After years of painstaking restoration work, Peru's Caral ruins are to be opened to tourists who are now being invited to visit the oldest city in the Americas.

This ancient archaeological site in the Supe valley, just under 200 kilometres north of Lima, was settled some 5,000 years ago by one of the continent's oldest civilizations.

First stumbled upon in 1994, the site was painstakingly restored by archaeologists led by Ruth Shady, whose work revealed an ancient, majestic city replete with pyramids, temples and plazas.

This ancient civilization lived off farming and fishing, and were believed to have a barter system in place. According to Shady, the Caral civilization was the foundation which led to the development of the Inca empire 4,400 years later.

"Here in America human beings also had the same ability as in the old world to create civilizations as ancient as in the old continent and regarding Peru, as we have already shown, this is the mother civilization because it gave rise to a cultural process that went on to be evidenced in Machu Picchu and the Incan empire 4,400 years later," she said.

According to Shady, the discovery of the city Caral has had a huge impact on studies of urban development and ancient civilizations. "Caral has changed the knowledge that we had about the urban development that existed in the world," she said.

Now the Peruvian government is keen to promote its newly-discovered tourist treasure, and Minister for Foreign Trade and Tourism Alfedo Ferrero visited the site as part of the strategy.

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