Caral’s first rulers must have been supremely obstinate. To build a city on a continent that may never have seen one before, to create a community out of mud and cobbles and hand-hewn boulders in the grimmest of deserts, required an almost unimaginable toughness and determination. The abandoned settlement, 120 miles north of Lima, Peru, is a vast sprawl of platform mounds, sunken circular plazas, and hivelike living quarters, encircled by gray crags and windblown sand. Few urban settings are grander, or less welcoming.
Today Caral’s sovereign is archaeologist Ruth Shady Solís of San Marcos National University in Lima. A dark-haired woman of regal bearing, she uses a cane for support as she navigates a patch of rubble. But there is nothing frail about her. “These stones have power,” says Shady, 59, peering up at the 92-foot Pirámide Mayor. “They impose authority.” For nearly a decade, she has imposed her own authority to bring Caral back from the dead. She has dug its buildings out of the dust and pried cash from the grip of reluctant benefactors. She has endured poverty, political intrigue, and even gunfire (her bum knee is a souvenir of an apparent attempted carjacking near the dig site) in the pursuit of her mission.
Lately, however, Shady has been embroiled in the fiercest battle of her career—one that may someday lead to the rewriting of human history. Her opponents are her former collaborators, Chicago-based husband-and-wife archaeologists Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer. Her most formidable ally is archaeologist Michael Moseley, at the University of Florida, whose thinking has long dominated discussions of how ancient South Americans made the leap from subsistence fishing to urban sophistication.
On one side:
