Elite 5,000- year-old woman’s tomb unearthed in coastal Peru

LIMA: Archaeologists in coastal Peru have discovered the 5,000-year-old remains of a woman who may have belonged to the upper echelons of the ancient Caral civilization, a find they say points to the importance of women in the city some five millennia earlier.

Caral, located some 180-kms up the Pacific coast from Lima, is considered the oldest city in the Americas and would have been inhabited at the same time as ancient Egyptian, Chinese and Sumerian civilizations - though unlike these, researchers say it developed in complete isolation.