Of the big civilizations of the New World, the Maya, one of the first in Middle America, had to cut its way out of the jungle. The Aztecs had to conquer their way through Mexico. Far to the South, other mighty civilization, the Andean, thrust upward through some of the world's most forbidding terrain: the towering mountains and desert coast of Andean Peru.
The Inca Empire, which crowned these early civilizations of the Southern half of the globe, ruled from a capital 11,152ft/3,400m in the clouds, near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes, Peru.
The Andean civilization centered far more than that of Middle America on the material techniques of life: - Planning big cities and irrigation works, - Building highways and a network of communications, and - Perfecting the domestic arts of weaving and pottery making.
The Inca passion for organization in every field extended even to their art work. The best in Andean art was produced by the Andean peoples who preceded the Incas and they simply absorbed and perfected the technique.
Civilization around the world traces their origins to the time when men settled down and started cultivating rather than hunting their food. The early people of South America showed a versatile talent for domesticating plants, many of them unknown in the Old World. Some 5,000 years ago they were already cultivating squash, peppers, gourds, beans, and cotton on the Coast of Peru.
By the time of the European invasion, these early people of South America were already better farmers that their Europeans contemporaries. They had domesticated the potato, the corn, the tomato, the yam, and the lima beans. They found a source of wool by taming the llama and the alpaca. They terraced the mountainsides and built vast irrigation systems.
Since very ancient time Pre-Inca civilizations of the Central Andes occupied an area, at over 4,000 m of elevation, which today is regarded as marginal for many basic crops. The ancient People of the Andes were able to build a dense population that supported both a city life and a highly organized social and economic society as evidenced from archaeological findings. Part of it lie in the type of agricultural technology employed, together with the choice of food plants, which together ensured both quantity and quality of sustenance. A strong economic base was in existence from at least 2000 years before the present time.
The extensive agricultural cultivation and irrigation system still work today and produce just like they did long time ago. The vast majority of these agricultural terraces are built on the sides of mountains and hills, and required hard work for creation, but ensured food production over a long period of time. The reason for creating stepped agricultural fields are various. For example, the Sacred Valley region, in which the Vilcanota River, the main artery of life, flows surrounded by abrupt mountains that are over 4000 m high, the sun's rays don't reach deep enough in the Valley, which remain cooler in their bottoms. Then the mountain sides ensure more intense sunlight for longer time during the day. In some parts there is little space in the Valleys, so the usage of steps actually increases the area available for agriculture.
The benefits of the steeped technology included defense against landslide and floods. In this way the water did not accumulate and run down over the towns below. The rocks used for creating the steps strengthened the sides of the mountains, that protecting what was in the Valleys from possible mudslide during heavy rainfall. Higher grounds protected the plantations from disasters.
The Vilcanota River is terrifying when its affluent and intense rain increase its volume. During the glorious period of the Inca Empire, the Sacre valley of the Vilcanota River was one of the most agriculturally productive region of the world. When Europeans waited for the rain to come, the incas were controlling the irrigation of the terraces by diverting small quantities of water from mountain rivers, making a sort of balance in the ecosystem of the land. The threat of drought was practically eliminated.
Up to this point in history, no culture in the world had spread a civilization over a similar terrain conditions like the whole of Peru's arid Coasts and High Mountains.
Saturday, September 10, 2016
THE PARACAS PEOPLE OF PERU.
Paracas is a desert peninsula located within the Pisco Province in the Ica region, on the Southern Coast of Peru.
The Paracas culture was an Andean society between approximately 1000 to 100 BC, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management and significant contributions in the textiles arts. Most information about the ancient lives of Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside territory of the site on the peninsula.
It is here where Peruvian archaeologist, Julio C. Tello (1880-1947), discovered 429 mummies bundles from two clusters in the subterranean structure (necropolis) at Wari Kayan, during excavations in 1927-8 on the Northern side of the Red Mountain (Cerro Colorado) area of the Paracas Peninsula.
It was a massive and elaborated graveyard containing tombs filled with the remains of individuals with the largest elongated skulls found anywhere in the world. The mummified bodies were swaddled in colorful fabrics, some of which were richly embroidered with wool to create elaborated patterns, which are among the best South American textiles ever found. The individuals were then placed in baskets in a sitting position, and interred facing North; as with all South American mummies. Their preservation is due to natural desiccation. Almost 400 embroidered cloths were recovered. All the burials were of males and the quality of their grave gifts suggests that they were of high status.
