Imagining Life in Pre-Conquest Peru

                                                        by Jim Goodman

modern painter's rendition of Inca life

       The Spanish conquest of Peru was not only a land-and-treasure-grab.  It also involved the deliberate destruction, as far as possible, of an entire civilization.  Not content with looting the palaces and temples, the conquistadores also destroyed them and replaced them with churches and mansions in the Spanish style.  They were here to stay and they didn’t want to live in a place so alien and pagan-looking.  Here and there they might build on the original Inca foundation, for example, but in general the new colonial cities had to look European. 

       The primary means of transforming the native way of life was the imposition of Christianity.  One can hardly blame the natives for accepting it.  Their own gods failed to prevent the disaster of the Conquest, so the invaders’ gods were obviously stronger.  And there was that concept of Heaven, a reward in the after-life for putting up with exploitation on Earth without rebelling against it.

the Lord of Sipan's tomb

       But besides a new religion the Spanish also introduced new animals, like cattle, pigs and chickens, contributing to changes eradicating the old ways.  This process has continued down to modern times, so that it is not easy to imagine what life was like before the Spanish came.  Other civilized states existed before the Inca Empire, but these had been abandoned already and what remained in extant pyramids, palaces and temples suffered the same wanton looting and destruction as the Inca cities. 

       Centuries later, when archaeologists began to excavate, collect and preserve the relics of the past, there weren’t a whole lot left.  Fortunately, a number of gold artifacts remained, enough to show us the skill of ancient artisans.  Grave robbers, both Spanish and native, made off with most.  But one particular site, the tomb of an ancient Moche king, escaped pilferage.  Discovered in the late 20^th century, inland from Chiclayo n northern Peru, this was an intact tomb of the Lord of Sipan, dating to the early 3^rd century.   

the Lord of Sipan's procession

       This is generally considered the South American equivalent of the tomb of Tutankhahmen in Egypt.  The Lord of Sipan was buried with several others, in the primitive belief these would serve him in the afterlife.  He was also splendidly dressed for his internment, but today all that has been removed to a museum in Lambayeque, near Chiclayo.  What remains is a recreation of the burial site, which is near the sand-encrusted mound that covers the original palace,

       All the original artifacts, jewelry, vestments and ornaments of the tomb of the Lord of Sipan are now displayed in the museum in Lambayeqeu.  The most visited museum in the country, for Peruvians, it’s the only one where photography is not permitted.  It’s easy to see why.  In this narcissistic age, progress through the museum would be much impeded by people taking selfies of themselves beside the recreated court of the Lord of Sipan, among other places.

Moche gold necklace

       The amount of excavated items exhibited in this museum, all from a single site, reveal much about the life of the ancient Peruvian elite.  The Lord of Sipan wore a large, crescent-shaped crown, made from a single sheet of gold.  He also wore other gold ornaments and carried a gold-topped scepter.  Scholars believe that when the Lord appeared in public he faced the sun so that its rays flashed against his gold crown and ornaments, dazzling the eyes of his subjects.

       High-ranking nobles and warrior chiefs also wore gold ornaments, on the head or through the nose.  The priests also had gold necklaces of the heads of the gods, which they either wore or dangled from staffs during ceremonies.  Restorers have removed the corrosion of so many centuries, polished them up and now they look like when they were first made.  All of these items, along with weapons, ritual paraphernalia, beaded necklaces and so on, along with the paintings and models of the Lord of Sipan’s times, give the visitor a fairly complete picture of ancient Moche royalty.

Moche warrior

       One of the most obvious traits of this society was the projection of power.  Great public ceremonies achieved this domestically.  Normally hidden behind his palace walls, on this occasion the Lord of Sipan dressed in his most magnificent raiment, rode in a litter borne through the streets to the ritual site, surrounded by warriors and priests.  In full view of his subjects, assembled for the event, the Lord witnessed his priests conduct rites designed to channel more spiritual power to the state, personified by its Lord, as well as keep the people in awe of their ruler.

       The other way to project power was by waging war against neighbors.  Warfare seems to have been an important part of just about every pre-Conquest civilization.  At Sechin, an excavated ruined city that flourished about 1500 BCE, the most outstanding features are the walls with engraved portraits of ferocious armed warriors and the severed heads and limbs of their battles.  In the interiors of the Moche pyramids near Trujillo, the Temple of the Sun and Moon, built around two thousand years later, warriors on one wall duel in pairs and on other walls march off to combat with maces and javelins.

dueling Moche warriors

       Ancient Peruvian armies had archers with bows to fire arrows at the opposing ranks, but most of the battle action was hand-to-hand with clubs, maces, battle-axes and slings.  Warriors painted their faces and maybe wore animal skins to look fierce, but not much body armor, if any.  Judging from extant sculptures and depictions of warriors on ceramics, weaponry didn’t develop over the centuries until the Spanish began fighting the natives with a new kind of warrior—one mounted on a horse.

