Caral Pyramid of the Huanca

10.8897°S, 77.5185°W.

The Pyramid of the Huanca at Caral in the Supe Valley, Peru — one of the six monumental platform pyramids of the oldest documented urban site in the Americas, built between approximately 3000 and 1800 BCE. Original base 130 by 80 metres; original height 21 metres on five terraces. The pyramid takes its name from a 2.3-metre standing stone (huanca) erected at the top of the access ramp on the building's eastern side — one of the earliest documented uses of a free-standing monolithic stela in Andean religious architecture, a tradition that would recur for the next 4,000 years through Chavín, Tiwanaku, and Inca religious sites. Excavated by Ruth Shady Solís's Caral Archaeological Project from 1994 onward. The substructure included a sunken circular plaza on the building's eastern flank with stone-lined steps for ritual descent.

A platform pyramid with a standing stone marking the entrance to a sunken circular plaza, in a city built nearly five thousand years ago without ceramics, metal tools, or writing.