Peru has recently been shown to have been home to one of the oldest monument building cultures in South America. The valleys of the Norte Chico region have revealed cities with pyramids and other large ceremonial structures that have now pushed the date of the earliest buildings to the end of the 4th millennium BC. Dr. Jose Oliver, who lectures in Latin American archaeology at University College London, has stated “that by 3100 BC monumental buildings were already under way, not just at an isolated site but also across a whole region”. Such structures were being erected 400 years earlier than the earliest Egyptian pyramids!
The prehistoric coastal city of Caral has also revealed that quipus, the ancient South American ‘writing’ system, was in use there as early as 3000 BC. Philip Coppens gives an interesting overview of the Caral site(a).
As early as the 16th century Agustín de Zárate identified Peruvian natives as originally having migrated from Atlantis.
In the 1960’s Mrs. Karola Siebert of Lima attempted to link her own finds and other discoveries of structures and inscriptions in Peru with Atlantis. The rather tenuous links suggested were compounded with a high degree of supposition. A few years later James Bailey also opted for Peru as the site of Atlantis.
The Peruvian Times have an extensive ongoing (2011) series(b) on the history and culture of Peru which is well worth a look.
(a) http://www.philipcoppens.com/caral.html
(b) http://www.peruviantimes.com/category/feature/