       To deal with this phenomenon the Incas invented the bolas, a device consisting of three stones tied to connected lengths of llama tendons.  They hurled these twirling missiles at the horses’ legs, which entangled them and brought them down to the ground, toppling their riders as well.  Then they would throw a bolas around the fallen soldier, all but immobilizing him.  His rescuers would find the tough llama tendons difficult to sever, even with their European-made, top-of-the-line swords and daggers, especially while fighting off the attackers.

guano islands

       Pre-colonial Peruvian states were highly stratified and evolved no sense of the popular will, only the will of the ruler.  In these centrally organized societies the people owed their rulers service of one kind or another:  producing food, working as craftsmen, construction workers or serving as soldiers.  While some people in the upper classes were generals or career officers, other than a contingent of palace guards the states probably had no standing armies.  They simply assembled one from the ranks of the commoners, trained them and sent them off to war.

contemporary flautist

ancient flautist

       Defense of the state, as well as its expansion, was an inherent duty of the ruling class.  But it also had the responsibility of the welfare of its subjects.  The Incas, for example, kept numerous storehouses stocked with food, clothing, weapons, blankets, household goods and just about everything produced in the realm.  The state would distribute these items whenever necessary.  (When the conquistadores organized the systematic looting of Cusco, they themselves went after the gold and other valuables in the palaces and temples and left the storehouses to their Indian auxiliaries.)

carrying on a litter

       In general, warfare was periodic, not an annual event.  The basic economy of these states was agriculture, supplemented in the coastal states by fishing.  In the arid deserts of coastal Peru, this was only possible in the thin strip of land along the rivers that flowed from the Andes to the sea.  States organized labor forces to build irrigation systems that extended the cultivable lands.  Peru had no draft animals then, so men used foot-plows, which were long poles with hardened points and handles, to lift up the soil, while the crouched women beside them broke up the clods and planted the seeds.

       The fertilizer for these fields was guano, the excrement of sea birds like the Guanay cormorant, booty and pelican.  The main source, for over 1500 years, was guano-encrusted islands just off the coast of central Peru.  With its high uric acid content, it was rich in nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid.  It was effective in both the coastal plains and the mountains.  The Incas also organized its extraction and distribution and enforced edicts against killing or capturing the birds that produced it.

pounding grain

       Agriculture in the highlands differed from that in the coastal plains because not so much relatively level land was available.  So the people also constructed great, stonewalled terraces that climbed up the steep sides of the mountains flanking the valleys.  These are among the popular tourist attractions at places like Machu Picchu, Pisac and Ollantaytambo.  Farmers grew potatoes, maize, quinoa and coca in them.  Due to population transfers and the effects of repeated earthquakes, they are no longer in use, but stand as testimonials to pre-colonial Peruvian engineering skills.

       The land was owned and worked collectively, so at planting and harvest time the terraces were filled with villagers.  It was not all grueling work, though, for Spanish chroniclers observed that the natives took many breaks, drank chicha (maize beer), amused themselves with music and dance and then carried on with the task.  Judging from the ceramic sculptures preserved in Peru’s museums, flutes and drums were the main musical instruments employed.  But the Peruvian Pan pipes are also very ancient, as witnessed by the Moche ceramic of a figure playing the same instrument tourists hear today in fancy restaurants, listening to their umpteenth rendition of the old Simon and Garfunkel hit “El Condor Pasa.”

Peruvian Pan pipes

       Pre-Conquest ceramics preserved in Peru’s many museums provide much insight into how people lived back then.  Unlike ceramics from ancient Europe or China, that have to be painstakingly re-assembled from shards, those from ancient Peru were made for funerals and interred with the corpses.  Thus, excavators found them intact.  Intended for use in the afterlife, as vases, cups, bowls, pitchers and so on, they depict all the aspects of everyday life

     There are all the animals of their environment:  llamas, pumas, lizards, snakes, fish, frogs, monkeys and jaguars.  Others portray warriors, diseased people, gods, fishermen and very realistic commoners.  There are vignettes of everyday chores like pounding grain, toting water jugs, giving birth, carrying someone on a litter, catching fish, confronting a wild animal and making love.        

