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The Peoples And Civilizations Of The Americas Author: Michael Adas Date: 1992
The Andean World
The rise of civilization in South America paralleled many of the processes in Mesoamerica, but it was also conditioned by the specific geographical features of that continent. The Andean world presented to men and women a peculiar geography of complex microregions with extreme changes in altitude and temperature. The narrow and arid strip on the western coast, cut by a few rivers that flow to the Pacific, gives way quickly to the high Andes where some peaks rise to over 15,000 feet. Between the two major chains of the Andes lie high valleys and steppes, or puna, that form the highlands, or altiplano. On these cool uplands (usually above 10,000 feet) the land is relatively level and there is adequate water. Here potatoes and maize could be grown and the puna provided good grazing for llamas and alpacas, the "sheep of the Andes." Andean populations concentrated here or down on the arid coast in the river valleys that made irrigation possible. On the eastern slopes of the Andes a number of large rivers run down into the tropical rain forest concentrated at the basins of the Amazon and La Plata rivers. This is the humid montana, where tropical fruits and coca leaf can be obtained.
This rugged topography imposed limitations and created opportunities for civilization to develop. The arid coastal valleys demanded irrigation, and this spurred population growth and social complexity. Irrigation projects were enormous, involving miles of canals and ditches and requiring constant maintenance and construction. Did the need for irrigation create the state, or did irrigation result from the formation of centralized authority? Scholars disagree, but it is clear that once formed, a major function of the coastal states was to irrigate. In the highlands, irrigation and terracing increased the food supply in regions where the amount of arable land was limited. Populations concentrated in the fertile valleys but were separated from each other by steep mountains. Trade and communication were difficult. It took large and well-organized projects to build roads, bridges, and agricultural terraces. The reasons for state building were good. The warfare, military images, and trophy heads seen in much ancient Peruvian art represent a world of limited resources and competition.
Recall that, in the Andean world, sharp vertical changes created microclimates within relatively short distances. Peoples and even individual communities or families strove to control a number of ecological zones where different kinds of crops could be raised. A community might reside in the altiplano growing potatoes and quinoa, an Andean grain, but could also have fields in lower valleys to grow maize, pastures miles away at a higher elevation for their llamas, and even an outer colony in the montana to provide cotton, coca, and other tropical products. In fact, access to a variety of these ecological zones by colonization, occupation, conquest, or trade seems to have been a constant feature in Andean life that determined pre-Columbian patterns of settlement and influenced the historical development of the Andean world.
Early Developments And The Rise Of Chavin
Much of early Andean history fits a pattern of alternation between periods of decentralization, in which various local or regional centers developed distinctive cultures, and periods when one of these centers seems to have spread its control over very large areas, establishing a cultural horizon under centralized authority. Between 3000 and 2000 B.C. permanent agricultural villages were established in both the Andean highlands and on the arid Pacific coast. Maize was introduced from Mesoamerica and was grown along with indigenous crops such as the potato. By about 2700 B.C., pottery was produced, first on the north coast in present-day Ecuador and then in the highlands of central Peru. This early pottery, called Valdivia ware, indicates advanced techniques of production. It is remarkably similar to Japanese Jomon-period ceramics, and this has led some scholars to hypothesize a transpacific contact by Japanese fishermen. Whatever the origins of pottery in the region, the presence of sedentary agriculture, ceramics, weaving, and permanent villages marked a level of productivity that was soon followed by evidence of political organization. Early sites, such as El Paraiso on the Peruvian coast, contain monumental buildings of great size, but we know little of the societies that built them.
Between 1800 and 1200 B.C. ceremonial centers with large stone buildings were constructed both in the highlands and on the coast. Pottery was now widely distributed; the domestication of the llama had taken place; and agriculture had become more complex, with evidence of simple irrigation at some places. The most important of these centers was Chavin de Huantar (850-250 B.C.) in the Peruvian highlands. Chavin contained a number of large temple platforms and adobe and stone constructions. Its craftsmen worked in ceramics, textiles, and gold. Chavin culture was characterized by artistic motifs that were widely diffused through much of the Andean region and seem to represent a cult or a system of religious beliefs. Jaguars, snakes, birds of prey, and humans with feline characteristics were used as decorations, often along with scenes of war and violence.
