Tag: peru

We thought the Incas couldn’t write. These knots change everything

stormclouds-chainmail:

allthingslinguistic:

learninglinguist:

The Incas may not have bequeathed any written records, but they did have colourful knotted cords. Each of these devices was called a khipu (pronounced key-poo). We know these intricate cords to be an abacus-like system for recording numbers. However, there have also been teasing hints that they might encode long-lost stories, myths and songs too.  

In a century of study, no one has managed to make these knots talk. But recent breakthroughs have begun to unpick this tangled mystery of the Andes, revealing the first signs of phonetic symbolism within the strands. Now two anthropologists are closing in on the Inca equivalent of the Rosetta stone. That could finally crack the code and transform our understanding of a civilisation whose history has so far been told only through the eyes of the Europeans who sought to eviscerate it.

I’ve been loosely following developments in research about khipus since reading about them in an obscure paragraph in the back of my high school history textbook and every time I read more about them, it’s more and more exciting. 

The full article is fascinating. Here’s another excerpt: 

Earlier this year, Hyland even managed to read a little of the khipus. When deciphering anything, one of the most important steps is to work out what information might be repeated in different places, she says. Because the Collata khipus were thought to be letters, they probably encoded senders and recipients. That is where Hyland started. She knew from the villagers that the primary cord of one of the khipus contained ribbons representing the insignia of one of two clan leaders.

She took a gamble and assumed that the ribbons referred to a person known as Alluka, pronounced “Ay-ew-ka”. She also guessed that the writer of this letter might have signed their name at the end, meaning that the last three pendant cords could well represent the syllables “ay”, “ew” and “ka”.

Assuming that was true, she looked for cords on the second khipu that had the same colour and were tied with the same knot as the ones she had tentatively identified on the first khipu. It turned out that the first two of the last three cords matched, which gave “A-ka”. The last was unknown. It was a golden-brown fibre made from the hair of a vicuna, an alpaca-like animal. Hyland realised that the term for this hue in the local Quechua language is “paru”. And trying this alongside the other syllables gave, with a little wiggle room, “Yakapar”. That, it turned out, was the name of another of the lineages involved in the revolt that these khipus recorded.

“We know from the written testimony that one of the khipus was made by a member of the Yakapar clan and sent to Collata, and we think this is it,” she says. Hyland claims that the Collata khipus show that the cords really do hold narratives.

Yet even if she is right, it is possible these later khipus were influenced by contact with Spanish writing. “My feeling is that the phoneticisation, if it’s there, is a reinvention of khipus,” says Urton. Equally, the Collata khipus might be a regional variation. Possibly even a one-off.

Hyland is the first to admit that we don’t understand the link between these khipus and those dating from before the Spanish arrived. That doesn’t make them any less interesting though. “Even if these later khipus were influenced by the alphabet, I still think it’s mind-blowing that these people developed this tactile system of writing,” she says.

She will spend the next two years doing more fieldwork in Peru, attempting to decipher the Collata khipus and looking for similar examples elsewhere.

Read the whole thing. 

I first learnt about khipus in the 1980s. They’re used as a written record in the kids series The Mysterious Cities Of Gold which is from the early to mid eighties.

We thought the Incas couldn’t write. These knots change everything

iehudit:

lanibgoode:

iehudit:

nose ornament with spiders
salinar culture (peru), c.100 BC – 200 AD, gold

the problem is that there’s no sense of scale in these pictures. i would love to see it on a mannequin head or something, just to see how big (or small!) it would be on a human’s nose

well, since u ask, u can look up the scale: this one in particular is about 4 3/8 inches wide and 2 inches in height, so it when worn this would at its longest point cover the length of approx the distance between the outer corners of each eye. the ornament would hang over the mouth but not all of the chin. these pre-columbian ornaments were stately and quite large compared to most our familiar contemporary septum nose rings.

Source: neshamama

tlatollotl:

Feathered Panel

Date: A.D. 600–900

Geography: Peru, Churunga Valley

Culture: Wari

The discovery of an ancient burial or ceremonial site in the upriver region of the Churunga Valley, in far south Peru, received little attention in the turbulent world of 1943. Decades later, it would take two generations of Andean scholars to painstakingly piece together the puzzling story of this discovery, which included the largest and most spectacular find of Precolumbian Peruvian feather work to date.

Protected from decay by being rolled, placed into large ceramic jars, and buried in the arid soil, the cache included an estimated ninety-six panels, each densely covered with tens of thousands of small glossy macaw body feathers, primarily from the blue and yellow macaw (Ara ararauna). Although these panels were found in the dry western foothills of the Andes, the birds’ home is the Amazonian rainforest, far to the east. The effort required to secure such a mind-bogglingly large supply of either feathers or live birds suggests that colorful feathers were highly valued.

