Читать книгу World History For Dummies - Peter Haugen - Страница 66

By 2000 BC, good-size communities with public buildings existed in South America, specifically in the Andes mountain range of what’s now Peru. Archaeologists have found evidence, for example, that the people near modern Lima irrigated their farmland and built a stone pyramid at nearby El Paraiso around 1800 BC.

In Peru’s northern highlands, the Chavín people started building cities around 1000 BC. Their culture thrived for 500 years, but they didn’t leave many clues for the ages. The Chavín may have traded with the Olmec, who had even earlier urban centers, dating from about 1200 BC, along the southern Gulf of Mexico in today’s Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. The Olmec left huge stone heads that may be portraits of their kings (albeit not very flattering ones). They also seem to have passed down their culture and social structure to later, more elaborate civilizations, such as the Maya (more on them in Chapter 5).