The artistic style was so widely diffused that archeologists refer to this epoch as a horizon, a period when there seems to have been a broad central authority that integrated a widely dispersed region. In truth, we do not know if the religion of Chavin was spread by conquest, trade, or missionary activity, nor do we know its origins. It does have some remarkable stylistic similarities with Olmec art in Mesoamerica; some archeologists have pointed out certain tropical features in both and have suggested the Amazonian lowlands as a possible point of origin for both traditions.
The evidence of warfare in early Peruvian agricultural societies may indicate a general process. With the development of intensive agriculture and a limited amount of arable land, the organization of irrigation and the creation of political authority and eventually states that could mobilize to protect or expand available land, was a vital necessity.
Regional Cultures And A New Horizon
By 300 B.C. Chavin was in decline, and whatever unity the widely spread Chavin style indicated was lost. The Andean world was now characterized by regional centers, each with its own cultural and artistic traditions. This was a period without political unity, but it produced some of the Andean world's finest art. Irrigated agriculture producing a wide variety of crops, the domestication of llamas and related animals, dense populations, and hierarchical societies could be found in a number of places. Some societies, such as Nazca on the south coast and Moche to the north, produced remarkable pottery and weaving.
Nazca weaving reached a high point for the Americas. Discovery in the 1920s of a group of richly dressed mummies at Paracas near Nazca revealed the artistic accomplishments of these ancient weavers. Over 100 colors were used and many techniques of weaving and cloth types were produced; designs were often abstract. The plain near Nazca is also the scene of great figures of various animals, which cover many hundreds of feet and can only be seen from the air. There are also great straight lines or paths that cut across the plain and seem to be oriented toward distant mountains or celestial points. Why these lines and designs were drawn is unknown.
The Mochica state (A.D., 200-700), in the Moche valley and on the coast to the north of Chavin, mobilized workers to construct great clay-brick temples, residences, and platforms. Artisans produced gold and silver jewelry and copper tools. The potters' art reached a high point; scenes on Mochica ceramics depict rulers receiving tribute and executing prisoners. Nobles, priests, farmers, soldiers, and slaves are also portrayed in remarkably lifelike ways; many vessels are quite clearly portraits of individual members of the elite. The Mochica also produced a great number of extremely explicit pottery vessels showing a variety of sexual activities. These scenes are almost always in a domestic setting and indicate descriptions of everyday life rather than ritual unions.
Moche expanded its control by conquest. Mochica art contains many representations of war, prisoners, and taking heads as trophies. There is also archeological evidence of hilltop forts and military posts. Politically, Moche and the other regional states seem to have been military states or chiefdoms, supported by extensive irrigated agriculture and often at war.
Some idea of life in Moche society has been spectacularly revealed with the discovery in 1988 of the tomb of a warrior-priest. Buried with retainers, servants, and his dog, this nobleman was covered with gold, silver, and copper ornaments, fine cloth, and jewelry. The scenes depicted on these objects and in the pottery buried with him include scenes of captive prisoners, ritual sacrifice, and warfare.
This pattern of regional development continued until about A.D. 300 when two large centers, Tihuanaco on the shores of Lake Titicaca and Huari, farther to the north in southern Peru, began to emerge as large states. How much centralized political control they exerted is unclear, but as in the earlier case of Chavin, the religious symbols and artistic style associated with these centers became widely diffused in the Andean world, creating perhaps a second or Intermediate Horizon (c. A.D. 300-900) roughly contemporary with the classic Maya and Teotihuacan in Mesoamerica.
Tihuanaco was an urban ceremonial center with a population of perhaps 40,000, supported by extensive irrigated agriculture. Recent archeological work has revealed an extensive system of raised fields, irrigated by canals, that could produce high yields. Tihuanaco's inhabitants probably spoke Aymara, the language of the southern Andes that is spoken today in Bolivia. The art style of Tihuanaco and representations of its gods, especially the Staff God, spread all over the southern Andean zone.