The men interred in the graveyard had conical, and so unusual elongated skulls. The cranial volume were measured and they were up to 25% larger and 60% heavier than conventional human skulls, containing only one parietal plate, rather than two.
The parietal bones are two bones in the human skull which, joined together at a fibrous joint, form the sides and roof of the cranium. Each bone is roughly quadrilateral in form, and has two surfaces, four borders, and four angles. The external surface of the parietal bone is convex, and marked near the center by an eminence which indicates the point where ossification commenced. The parietal bone is ossified in membrane from a single center, which appears at the parietal eminence about 8th week of fetal life. Ossification gradually extends in a radial manner from the center toward the margins of the bone; the angles are consequently the parts last formed, and it is here that the fontanelles exist.
A 19th century doctor Johann Jacob Von Tschudi claimed that the parietal bone found on the skulls was an evidence of a very ancient race of people inhabiting the land. The skulls had two abnormal holes and only one parietal plate instead of two. The little holes appeared to be a common human variation allowing the passage of veins connecting the venous system inside the skull to that on the outside.
DNA tests for the skulls were performed and they had concluded that the individuals were not fully humans, because other examples of cranial deformation did not alter the size, wight or cranial volume, as seen in the Paracas skulls. Although, the test did not confirm they were from one of our earlier ancestors instead. But there is a little more to say about of these Paracas skulls. The fact is the remains were found almost a century ago, but since the 1850's the idea of the elongated skulls has been around for a very while.
David Forbes wrote and submitted a research paper, "On Aymara People of Bolivia and Peru" to the Ethnological Society of London in 1870. In it he describes not only his examinations of the skulls, but those of his predecessors Mariano Eduardo de Rivero & Ustariz and Johan Von Tschudi who also had investigated the elongated skulls as early as the 1850's. Undoubtedly, the People of the Andes knew about them long before the Europeans put their feet in South American Lands.
The average cranial capacity of the skulls from the necropolis is about 1600 cc. Normal human cranial capacity varies widely, with 1350 cc. being the modern average.
The human skull has 3 bones (plates) that comprise the spherical shape of the skull. They are the frontal lobe, the parietal bone (left and right) and the occipital bone. The main difference in elongated skulls is that they have 2 major skull bones, the frontal and the back plates.
The Peruvian archaeologists, Julio C. Tello had previously excavated at Chavin of Huantar and recognized that there were cultural afinities between its products and those found at Wari Kayan and suggested that the Paracas People was related to the largely Chavin Culture. Comparisons have also been made between the later Paracas textiles and those of the Nazca Culture, suggesting another relationship. The pottery was largely plain and thin walled; and very similar to ceramics found in the Canete and Chincha Valleys, to the North of Paracas.
A Paracas Necropolis settlement has been found at White Sand (Arena Blanca), in the Coastal Plain below the Red Mountain (Cerro Colorado). It covers an area of some 5 hectares, divided into 20 separate districts, with buildings made from cobbles in dried mud. Its inhabitants had cultivated plants, while cotton nets may be evidence for fishing. Further settlements are known in the Ica Valley to the South.
The Ica Valley of Peru is one of the driest places in the world. Ground water is provided by the Ica River, rising in the Mountains of Huancavelica. The Mountain People there is already lacking water because of the British and American mining pollution and depleted ice caps which feeds the River. Much of the water supply is diverted to the British funded asparagus farms in the Ica Valley, as a result wells are drying up and water rate prices are astronomical high, forcing farmers to sell their farms to the asparagus trade. Supplies are severely rationed, yet one giant asparagus farm can use much water as the entire city of Ica every day.
Greed as an inordinate or insatiable longing, especially for wealth, status, and power did not exist in this region of Peru. The ancient individuals interred in the land graveyard came from a time when the world were completely different than the one we live today, and there is a common belief that they will return and do justice to people of all kinds and the land entrusted to them.
The Paracas culture was an Andean society between approximately 1000 to 100 BC, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management and significant contributions in the textiles arts. Most information about the ancient lives of Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside territory of the site on the peninsula.
It is here where Peruvian archaeologist, Julio C. Tello (1880-1947), discovered 429 mummies bundles from two clusters in the subterranean structure (necropolis) at Wari Kayan, during excavations in 1927-8 on the Northern side of the Red Mountain (Cerro Colorado) area of the Paracas Peninsula.
