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The Guardian
Squatters Throw Death Threats at Archaeologist Who Discovered America’s Oldest City
Squatters apparently belonging to a family claiming 5,000-year-old ruins were given to them in the 1970s Illegal squatters invaded the ruins of the oldest city in the Americas and made death threats against Ruth Shady, the famous archaeologist Peruvian who discovered the 5,000 threats came through phone calls and messages to various workers at the archaeological site at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Peru. They followed reports to police and prosecutors about the invasions of the ancient ruins of Caral. “They called the site’s lawyer and said if he continued to protect me, they would kill him, along with me, and bury us five meters underground,” said Shady, 73. “Then they killed. our dog as a warning. They poisoned her, as if to say, look what will happen to you, ”she said. This is not the first time that Shady has been threatened or attacked. In 2003, she was shot in the chest during an assault on the 626-hectare (1,546-acre) archaeological complex which was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2009. After nine invasions of the sacred city during the pandemic period, Shady and his team have repeatedly asked the authorities to intervene: “We have the feeling that there is no authority dedicated to the protection and defense of our heritage. In July, squatters using a large excavator tore down adobe walls and tore up the floor, destroying ancient ceramics, tombs containing mummies, textiles and household remains, before police and site staff could stop Following Shady’s calls, a police car is now patrolling the archaeological site day and night, but nothing has been done to punish or remove the invaders from the land.The squatters are believed to be from one extended family and claim the land was given to them in the 1970s during Peru’s controversial land reform that was driven by a left-wing military dictatorship. Shady denies the claim: “They don’t have a single land title. The owner of the land is the Peruvian State. A planned eviction of one of the squatters was thwarted in December when a local prosecutor and an official did not give the order to prosecute despite police support, Shady said. the area has grown from around $ 5,000 per hectare to $ 50,000 per hectare, as outsiders rush to buy land around the prestigious archaeological site which is surrounded by a 56 square mile buffer zone. last year, visited Caral for the first time in 1978. But it was not until 1994 that she discovered the ancient city and began to properly excavate the site, which is located on a dry desert terrace overlooking the Supe River valley nearly 200 km (124 miles) north What she discovered was the “oldest center of civilization in the Americas” which Unesco describes as “exceptionally well preserved” with an intricate architectural design with “monumental platforms in stone and circular nken earth”. Organic material found at the site has been carbon dated to 2627 BCEShady and his team continues to investigate and excavate a dozen ancient settlements, half of the 24 located in the Supe Valley that are part of the Caral- civilization. Supe. Their findings have revealed musical instruments such as flutes made from animal and bird bones and evidence of the cultivation of multi-colored cotton used in textiles. “We cannot allow archaeological sites to continue to be invaded and destroyed because it is unwritten history and we are recovering this history through our investigation,” Shady said. “If we can’t do this, it’s like burning a book that no one will ever read.” “I hope we can continue to investigate and continue to recover our story because it has such an interesting message,” she added. “It was a very, very peaceful society. We did not even find a single fortified settlement. “There is a message here that we humans should live in harmony between ourselves and nature,” Shady concluded. “We are experiencing this pandemic, in part, because of our mistreatment of nature.”
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