
The threats came through phone calls and messages to various workers at the archeology site at the height of Peru’s Covid-19 pandemic. They followed up reports to the police and prosecutors about the attacks of the ancient ruins of Caral.
“They called the site’s lawyer and said if he kept killing me they would kill him, with me, and bury us five meters underground,” said Shady, 73.
“Then they killed our dog as a warning.” They poisoned her, as they say, look at what happens to you, ”she said.
This is not the first time Shady has been threatened or attacked. In 2003, she was burned in the coffin when she attacked a 626-hectare (1,546-acre) archaeological building that was declared a Unesco world heritage site in 2009.
After nine attacks on the holy city during the breakout period, Shady and her team again called on the authorities to intervene.
“There is a sense that there is no authority to protect and safeguard our heritage. It’s a big concern, “she said.
Map caral
In July, squatters using an adobe-heavy excavator knocked down adobe walls and tore down the ground destroying old ceramic materials, graves containing corpses, clothing and household debris, before police and staff could the sites stopped them.
As a result of Shady’s claim, a police car now surrounds the archaeological site day and night but nothing has been done to punish or evict the invaders of the land.
The squatters are believed to belong to one extended family, and are said to have been given the land in the 1970s due to the controversial reform of Peruvian agri-land pushed through by an armed dictatorship. left.
Shady denies the allegation: “They do not have a single title to land. The owner of the land is the state of Peru. “
A planned eviction at one of the squatters in December was thwarted when a local prosecutor and order officer failed to proceed despite support from police officers, Shady said.
Land prices in the area have gone up from around $ 5,000 per hectare to up to $ 50,000 per hectare, as foreigners rush to buy land around the prestigious archaeological site that is surrounded with a 56 square mile buffer zone.
Shady, who was named to the BBC’s 100 Women’s List last year, first visited Caral in 1978. But it wasn’t until 1994 that she discovered the old town and began excavating the site properly, which located on a dry desert plateau overlooking the Supe river valley nearly 200 km (124 miles) north of Lima.
What she discovered was the “oldest civilization center in America” which Unesco describes as “well-preserved” with a complex architectural design with “stone and clay platform stones and courtyards” circular under “. Organic materials found at the site are carbon sequestered dating back to 2627 BCE
Shady and her team continue to explore 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 flu made from the bones of animals and birds and evidence of the cultivation of multicolored cotton used in clothing.
“We cannot allow archaeological sites to continue and attack because it is an unwritten history and we will retrieve that history through our study,” Shady said. we can do that is like burning a book that no one will ever read. “
“I hope we can continue to explore and continue to get our history back because it has such an interesting message,” she said. “It was a very peaceful society. We didn’t even find it. one walled town. “
“There’s a message there that we humans should live in harmony with nature,” Shady said. “We are living through this pandemic, in part, because of our mistreatment of nature.”