This Ancient High-Status Woman Was Buried With a Parrot-Feather Cape and a Beaded Toucan’s Beak in Modern-Day Peru
The burial belongs to the ancient Caral culture, the oldest civilization in the Americas
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Around 5,000 years ago, members of an ancient Peruvian Indigenous group buried an elite member of their society: They wrapped her body in layers of cloth, woven plants and colorful macaw feathers, and they filled her grave with valuable goods, including seashells, stone bowls and the beak of a toucan.
Archaeologists recently unearthed the burial in the archaeological site of Áspero—once a developed fishing town of the Caral civilization, a group that lived in coastal Peru between about 3000 and 1800 B.C.E., according to a translated statement by Peru’s Ministry of Culture. The discovery has illuminated a key facet of Caral societal structure.
“This is an important burial because it has elements that correspond to a woman of high status,” David Palomino, head of the Áspero archaeological site, tells Reuters. “Not only men had an important association in this civilization.”
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The Caral civilization, also known as the Caral-Supe, was the oldest known civilization in the Americas, building up to 30 major cities. It formed about a thousand years after Mesopotamia’s Sumer, at around the same time the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids. The Caral people predate the more-famous Olmec civilization, of modern Mexico, by almost 2,000 years.
A team of archaeologists led by Ruth Shady discovered the grave in an ancient Caral public building called the Huaca de los Ídolos, less than half a mile from the Pacific Ocean. The building is one of the 22 “architectural complexes” that make up Áspero, which lies north of Lima in central Peru, per the statement. Before researchers began archaeological work at the site in 2005, it functioned as a municipal dump for three decades.
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Because of the corpse’s careful wrapping, its hair, skin and nails have been preserved through the millennia. The woman was approximately five feet tall, and she died between 20 and 35 years of age.
Researchers are currently examining the remains to learn more about the woman’s diet and cause of death.
“It was generally thought that [Caral] rulers were men, or that they had more prominent roles in society,” as Palomino tells the Agence France-Presse’s Tanika Godbole. But this grave, along with another elite Caral woman’s burial found in 2016, suggest that in fact, women were influential members of the ancient civilization.
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The recently unearthed woman’s grave goods included an Amazonian snail shell, a fishing net, a wool textile, about 30 sweet potatoes, weaving tools and a needle, four reed baskets and a toucan’s beak adorned with green and brown beads. She was buried wearing a cloak of blue and brown feathers, seemingly from a macaw of the Amazon rainforest. And the feather cloak was woven using a technique that, until now, has only been found in Chimú and Inca sites dating a few centuries later, reports Spanish news agency Agencia EFE. The cloak and the other grave goods suggest that the Caral culture developed both advanced fishing technology and artistic techniques.
“This discovery is not only important for the history of Peru, but also for the world,” Palomino tells Agencia EFE, “and for understanding how the Caral civilization reached such a significant technological level.”