It was a massive and elaborated graveyard containing tombs filled with the remains of individuals with the largest elongated skulls found anywhere in the world. The mummified bodies were swaddled in colorful fabrics, some of which were richly embroidered with wool to create elaborated patterns, which are among the best South American textiles ever found. The individuals were then placed in baskets in a sitting position, and interred facing North; as with all South American mummies. Their preservation is due to natural desiccation. Almost 400 embroidered cloths were recovered. All the burials were of males and the quality of their grave gifts suggests that they were of high status.
The men interred in the graveyard had conical, and so unusual elongated skulls. The cranial volume were measured and they were up to 25% larger and 60% heavier than conventional human skulls, containing only one parietal plate, rather than two.
The parietal bones are two bones in the human skull which, joined together at a fibrous joint, form the sides and roof of the cranium. Each bone is roughly quadrilateral in form, and has two surfaces, four borders, and four angles. The external surface of the parietal bone is convex, and marked near the center by an eminence which indicates the point where ossification commenced. The parietal bone is ossified in membrane from a single center, which appears at the parietal eminence about 8th week of fetal life. Ossification gradually extends in a radial manner from the center toward the margins of the bone; the angles are consequently the parts last formed, and it is here that the fontanelles exist.
A 19th century doctor Johann Jacob Von Tschudi claimed that the parietal bone found on the skulls was an evidence of a very ancient race of people inhabiting the land. The skulls had two abnormal holes and only one parietal plate instead of two. The little holes appeared to be a common human variation allowing the passage of veins connecting the venous system inside the skull to that on the outside.
DNA tests for the skulls were performed and they had concluded that the individuals were not fully humans, because other examples of cranial deformation did not alter the size, wight or cranial volume, as seen in the Paracas skulls. Although, the test did not confirm they were from one of our earlier ancestors instead. But there is a little more to say about of these Paracas skulls. The fact is the remains were found almost a century ago, but since the 1850's the idea of the elongated skulls has been around for a very while.
David Forbes wrote and submitted a research paper, "On Aymara People of Bolivia and Peru" to the Ethnological Society of London in 1870. In it he describes not only his examinations of the skulls, but those of his predecessors Mariano Eduardo de Rivero & Ustariz and Johan Von Tschudi who also had investigated the elongated skulls as early as the 1850's. Undoubtedly, the People of the Andes knew about them long before the Europeans put their feet in South American Lands.
The average cranial capacity of the skulls from the necropolis is about 1600 cc. Normal human cranial capacity varies widely, with 1350 cc. being the modern average.
The human skull has 3 bones (plates) that comprise the spherical shape of the skull. They are the frontal lobe, the parietal bone (left and right) and the occipital bone. The main difference in elongated skulls is that they have 2 major skull bones, the frontal and the back plates.
The Peruvian archaeologists, Julio C. Tello had previously excavated at Chavin of Huantar and recognized that there were cultural afinities between its products and those found at Wari Kayan and suggested that the Paracas People was related to the largely Chavin Culture. Comparisons have also been made between the later Paracas textiles and those of the Nazca Culture, suggesting another relationship. The pottery was largely plain and thin walled; and very similar to ceramics found in the Canete and Chincha Valleys, to the North of Paracas.
A Paracas Necropolis settlement has been found at White Sand (Arena Blanca), in the Coastal Plain below the Red Mountain (Cerro Colorado). It covers an area of some 5 hectares, divided into 20 separate districts, with buildings made from cobbles in dried mud. Its inhabitants had cultivated plants, while cotton nets may be evidence for fishing. Further settlements are known in the Ica Valley to the South.
The Ica Valley of Peru is one of the driest places in the world. Ground water is provided by the Ica River, rising in the Mountains of Huancavelica. The Mountain People there is already lacking water because of the British and American mining pollution and depleted ice caps which feeds the River. Much of the water supply is diverted to the British funded asparagus farms in the Ica Valley, as a result wells are drying up and water rate prices are astronomical high, forcing farmers to sell their farms to the asparagus trade. Supplies are severely rationed, yet one giant asparagus farm can use much water as the entire city of Ica every day.
Greed as an inordinate or insatiable longing, especially for wealth, status, and power did not exist in this region of Peru. The ancient individuals interred in the land graveyard came from a time when the world were completely different than the one we live today, and there is a common belief that they will return and do justice to people of all kinds and the land entrusted to them.
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