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| Ica |
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| Desert Cultures |
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In Ica, Andean man from the Coast changed
the constraints of the desert into life-giving opportunities
through enhanced knowledge and technology that allowed
him to make the best possible use of harsh water and
weather conditions. Also, the art of these people flooded
the monotonous landscape with color and profound enigmas.
Ica, the department capital, located 300 km south of
Lima and 104 km north of Nazca, can be reached along
the Pan- American highway. The region can be visited
throughout the year, because its warm weather (an annual
average of 24°C) is amazingly bright and stable.
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| Tambo de Mora Pyramids |
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In the valley of Chincha (200 km south
of Lima), we find Centinela Tambo de Mora, a series
of pyramidal mounds, mostly from the Late Intermediate
period.
All the mounds are built with large blocks, except in
the Inca section, where they were made with rectangular
adobe bricks. The four roads departing from this site
seem to have had a ceremonial character and served to
communicate with other settlements in the valley.
The archeological compound, extending over a surface
of approximately 400 by 1 000 meters was probably the
capital of the Chinchas, a coastal civilization reputed
for its remarkable commercial and sailing skills. |
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| The Inca’s Residence at Tambo
Colorado |
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Situated at only 566 masl and about 50 km
from the coast, halfway between the Coast and the Highlands,
this important archeological site is the most representative
Inca settlement on the Peruvian coast.
Tambo Colorado (250 km north from Lima) was probably the
Inca and his retinue’s residence in the central
plains region. A large trapezoidal square enclosed by
four walls with niches features platforms and benches
to the south and west. Noteworthy is the small ushnu platform
to the west that was used during Inca times for rituals.
Also outstanding in the residential sector to which restricted
access may be gained trough a double-threshold entrance
gate (3 300 square meters). Inside, a series of rooms
lies separated by courtyards and hall ways, two of which
include ponds built with Cusco style carved stones.
Several rooms in this area are closed by painted fences
(red, white and yellow), while some separating walls exhibit
triangular and crenellated decoration.
Evidence of niches and trapezoid windows at different
levels are accompanied by the remains of friezes depicting
figures made of painted and high-relief mud decorations. |
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| Paracas Cemeteries |
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Paracas (235 km south of Lima) is known
for the beauty of the natural scenery, the richness of
its funeral ritual, the quality of its textiles, and its
advanced knowledge of surgery dating back to 2 500 years
ago. Almost 60% of the patients who underwent cranial
trepanations are estimated to have survived the operation.
In 1 925, Peruvian archeologist Julio C. Tello unearthed
the first remains of the Paracas civilization. Their splendid
fabrics- witnessing to a rich magical vision of this civilization’s
social life- were woven in cotton, the wool of South American
ruminants or a mix of both, and decorated with brightly
colored embroideries in woolen thread. One of the most
frequent characters is depicted as a line drawing of bird-and
feline-like human beings holding a scepter, severed heads,
arrows, plants and various emblems.
It is variously represented in standing and flying position,
looking straight ahead or to the side. The oldest Paracas
human remains date back to at least 5 000 years BC, attesting
to impressively continuos human habitation in an oasis
and desert environment that seems to have changed little
in thousands of years. Around approximately 400 BC The
peninsula started to look like a gigantic cemetery. Generation
after generation buried their dead in the desert sand,
thus turning the area into a land of the dead. Tombs were
dug deep in the shape of a bottle. A large underground
chamber that could hold 30 to 40 individuals wrapped in
fabrics was accessed through a long and narrow well. This
configuration is at the origin of the Paracas Caverns
name given to this stage of their evolution.
Hundreds of these burials were found by Tello in the 1
920s, fundamentally in the Cerro Colorado zone, near the
present day Paracas site museum.
Towards 200 AD, funeral habits changed. At this new stage-
Paracas Necropolis- the grouped individuals were interred
at a lesser depth, frequently among the garbage in houses
of former occupations, although always in funerary bundles
wrapped in textiles, located one next to the other. Wari
Kayan and Cabeza Larga, cemeteries of this type, provide
many of the best evidence of textile art and pre-Hispanic
surgery. The fabrics wrapping the buried corpses, a product
of their creative work, were made of cotton using natural
dyes.
They are one of the most outstanding achievements of Andean
techniques and aesthetics. During its complex history,
the peninsula became also attractive for the inhabitants
of neighboring regions. Pottery found in the Paracas Necropolis
burials, specially the most recent one, shows a series
of cultural patterns originated in the immediately neighboring
valleys, Pisco and Chincha, area of the Topará
culture. |
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| The Nazca Lines |
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Some of the world’s most famous geoglyphs
can be seen in the arid San José plains on the
southern bank of the Ingenio river. On the barren, dry
plain, the Nazcas, but also more recent occupants, carved
geometric figures and animal silhouettes in a gigantic
scale that has not been replicated elsewhere on Earth.