In typical Andean fashion, Tihuanaco extended its political control through colonies as far away as Chile and the eastern Andean slopes in order to assure access to fish, coca, and tropical plants - the products of different ecological zones. Huari may have begun as a colony of Tihuanaco, but it eventually exercised wide influence over much of the North Andean zone. While the period of its control was relatively short, the urban area of Huari eventually covered over six square miles and its influence was spread by the construction of a system of roads.
The Intermediate Horizon, represented by Tihuanaco and Huari, came to an end in the 9th century A.D., about the same time as the end of the classic period in Mesoamerica. Whether these two processes were connected remains unknown. With the decline of these expansive cultures in Peru another period of regional development followed as different peoples, especially those along the coast, sought to establish control over their neighbors. The Chimu state on the north coast, based on its magnificent capital city of Chau, eventually controlled over 600 miles of the coastal zone.
The Chimu state, founded about A.D. 800, was still expanding when it fell to the Incas in 1465. In this period other small states had formed. From Lake Titicaca westward to the Pacific coast, the Lupacqa created a kingdom. On the eastern margins of the lake and into the rich valleys on the eastern slope of the Andes other small chiefdoms formed. Meanwhile, in the highlands various ethnic groups were struggling for control of their neighbors. One of these, a group of Quechua-speaking clans, or ayllus, took control of the highlands around Cuzco and began to expand, especially after A.D. 1400. These were the Incas, who were in the midst of creating a new horizon of centralized control and considerable cultural influence over the various ethnic and linguistic groups of the Andean world from Ecuador to Chile, when the Europeans arrived in 1532.
Andean Lifeways
Although it is difficult to reconstruct much of the social and political organization of early Andean societies on the basis of archeological evidence, by using later observations from Inca times along with archeological materials we can identify some characteristic features. We have already spoken of verticality, or the control of a number of economic niches at different altitudes, as a principle of Andean life. This control and related self-sufficiency was sometimes the objective of states, but it was also the goal of families and communities. Kin groups were another constant of the Andean world.
Andean peoples were divided into ethnic groups and spoke a number of languages, although Aymara came to predominate in the Bolivian highlands and the Incas later spread Quechua from the central Andes to the coast and north to Ecuador. Despite ethnic and linguistic differences, communities were generally composed of households, which together recognized some form of kinship. These kinship units, or ayllus, traced descent from some common, sometimes mythical ancestor and they referred to other members of the ayllu as brother and sister. People usually married within their ayllu. The ayllu assigned each household land and access to herds and water to each household. But rights and access were not equal for every household or family within an ayllu. Ayllus were often divided into halves, which might have different functions or roles. This was a form of organization the peoples of the highland civilizations shared with many tribes of the Amazonian forests.
There were also community leaders and ayllu chiefs, or curacas, with privileges of dress and access to resources. Groups of ayllus sharing a similar dialect, customs and distinctive dress were bound together into ethnic groups, and sometimes a number of these were forged into a state. The ties of kinship were used to mobilize the community for cooperative labor and war. The ayllu was a basic organization, and kinship provided an understanding of the cooperation and conflict from the village to the empire. Some authors have suggested that, even in the large states, conflicts were more often between ayllus or groups of ayllus than between secondary social classes.
The principle of reciprocity that lay beneath the cooperative organization of he ayllu infused much Andean social life. Reciprocal obligations existed at many levels - within the family between men and women, between households within the ayllu, and between the curacas who were expected to represent the interests of the ayllus. Eventually, in theory at least, reciprocity also existed between communities and a large state such as Huari, which in return for labor and tribute was expected to provide access to goods or to mobilize large projects, such as irrigation or terracing, that would benefit the community. Reciprocity also infused religious belief. Andean peoples lived in a world where sacred spirits and powers, or huacas, were apparent in caves, mountains, rocks, rivers, and other natural phenomena. Worship of the huacas and of the mummies of ancestors (which were also considered holy and part of Andean religious life), at least from the Nazca period, was a matter of reciprocal exchange as well.
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