One of the first and big civilizations in Middle America, the Maya, had to cut its way out of the jungle. The Aztecs had to conquer their way through Mexico. And far to the South of the American continent, the Andean race, thrust upward through some of the World's most forbidding terrain: the towering mountains and desert coast of Andean Peru.
The empire of the Inca race, which crowned the early civilizations of the Southern American continent, ruled from a capital 11,000 feet in the clouds.
The Andean civilization centered far more than that of Middle America on the material techniques of social life: planning big cities and irrigation works, building highways and a network of communication regardless the condition of the terrain, perfecting the domestic art of weaving and pottery making. The passion of the Inca race for organization in every field extended even to their art work. But the best in Andean art was produced by the race of the ones who preceded the Inca.
Civilization around the World usually traces its origins to the time when men settled down and started cultivating rather than hunting their food. The early race of Andean people showed a versatile talent for domesticating plants and a very disciplined and well developed way of doing it.
Some 5,000 years ago they were already familiar with the cultivation of squash, peppers, gourds, beans, and cotton. By 900 BC, the North and the South areas in which people established their living quarters, grew up with corn as its basic food crop. The corn of the Andes is a very distinctive one from the other types of corn that grow in Middle America. It grows at a very high altitude absorbing from the terrain and the atmosphere the medicinal properties of which it is known for.
The ancient Andean race were better farmers that their European contemporaries, since the way of doing farming had to deal with so many variations of the ground and ecosystems that had to be studied in order to make the soil produce food. For that purpose they terraced the mountainsides and built vast irrigation systems. Then they were able to domesticate the potato, the tomato, the yam, and the lima bean. In textiles, they found a source of wool by taming the llama and alpaca.
Since the ancient race of Andean people never developed writing, all that is known of their early progress is what archaeologists have been able to find out. They traced 6 distinct cultural stages in the succession of the Andean civilization. The earliest of these, named 'Chavin de Huantar', a 2,800-year-old ruin in the Northern Highlands of Peru, lasted from about 1,200 to 200 BC, and is the period in Andean prehistory when religion seems to have absorbed all high culture completely. At their huge ceremonial center, the Chavin people created a resplendent temple and powerful stone carvings.
In the 2nd of these eras, the Paracas people, named for the South Coast peninsula where their tombs and other remains were found, flourished. They wove textiles that have seldom been surpassed by civilized human.
In the 3rd period, the Nazca culture succeded the Paracas while the so-called Mochica people arose on the North Coast. The Mochica people evolved a complicated class society, laid roads and invented new agricultural techniques, since their subdued neighbors in the nearby River Valleys had different ways of treating the ground. These techniques were later passed on to the Incas. Their pottery is the finest made by the early race of Andean people.
In the 4th period, a single culture originating around Tiahuanaco in the Southern Andes imposed its leadership in art and in war throughout most of Peru. The spread of this culture was not long-lived.
A 5th period opened, and new forces sprang up again along the Coast, notably the Chimu people in the North.
The 6th and last development set the stage for the Andean civilization: the emergence by conquest and annexation of a completely unified state - the Inca empire.
No comments:
Post a Comment