Representations of spiders, humming birds, monkeys, reptiles,
fish and other beings cover more than 1 000 square kilometers,
some around 300 meters long, like the guanay bird (280
meters) and the pelican (285 meters). Among the human
figures, the most enigmatic is that known as the extraterrestrial.
Innumerable figures crisscross the plain, sometimes 30
meters wide and up to 9 km long. How these figures were
made has been explained quite well. The desert is covered
by a reddish film of dirt that has remained stable for
thousands of years thanks to the absence of strong winds
and erosion. Under this cover, the soil is light yellow.
This allowed the Nazcas to draw these large figures on
the plain by simply removing the reddish film, generally
a few centimeters thick, until they achieved a remarkable
effect of light lines over a dark backdrop.
The design of figures at scale does not seem to have been
a substantial problem if we consider that the methods
of using grid patterns to design textile motifs, and laying
out the ground to build temples and canals were arts which
the peoples of Ica had known for long and at which they
excelled.
However, the meaning of these enormous representations
is the subject of ongoing debate. For Maria Reiche, the
German mathematician that studied them for more than 40
years, the lines were a gigantic agricultural and religious
calendar. Others hold that they were just ritual paths.
More recently, some hold that figures were a sort of “hydraulic
map” of the valley. In any case, carving the Nazca
lines was possible only through the joint action of peoples
brought together by religion and faith. |
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Archeology |
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| The Cahuachi Ceremonial Center |
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Nazca (200 BC-900 AD) is the name of one
of the most famous pre-Columbian Andean civilizations.
Reputed around the whole world for its fine pottery and
for the enigmatic lines and figures drawn in the Palpa
and San José plains, this culture saw its first
development in the Río Grande basin, about 400
km south of Lima and many kilometers away from the sea.
Cahuachi spreads over 150 Ha of arid hills and dunes.
The ancient Nazca people built their pyramidal temples
by terracing the fossil sand dunes. In the lowers parts,
smaller architectural mounds, streets and squares give
the site a general city aspect. However, this is a deceiving
appearance because Cahuachi was a ceremonial center, a
sacred destination of Nazca pilgrims between 100 and 500
AD. The ceremonies in the place included the construction
of temples using thousands of conical or wedge adobe bricks.
Each participating community demonstrated their true belonging
to their religious community by singing, dancing and banqueting,
thus explaining why in Cahuachi there is little garbage,
while offerings abound (pan flutes and musical drums,
sacrificed llamas and guinea pigs, fine textiles, human
burials and pottery representing deities). The ceremonial
site, center of the social, political and religious life
of the region, became very busy when the pilgrims arrived
at a scheduled date to then recover its peace under the
care of the priest and a very small care-taking population. |
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Archeology |
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| Defeating the Desert: The Nazca
Puquios |
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The Nazca valley also has evidence of large
hydraulic projects. Taking advantage of the water table,
which was close to the ground, the ancient Nazca developed
an underground filtering gallery system, known as puquios,
to irrigate the areas lacking surface water.
These clever galleries, known as puquios, successfully
met the challenge of hash water conditions in the valley’s
middle sections, a 15 km stripe where water can only be
found underground. The lack of surface water is due to
the fact that the Nazca desert is regularly interrupted
by small valleys made up by the driest rivers of the Pacific.
Coast, which carry water only in the summer and even then
irregularly. In these conditions, simple detouring canals
are useless, because the river and its small tributaries
torn into barren dry courses.
Irrigation ditches are effective when the sloping ground
can take the water where needed by simple gravity, as
in the valleys of northern Peru. But in the southern valleys,
where the slopes are less marked, pre- Hispanic societies
found other technological answers for taking water away
from its natural course and defeated the ongoing threat
of desert, made even worse by the strong winds blowing
in the region.
By means of series of deep wells spaced every 20 meters,
Ica people reached the water table. The wells can still
be seen around. They were communicated by means of a network
of a network of galleries for circulating water. Careful
monitoring of the ditches’ inclination and lining
them with stones to minimize leaks allowed to bring water
to the surface to finally store it in circular reservoirs
or qochas, from which it was transported to the fields
by canals.
To date, 35 puquios have been identified, many of them
still in use. Numerous galleries covered with boulders
and roofed with large stone slabs and huarango tree (Acacia
machracanta) branches are still seen in the area. Also,
every 10 to 20 meters vents permitted air circulation
and the periodical cleaning of the galleries. These were
often built at more than 10 meters of depth over an average
length of 500 meters. An exceptionally long gallery however
reaches 1.5 km long and even runs under a riverbed. |
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