Ancient Murals in Peru Reminded Residents of Climate Crisis

LIMA, PERU—When severe drought forced the residents of Caral to evacuate their city some 4,200 years ago, they adapted to new climate conditions and built new settlements, The Guardian reports. Located in north-central coastal Peru, the site of Caral consists of 32 monumental buildings. Archaeologist Ruth Shady and her colleagues now suggest that the people of Caral traveled 10 miles east and founded the site of Peñico on the Supe River, where they constructed the same types of temple pyramids and sunken circular plazas found at Caral. They also found imagery telling a survival story on the walls of a temple at Vichama, another nearby city founded on the Pacific coastline after the abandonment of Caral. The murals show emaciated corpses with sunken bellies and protruding ribs, pregnant women, ritual dancers, and a fish. On a higher wall, the artwork depicts the face of a toad with human hands being struck in the head by a lightning bolt. “After the deaths, the empty stomachs, a toad appears, emerging from the earth with lightning striking its head, as if announcing the arrival of water,” Shady said. For more on the Caral civilization, go to "Off the Grid: Vichama, Peru."