The panels are of roughly similar dimensions, and the majority feature alternating rectangles of blue and yellow feathers, which came from the macaw’s dorsal and ventral sides, respectively. The panels have a woven heading tape, and most also include braided cords that hang from the narrow sides. Although the cords suggest that these works were meant to be secured to some kind of structure, their actual function remains frustratingly illusive.

Christine Giuntini, Conservator, 2016

References
Bird, Junius B. 1958. Art of Ancient Peru: Selected Works from the Collection. Checklist with commentary of an exhibition at the Museum of Primitive Art, Feb 19–May 18, 1958. New York: Museum of Primitive Art. (unpaginated)

King, Heidi. 2013. “The Wari Feathered Panels from Corral Redondo, Churunga Valley: A Re-examination of Context.” Ñawpa Pacha, Journal of Andean Archaeology 33 (1): 23–42.

The Met

In Peru’s Deserts, Melting Glaciers Are a Godsend (Until They’re Gone)

rjzimmerman:

A 30-year-old photograph taken from a nearby location was placed on the path to the Pastoruri glacier in Áncash, Peru, showing how far the ice has retreated. Credit: Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Excerpt:

The desert blooms now. Blueberries grow to the size of Ping-Pong balls in nothing but sand. Asparagus fields cross dunes, disappearing over the horizon.

The desert produce is packed and shipped to places like Denmark and Delaware. Electricity and water have come to villages that long had neither. Farmers have moved here from the mountains, seeking new futures on all the irrigated land.

It might sound like a perfect development plan, except for one catch: The reason so much water flows through this desert is that an icecap high up in the mountains is melting away.

And the bonanza may not last much longer.

“If the water disappears, we’d have to go back to how it was before,” said Miguel Beltrán, a 62-year-old farmer who worries what will happen when water levels fall. “The land was empty and people went hungry.”

In this part of Peru, climate change has been a blessing — but it may become a curse. In recent decades, accelerating glacial melt in the Andes has enabled a gold rush downstream, contributing to the irrigation and cultivation of more than 100,000 acres of land since the 1980s.

Yet the boon is temporary. The flow of water is already declining as the glacier vanishes, and scientists estimate that by 2050 much of the icecap will be gone.

The glaciers are the source of water for much of the coast during Peru’s dry season, which extends from May to September. But the icecap of the Cordillera Blanca, long a supply of water for the Chavimochic irrigation project, has shrunk by 40 percent since 1970 and is retreating at an ever-faster rate. It is currently receding by about 30 feet a year, scientists say.

Farmers along the 100-mile watershed that winds its way from the snowcapped peaks to the desert dunes say they are already feeling the effects of the change.

The retreat of the icecap has exposed tracts of heavy metals, like lead and cadmium, that were locked under the glaciers for thousands of years, scientists say. They are now leaking into the ground water supply, turning entire streams red, killing livestock and crops, and making the water undrinkable.

A team of glacier researchers walking in Cordillera Blanca, Peru. The temperature at the site of the glaciers rose between 0.5 and 0.8 degrees Celsius between the 1970s and early 2000s. Credit: Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Sand dunes near agricultural lands in Viru Valley, Peru. Credit: Tomas Munita for The New York Times

In Peru’s Deserts, Melting Glaciers Are a Godsend (Until They’re Gone)

The Norte Chico civilization had large edifices, textiles, organized government, and music, but no visual art (unlike seemingly every other civilization and culture). What are the current leading theories on why there is no visual art? • r/AskHistorians

tlatollotl:

Answer by /u/CommodoreCoCo

This is a simple question, but it ties to a huge theoretical discussion in Andean Archaeology. So…

First let’s narrow the question to something more tangible. What does visual art mean in the pre-Columbian Andes? Art historians most typically focus on three traditions: pottery, textiles, and sculpture.

  • Textiles can preserve for thousands of years if the environment is both dry and unexposed enough, and we have a few examples of textiles from the desert Norte Chico region. Cotton was actually one of the first cultivated crops on Peru’s north coast, alongside other utilitarian plants like gourds. Though we don’t have elaborately decorated textiles like we see in later periods in the same area, it’s no stretch to assume they existed: a few of the known samples retain traces of dye. Additionally, the Chinchorro culture on the south coast mummified their dead with dyed and embroidered fabrics thousands of years before the Norte Chico centers coalesced.
  • Ceramics preserve much longer than textiles in a variety of conditions. However, the Norte Chico sites date to the the Late Preceramic (or Archaic) period, that is, they predate the earliest known pottery in the Andes. So much (some might say too much) of our archaeological methods relate to ceramics in that this hinders both our ability to identify “visual art” and our understanding of many larger sociocultural phenomena. (“But how could they have had pyramids without ceramics? I know my Civ V tech tree!” more on that later…)
  • Stone sculpture and rock art is likewise unknown during the Late Archaic. The earliest examples of free-standing lithic art are at Cerro Sechin, whose monuments are covered in images of disembodied heads, captives, and warriors. The site is not far from the Norte Chico, but dates to the end of the Archaic period around 1500 BC. The most notable early lithic traditions, such as that at Chavin, are associated with powerful centralized hierarchies and single-event constructions. Chavin’s temple was modified and expanded over time, but in distinct sections. Most Late Archaic monuments were built over time in a series of small building and feasting events. Any authority was ephemeral and constantly needed to be reasserted- carved monoliths would not be part of such a process.

