Many developments which are attributed to the Inca Empire in areas such as agricultural technology, weaving, pottery, gold and silver work can actually be traced to previous cultures.
Manco Capac became the first Inca king sometime in the 11th century. Machu Picchu was constructed in as a royal estate for Pachacutec and his lineage. By , the Tahuantinsuyo stretched north to present-day Ecuador near Quito, west to the Pacific, east to the Amazon, and south to Chile near Santiago.
The Sapa Inca was revered as the son of the Sun, the highest divinity. Conquered peoples were obligated to provide labor and tribute to the imperial capital in Cusco.
This, along with a civil war of succession between the brothers Huascar and Atahualpa, formed the context that greeted the arrival of Spanish conquistadors to the shores of Peru in the s. Beginning in , Spanish soldiers under the command of Francisco Pizarro landed in Peru with the intent to conquer an empire rich in gold and silver, in much the same way Hernan Cortes had toppled the Aztec Empire Pizarro devised the capture of Atahualpa in Cajamarca in , and then executed the Inca king.
Spanish troops finally arrived in Cusco in November and installed Manco Inca Yupanqui son of Huayna Capac as the new puppet ruler. In , Pizarro founded the city of Lima as the capital of his newly conquered territories. From the Paracas culture emerged the mysterious Nazca. The Nazca people were the architects of the incredible Nazca lines. The lines are a series of drawings across over 50 miles of the southern Peruvian desert, called geoglyphs.
These drawings include the famous monkey, spider, bird, and waving human figure, as well as several other smaller lines and drawings. The drawings are huge, large enough that they can only be made out vaguely from viewing towers. They are best deciphered from the air, which is where the mystery arises. The waving figure is particularly mysterious; who was it created to wave at? A Peruvian tour should include the Nazca lines, so travelers may form their own opinions.
As the Nazca and other coinciding civilizations began to disappear, the mighty Inca rose in Peru. Cuzco remained the military and political center of the Incas as it began to expand. In less than a century, the Incan Empire stretched from Colombia all the way down to northwest Argentina. The seat of the Incan emperor, Cuzco became the richest city in the Americas. It was built in the shape of a jaguar, and travelers to Peru can still walk the outline for themselves. The Incas were successful in their expansion, obviously because of great military skill and planning, but also because they incorporated the best aspects of each culture they conquered into their own.
Peaceful assimilations were common; emissaries would be sent to outside rulers, who would acquiesce and send their children to Cuzco to be educated. Francisco Pizarro landed on the Pacific shores of the Ecuadorian region in , when his arrival coincided with the end of a destabilizing civil war between two Incan rulers.
He and his retinue assassinated Atahualpa see Ecuador article and easily took the northern region of the empire. Pizarro continued south to Cuzco and sacked the city.
The Incas continued to fight fiercely for several years; the lost city of Machu Picchu was one of their last strongholds. The Spanish rule had already begun. The Incas disappeared as their cities were destroyed, and smallpox and other European diseases swept through the region, but they left behind their sublime stonework and architecture.
The jaguar of Cuzco still rears its head, and Machu Picchu rises through the mists with the sun. Recent History Peru remained a Spanish colony through the next few centuries. Even as wars of independence rocked the rest of South America, Peru was a royalist stronghold. It was the last country to gain its independence, in The fledgling country rocked between military rule and political infighting. Peru engaged in war with Chile in the War of the Pacific from , in which they were defeated.
Military coups, political turmoil, and radical reforms characterized the country for the next several decades. A period of stability settled under the presidency of Alberto Fujimori, but he was forced to resign in under accusations of human rights violations and corruption. The current president of Peru is Alejandro Toledo. The president designates the Prime Minister and other members of the Council of Ministers. They were adept metalworkers, capable of producing some rather fine gold pieces, as well as growing potatoes, quinoa and corn and rearing llamas both for their meat and wool.
Kuoda can arrange for your very own personal guide to show you around the site, which is located around miles north of Lima. The Wari, also known as Huari, people occupied the south central Andes and coastal regions of Peru from A. Their capital was located just slightly north of Ayacucho and the well-preserved remnants of it are the end point of a popular eight-day hike along the Cactus Trail.
Kuoda can arrange for you to tour this site, or other Wari sites such as Pikillaqta near Cusco and another recently discovered site near Chiclayo, with a private guide during your customized tour of Peru.
This vast complex is thought to have once been home to a population of up to 40, people. It was built by the Wari civilization, a pan-Andean culture that was later absorbed by the Incas around A. Located just outside the city of Ayacucho, this site showcases the urban planning expertise of these ancient people.
The site covers an area of acres, and interesting discoveries are still being uncovered here, including recently unearthed subterranean galleries, mausoleums with human remains and astronomical tables — proving there is still much to be learned about this culture. Back in the s, Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello began excavating and studying a huge oceanside ruin on the Paracas Peninsula, introducing the world to yet another fascinating ancient Peruvian culture.