       Many of these vignettes in ceramic are still part of rural life in Peru, especially the poorer, less developed areas.  The ancient textiles in museum exhibits were woven on simple backs-trap looms, still in use today in the highlands.  Andean women don’t weave all the cloth for their clothing, for it is so much easier to buy it in the market, but use narrower looms for belts and scarves.

weaving with an ancient type of loom

field shrine, Taquile Island,LakeTiticaca

       When the conquistadores finally consolidated their rule in Peru they pursued an aggressive assimilation policy.  The Indians not only had to convert to Christianity, they had to relocate from their “squalid” villages to new towns.  Spanish bishops alleged that the dark, circular, thatched huts with no interior walls were conducive to incest.  The relocated Indians were to live in square buildings with separate rooms and tiled roofs.  Round stone buildings with thatched roofs still exist in Andean villages, but these are used for storage rather than residence.

bulls on the roof to bring prosperity and fertility

       As for religion, over four and a half centuries of Christianity has not wiped out every indigenous belief.  It’s hard to totally eradicate a farmer’s ingrained, ancient inclination to honor the spirit of the land he tills.  So here and there one finds modest field shrines, though these are not used for rituals or sacrifices anymore. 

       Other customs survived the Conquest through adaptation.  The roofs of Andean village houses feature ceramic statures of a pair of bulls on top.  They represent prosperity and fertility and may be backed by a Christian cross.  Perhaps the priests tolerated this ‘superstitious’ symbolism because the people added the cross and began using animals that the Spanish introduced.  Originally they were a pair of llamas, backed by symbols of the sun and moon.   

       The Conquest devastated the native people of Peru.  Disease, war and gross exploitation sent the population figures into a precipitous decline.  But over time they recovered and today the native Indians and those of mixed Indian-European blood make up a majority of the population, the only country in South America where that holds true.  Contemporary Peruvians are quite ware of this and embrace the multiple heritages that make up their country’s identity.  It’s Moche, it’s Inca, it’s Spanish, it’s ancient, it’s colonial, it’s whatever is in the country, past or present.  It makes no difference.  It’s all Peru.

ancient terraces at Pisac,used until last century

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Desert Kingdoms of Ancient Peru

                                                        by Jim Goodman

terraced pyramid at Caral, oldest city in the Americas

       The Andes Mountains that run the length of Peru make a clear geographical division of the country between Peru’s portion of the Amazon basin and the arid western coastal strip, containing the biggest cities and most of the population.  About forty rivers tumble down from the mountains to reach the coast, creating green valleys that can support human habitation.  In between these valleys scarcely a plant can grow.  It’s all dry desert—sand dunes and smooth brown hills.  It reminds you of the Sahara or the middle of Saudi Arabia.  You half expect to spot a camel caravan along the way. 

       These rivers provide almost all the water that ever gets to this arid part of the country.   A little rain may fall in the far north, but not much elsewhere.  The southern coast gets the least, 4 mm per year around Nazca, for example, because of the effects of the Humboldt Current.   This brings cold water from the Antarctic up the coast this far, cooling the surface and limiting the amount of moisture reaching the clouds. 

       The earliest settlements in Peru were around these river valleys, preferably close to the sea, which was also a major food source.  Agriculture was possible wherever they could divert water to their farms.  The community’s growth required organizing the creation of irrigation systems, which could create surpluses, enabling the development of a society and culture.

'eyes' of a puquio near Nazca

       As these societies grew they opened up and irrigated new lands with canals and ditches in the north and center of the coast and in the south by underground aqueducts.  Called puquios, these conducted water from the hills to the dry plains, with periodic placement of openings (‘eyes’) for farmers to check the flow and remove debris and obstacles.  Around Nazca, ancient puquios are still in use.

       Societies also established states with non-farmer classes that lived off the surplus of the farmers—rulers, priests, soldiers and artisans.  States grew more sophisticated, expanded their territory and everything seemed to be going fine forever when suddenly the peculiar weather phenomenon known as El Niño came along and destroyed it all. 

       El Niño is a periodic temperature alteration in the movement of Pacific Ocean waters that causes warm air to rise off the coast of Peru, triggering heavy rains in the deserts, and inhibits the upwelling of cold waters in the sea.  These are the waters with the nutrients that feed the fish population, which then declines considerably.  With fewer fish the seabird population also goes down, as does their production of guano, the droppings left on offshore islands that has long been coastal farmers’ favorite fertilizer.  It is rich in nitrogen, phosphate and potassium, all good for plant growth.

