Peru's 4600 year-old city

Archaeologists in Peru have found evidence of a major city which flourished four-thousand-six-hundred years ago, making it the oldest civilisation discovered in the Americas.

Using carbon-dating techniques, the researchers, from the United States and Peru, found that remains at Caral, on the Pacific Coast, dated back about eight centuries before the region's first known urban settlement.

They say the city was much more advanced than previously thought, with a huge public meeting area and sophisticated irrigation.

Correspondents say the new data puts the inhabitants, thought to be ancestors of the Incas, on a par with the ancient Egyptians, who at the same time were building pyramids in North Africa. Caral was first uncovered in 1905, but has remained largely unexplored.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service