Of all the many things unearthed here, there was one type of object that caught the public imagination more than any other: elongated human skulls.
The discovery spurred much speculation as to their origin, and whispers began of possible extra-terrestrial findings, though most scientists concluded these unusually shaped heads were the result of a binding technique used on babies while their skulls were still pliable.
Besides the elongated skulls, other artifacts including ceramics and stone tools were uncovered, revealing the Paracas to have been fishing people with an intricate knowledge of water systems and irrigation, as well as being well-practiced in textile art. If you are interested in finding out more about the Paracas people during your tour of Peru, make a beeline for the Paracas History Museum. The Regional Museum of Ica also contains a large collection of the aforementioned stretched-out skulls.
Between B. Picking up where the Paracas people before them had left off, they were skilled craftsmen and produced highly refined and intricate textiles and ceramics, using at least 15 different colors to paint their pottery. Like the Paracas, they also practiced fishing, supplementing their food source by rearing llamas and with crops such as maize, squash and sweet potatoes — all still mainstays in modern-day Peruvian agriculture.
The Nazca people also built underground aqueduct systems that still function today — a testament to their enduring quality — and used coca and the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus for spiritual ceremonies. This series of etchings in the Nazca Desert are a world-famous UNESCO-listed attraction, though the purpose behind them still causes a lot of head-scratching among experts. Early Peruvians were responsible for cave paintings at Toquepala Tacna, B. Experts say that recent analysis of findings at the coastal site Caral, in the Supe Valley, demonstrates the existence of the earliest complex civilization in the Americas.
The city was inhabited as many as 4, years ago, 1, years earlier than once believed. A long line of equally advanced cultures preceded the relatively short-lived Inca Empire. Over several thousand years, civilizations up and down the south Pacific coast and deep in the highlands developed ingenious irrigation systems, created sophisticated pottery and weaving techniques, and built great pyramids, temples, fortresses, and cities of adobe.
Early peoples constructed mysterious cylindrical towers and the even more enigmatic Nazca Lines, giant drawings of animals and symbols somehow etched into the desert plains for eternity. Over the course of nearly 15 centuries, pre-Inca cultures settled principally along the Peruvian coast and highlands. Around B. By the 1st century B. Another important advance was the specialization of labor, aided in large part by the development of a hierarchical society. The ceremonial center, a place of pilgrimage, contained wondrous examples of religious carving, such as the Tello Obelisk and the Raimondi Stella.
The temple demonstrates evidence of sophisticated engineering and division of labor. A subsequent society, the Paracas culture B. It is renowned today for its superior textile weaving, considered perhaps the finest example of pre-Columbian textiles in the Americas. The Paracas peoples were sophisticated enough to dare to practice trepanation, a form of brain surgery that consisted of drilling holes in the skull to cure various ailments and correct cranial deformation.
You can see fine examples of Paracas textiles and ceramics at the Julio C. Tello Museum in Paracas. The Classical period A. Likely descendants of the Paracas, the Moche and Nazca cultures are among the best studied in pre-Columbian Peru. The Moche or Mochica civilization A. Moche pottery, produced from molds, contains vital clues to their way of life, down to very explicit sexual representations.
Its frank depictions of phalluses, labia, and nontraditional bedroom practices might strike some visitors as pre-Columbian pornography. The best spot to view the extraordinary in all senses of the word ceramics of the Moche is the Rafael Larco Herrera Museum in Lima.
The Nazca culture A. Nazca engineers created outstanding underground aqueducts, which permitted agriculture in one of the most arid regions on Earth, and its artisans introduced polychrome techniques in pottery. But the civilization is internationally known for the enigmatic Nazca Lines , geometric and animal symbols etched indelibly into the desert, elements of an agricultural and astronomical calendar that are so vast that they can only really be appreciated from the window of an airplane.
The Huari also spelled Wari culture A. Along with the Tiahuanaco people, with whom they shared a central god figure, the Huari came to dominate the Andes, with an empire spreading all the way to Chile and Bolivia. Both cultures achieved superior agricultural technology in the form of canal irrigation and terraces.
Though Peru is likely to be forever synonymous with the Incas, who built the spectacular city of Machu Picchu high in the Andes and countless other great palaces and temples, the society was merely the last in a long line of pre-Columbian cultures. The Inca Empire was relatively short-lived, but it remains the best documented of all Peruvian civilizations. Though the height of its power lasted for little more than a century, the Inca Empire extended throughout the Andes, all the way from present-day Colombia down to Chile -- a stretch of more than 5,km 3, miles.
At its apex, the Inca Empire's reach was longer than even that of the Romans. The Incas were a naturalistic and ritualistic people who worshiped the sun god Inti and the earth goddess Pachamama, as well as the moon, thunder, lightning, and the rainbow, all regarded as deities.
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