       El Niño can be relatively mild and short-lived.  But it can also be occasionally very disturbing, with years of heavy rain, which demolishes the irrigation system, followed by years of severe drought, which stifles any chance of recovery.  El Niño-related weather disruptions struck Moche society in the 6^th century at its peak of development.  It recovered, but in a much attenuated form.  Decades of drought in the early 11^th century forced the Sicán society to abandon its homeland and relocate to Túcume.  Moreover, the coast lies on a major seismic fault line.  Earthquakes, which can destroy irrigation works and alter the courses of rivers, can be as devastating as weird weather.

sunken circular courtyard at Caral

       Fortunately, earthquakes and spells of violent weather have never been so frequent as to prevent the establishment and growth of ancient Peruvian states and their cultures.  Many of these societies lasted several centuries.  Moreover, the first one sophisticated enough to have a city began around 3500 BCE, contemporaneous with pyramid-building Egypt.  Known as the Norte-Chico Culture, it is the oldest in the Americas and one of the six places in the world where civilization originated independently.

       When a people abandon their homeland and leave their buildings behind, eventually fierce winds blow desert soil all over them, turning then into what looks like ordinary hills and mounds.  Many centuries may pass before anyone discovers that a certain barren hill actually contains the remains of ancient buildings under its surface.  This is what happened to the Norte-Chico culture when the people disappeared from their Supe Valley habitat around 1800 BCE.  Sandstorms covered up all vestiges of their civilization and concealed their past existence until excited Peruvian archaeologists began excavating the sites in the late 1990s.   

       The Supe Valley is about 175 km north of Lima and 15 km inland.   The 19 settlements found there are estimated to have had altogether 20,000 inhabitants.  The largest was Serro Caral, the first city in the hemisphere, where 3000 lived.  Some of the features of Caral—tiered pyramids, regular staircases, placement of buildings, sunken circular courtyards and broad streets—turned out to be prototypes for the cities built by the desert kingdoms of later centuries.

warrior with severed heads, Sechín

Moche warrior

       Caral’s heyday was still the pre-ceramic age, but archaeologists did find flutes and other instruments made from deer and pelican bones.  They also found an early type of quipu, the knotted cords used, in the absence of a writing system, to record accounts all the way down to Inca times.  Besides food crops the Norte-Chico people grew cotton, using it for textiles and making fishnets.

       What the excavators did not find was anything resembling a weapon, any fortifications or any sign of war.   This particular cultural characteristic, however, was not one maintained by the states that rose after Caral’s demise.  The next oldest archaeological site of significance, dating 1000-1600 BCE, is Sechín, another 200 k, or so north, near Casma.  Lying beside a broad valley, the main feature of this culture’s legacy is the violent scenes of war etched into the remains of its city walls.  Sculptures of fierce, club-wielding warriors, severed heads and limbs fill the facades, to the exclusion, save for a rare snake or feline, of every other type of imagery. 

detail of a Paracas textile

        Whom these warriors fought and what caused the Sechín state to vanish remain unsolved mysteries in the gaps that punctuate the history of the coast.  Perhaps another wind-swept, barren desert hill somewhere hides the remains of another undiscovered ancient culture.  The next significant cultural development was the rise of the Chavín people around 900 BCE.  But their capital was west of Casma in the highlands and though their culture survived until 200 CE, their control and influence over the coastal areas was minimal.

       In the south near Ica, a century later marks the beginning of the Paracas culture. Their main legacy is the textiles used to wrap mummies in their necropolis.  Using simple looms and cotton or alpaca wool thread, Paracas weavers created extraordinary pieces of intricate patterns and fanciful, very pictorial designs, unmatched by successive cultures, with a broad range of still vibrant colors.  Paracas culture also produced fine ceramic bowls and pitchers and lasted until around 100 CE, when it became absorbed by the emerging Nazca culture a little further south.

temple foundations at Pachacámac

       Ceramic and textile production were now an embedded part of cultures on the Peruvian coast.  Except for Paracas, where the burial shrouds had been preserved by their internment and the arid climate, only scattered examples of the ancient weaving tradition have survived.  The record is much richer for ceramics, from pieces excavators found in burial sites in the original condition, intact, no cracks and unbroken.  In contrast, ancient Chinese vases, Greek pots and Roman bowls were discovered as piles of shards that had to be reassembled like jigsaw puzzles before display.