Thus the quick and boring answer to your question is “We haven’t found any.” Any further reason presupposes that they “should” have visual art- and why should they? The obvious answer is “Because everyone else with monumental architecture, textiles, government, and music did!” In any other answer I’d explain why that’s dumb and move on. But the scholarship around the Norte Chico is a special case- so it’s your lucky day! Here’s CoCo’s History of Archaeological Theory 101TM

Thinking that the Norte Chico should have visual art is a relic of early anthropologists that sought to categorize societies into progressive evolutionary stages based on their technological achievements. Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society most famously defined three main stages of Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization: Norte Chico would be an easy fit for this definition of Civilization. As anthropologists started actually doing research, they realized this was crap: cultures didn’t develop the same across the globe. This new cultural-historical school replaced Morgan’s evolutionary thought at the turn of the century. It focused on defining and describing specific cultures at specific points in time, assuming archaeology could do little more. In the ‘60s archaeologists started flirting with these fancy things called “science” and “technology.” Maybe, they thought, this New Archaeology was capable of much more than making up cultures to give potsherds to. Maybe, even, it could describe process across time! Thus was born Processual Archaeology. While archaeology was forever changed by the new emphasis on scientific data collection, the Processualists, like Leslie White and Kent Flannery, also (re)introduced a neo-evolutionary perspective. Instead of classifying “savages” and “barbarians,” they focused on the development of sociopolitical complexity from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to states. It avoided the pejorative terminology and sense of moral progress associated with Morgan, but it continued a fallacy of similarity. Adhering to categories of tribes and chiefdoms caused people to look for tribes and chiefdoms. Once you’ve identified a chiefdom, you can then extrapolate other things about how that society worked… except that’s not how cultures work. Once more, in the ‘80s, younger archaeologists had to remind everyone that cultures were unique and special in their own way. That paradigm shift is now so long ago that calling yourself “post-processual” is passé.

Academic discussion of the Late Archaic in the Norte Chico region is contentious because the preeminent scholars remain staunch processualists. Elsewhere in the Andes, archaeologists are asking what critics call “microfocused” questions of social identity, power formation, social collapse, foodways, trade networks, craft production, etc. These are essentially synchronic questions, that is, ones that look at interactions between different co-existing groups, with descriptive answers. Processualism looks at diachronic questions, that is, ones that compare the same group at different times, with categorical answers. The literature is filled with words like “emergence” and “complexity.” To a critic like myself, and most anyone else who attended school in the 80s or later, the scholars at Caral, Supe, Cerro Lampay, and other Late Archaic sites are not looking to describe the sites on their own terms but to determine if they are a “civilization” or “complex” yet. A 2007 paper by Haas and Creamer, for instance, was rightly met with criticism from many Andeanists, and has since distanced them from working in the region. Ostensibly the study hoped to inform our knowledge of “where Andean civilization began,” itself a question post-processualists would never ask. It was limited, however, to an extensive survey of the Norte Chico and neighboring regions to collect soil core samples and calculate the dates for various sites. From just the settlement distribution and dates, the authors hoped to rewrite the sociopolitical development of the region and identify which things were “complex,” and maybe even which groups of sites were a “civilization.” The authors do use the term “complex” self-critically, but still hold to the idea that:

the civilizations of the six world areas [Mesopotamia, Egypt, Incia, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes] underwent similar processes of change and eventually converged on similar levels of cultural complexity, but their paths and histories were unique

Just how two areas, let alone six, can have unique histories but similar processes of change is beyond me. The authors follow this with a brief survey of what the process is: hunter gatherer -> agriculturalists -> cities -> multi-site polities. That there even is a unidirectional process at all is questionable; that the process has distinct stages even more so. As I’ve mentioned, once you put something in a category the tendency is to look for things in it that other members of the category have. This approach has tainted research in the Norte Chico. People see monuments and assume there must have been some form of centralized power. If there is power, then the society must be later in that process, and probably has other things like organized religion or specialized labor. But if you look for the people or site that had that power, you’ll most likely find it- even if other intensive excavations don’t fit with your model of centralized power. Yay confirmation bias.

So that’s the can of worms your question can open up.

TL;DR They didn’t have visual art because we haven’t found any. There’s no reason to suppose they should have had any. Unfortunately, most archaeologists don’t like the ones working in the region because their theory and methods are 55 years out of date.

The Norte Chico civilization had large edifices, textiles, organized government, and music, but no visual art (unlike seemingly every other civilization and culture). What are the current leading theories on why there is no visual art? • r/AskHistorians