Timeline
Every guide, in its time.
Read across eras and regions, then open a guide to see the sources behind its dates. A shared date is a question to investigate, not evidence of contact.
6 of 57 guides in South America
Before 5000 BCE 1
- 5450–890 BCE
Why prepare the dead for seven thousand years?
Chinchorro: the oldest artificial mummies.
Arica and Parinacota, northern Chile · South America · Deep time & first peoples
Marine hunter-gatherers on the Atacama coast practised artificial mummification millennia before Egypt. Learn to read a long cultural range as a container, not an event.
3000–1000 BCE 2
- 3000–1800 BCE
Where do cities begin?
Caral: a wider map of early urban life.
Supe Valley, Peru · South America · Early cities
Visit an early urban center in Peru and learn why a shared timeline helps us compare societies without assuming a connection.
- 1500–300 BCE
When a site names a culture, which came first?
Chavín: a ceremonial centre before the Andean states.
Ancash, Peru · South America · Kingdoms & monuments
Chavín de Huántar gave its name to a style found across the Andes. Learn why the site's building sequence and the cultural horizon need separate dates.
1000 BCE – 1 CE 1
- 500 BCE – 500 CE
What were the geoglyphs for?
The Nasca lines: a date range is not a function.
Coastal plain of southern Peru · South America · Kingdoms & monuments
The geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa are dated to a thousand-year span. Learn why that range cannot by itself tell you what any one figure was made to do.
1–500 CE 1
- 400–900 CE
Does a shared style mean a shared ruler?
Tiwanaku: a capital on the altiplano.
Lake Titicaca basin, Bolivia · South America · Kingdoms & monuments
Follow Tiwanaku from urban florescence to decline, and learn why the record refuses to date every monument by the city's best-known centuries.
Not tied to one period 1
- Rock art; disputed early occupation claims
How old is the oldest site in the Americas?
Serra da Capivara: rock art and the oldest-dates debate.
Piauí, northeastern Brazil · South America · Deep time & first peoples
A Brazilian park holds hundreds of rock-art sites and a claim of occupation far older than the regional consensus. See how the research seed keeps that claim open rather than accepted.
Keep the habit
Dates are ranges. Read them that way.
Each guide names its period, its place, and the records that support them.
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