       Each culture used its own kind of materials, molding techniques (no one used a potter’s wheel) and drying or baking methods, plus particular shapes, colors and motifs.  Whether for ceremonial or everyday domestic use, the themes ranged incredibly—natural subjects like plants, fish and animals, both real and mythical, warriors, peasants and vignettes of daily life like farming, weaving, playing music, boating, pounding grain and sexual intercourse.  Sometimes they painted these themes on the surfaces.  Other tines they molded the pieces to depict the subject.

spouts of a Huari water pitcher

        The final result could be a cup, bowl, vase, pitcher with one or more spouts, or a piece without any function other than as a decorative work of art.   They could appear rather crude, even if imaginative, or could reach an amazing level of verisimilitude, as in the Moche portrait ceramics, that look like so exact a depiction of a real person you can imagine the subject striking a pose in the courtyard of the artisan until the work was completed. 

       The Moche were also skilled goldsmiths.  They produced ornaments for the aristocracy and the golden masks, ritual paraphernalia, ceremonial weapons and so forth brandished by the Lord in his public appearances.   In 1987, in another of those fortunate cultural discoveries, archaeologists unearthed a huge trove of gold artifacts and royal paraphernalia in a scarcely disturbed burial pit at Sipán, just east of Chiclayo.  The find, dated around 300 CE, is comparable to that of the tomb of Tutankhamen in Egypt.  The treasure was removed, replaced by replicas visible today, and installed in a special museum in Lamabayeque, near Chiclayo, opened in 2002 and now the most heavily visited museum in the whole country.

relics of the Sicán capital at Túcume

       Moche culture collapsed by 800 and in the Lambayeque region Sicán culture replaced it, for a long time centered at Túcume   The Huari culture took over other parts of Moche territory, extended their sway into the highlands just south of Cusco and around 600 established a city 40 km south of Lima called Pachacámac.  Two centuries later the Huari people abandoned the site, which afterwards became the ceremonial center of yet another desert culture, the Ichma society, an Aymari-speaking people who added sixteen pyramid temples to the city and maintained independence until the Incas conquered them in the mid-15^th century. 

Chancay ceramics

Sicán ceramics

       What remained of Huari culture in the north became subsumed in the Chimú takeover of the area from 900.   From its large, walled capital at Chan Chan, near Trujillo, the Chimú ruled over the northern coast of Peru as far down as Chancay, 80 km north of Lima, where yet another post-Huari culture established itself.  Chancay artisans achieved fame for their mass production of quality ceramics, textiles, metal ware and wooden carvings.  Like the Chimú, their state became part of the expanding Inca Empire in the 1420s.

Nazca Lines--the dog

       All of these cultures established cities with similar terraced pyramid temples, palaces with ramped walkways and broad streets in rectilinear grids.  They used similar techniques for farming, fishing and waging war and similar methods of venerating their gods and their kings.  But in works of art, in the jewelry, ceramics, weavings and ritual paraphernalia they were distinctly different.  Each culture had its own creative style and execution that distinguished it from all others.   Many examples of their artistic achievements are now housed in the country’s museums, displaying the enormous variety and ingenuity of different ancient peoples.  An afternoon browsing the artifacts collected in a well-stocked museum (and there are several) is one of the great aesthetic adventures of a trip to Peru.

       One artistic achievement, though, cannot be lodged in a museum—the Nazca Lines.  Consisting of enormous pictures of various animals and ritual pathways etched into the ground, they can only be viewed in their entirety by taking an airplane flight north of Nazca over the plains where they lie.  Actually, they lay undiscovered for over a thousand years until the pilots spotted them on the first-ever airplane flight out of Nazca in the 1920s.

Nazca Lines--the hummingbird

       To make the lines for both the figures and the pathways people extended a rope between two posts and removed the top layer of red-brown soil along the line to expose the lighter, almost white soil underneath.  Then they moved the posts to the next section, curving where necessary, until eventually the picture was completed.  The figures, many meters long and wide, sometimes depict familiar animals—dog, snake, parrot, monkey, spider, condor, hummingbird—and sometimes more enigmatic images, like a face with a pair of hands or the one that resembles a human waving to the sky.

       Apparently this kind of art, only visible from high above, was meant to please the gods, perhaps to encourage them to deliver rain.  But the precise intention of the works, the significance or symbolism of the selected animals and other figures, remain matters for speculation.  Nazca culture collapsed around 900 and the area was all but abandoned.  Since Nazca culture had no writing system we have no records concerning this unique phenomenon.  Like the centuries of gaps in the archaeological record of the coastal kingdoms and the precise reasons for the birth and disappearance of some of the ancient societies, the Nazca Lines, the most unusual form of artistic expression in the hemisphere, will remain mysterious until some future accidental archaeological discovery, a la Sipán or Caral, spills the secrets.  Until then we simply marvel at what only gods were supposed to see.

sunset over the desert near Nazca

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