ANDEAN STATES

1
CHAPTER 22 ANDEAN STATES The Maritime Foundations
of Andean Civilization Western slopes of the
Andean mountains are among the world's driest
deserts.

• Richest fishery in the Americas hugs the Pacific
  coast.
• Maritime resources of the Pacific coast provided
  enough calories to support sedentary populations.
• Fishing, as opposed to agriculture, may have
  been the basis for these state-organized
  societies.
• Cultivation requires controlling the water runoff
  from the Andes by building large irrigation
  canals.
• Agriculture became increasingly important in the
  highlands, where a demand for lowland coastal
  resources such as salt, fish, and seaweed would
  have developed.
• The formation of states in both highlands and
  lowlands may have been fostered by continuous
  interchange between coast and interior.

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• Coastal Foundations The Initial Period
• Sedentary villages of several hundred people
  flourished along the north coast between 2500 and
  1800 BC.
• Huaca Prieta, 2500 - 1800 BC.
• Evidence for cotton weaving.
• Period of development of distinctive coastal and
  highland societies

• Caral, 2600 - 2000 BC
• Largest settlement in the Americas in its day.
• Supported by cultivated beans, guavas, peppers,
  cotton, and fruit grown using irrigation
  agriculture.
• Did not yet grow maize or potatoes.
• Anchovies a major dietary staple.
• Site consists of six large stone platforms with
  structures atop them, surrounding a central
  courtyard.
• Platforms built of cobbles in woven bags.
• Little is known about the inhabitants.
• Caral abandoned for unknown reasons between 2000
  and 1500 BC.

3

• Initial Period Centers
• A set of interacting chiefdoms emerged along the
  northern and central parts of the coast after
  1800 BC.
• Trades routes that straddled various
  environmental zones helped spread technology,
  ideology, pottery, and architectural styles over
  large areas.
• Creates a superficial sense of unity that was
  reflected in the widespread use of common art
  motifs.
• El Paraiso, 1800 BC
• Oldest of the U-shaped ceremonial complexes
• Spread of these U-shaped ceremonial centers
  reflects a restructuring of society that
  coincided with major economic change.
• Few signs of occupation around the site, and may
  have been shrines and public precincts rather
  than residential quarters.

4

• Huaca Florida, 1700 BC
• Same building arrangement as at El Paraiso, but
  on a larger scale.
• Lies in the midst of an artificial environment
  created by irrigation agriculture.
• Canals built to divert river water into the
  desert.
• People from dozens of scattered villages came
  together for unknown reasons to build these
  structures.
• Sechin Alto, 1400 BC
• Mound 1000 ft long and 800 ft wide formed the
  base of a huge ceremonial center with sunken
  courts, plazas, and flanking mounds.
• Development of the ceremonial architecture of
  the Andes and on the coast that of artificially
  raising or lowering sacred spaces relative to one
  another.
• Few signs from the burial rituals of any social
  ranking or personal wealth.

5

• The Early Horizon and Chavin de Huantar
• Dating to about 900 BC there was a great
  expansion of indigenous religious beliefs by
  conquest, trade, and colonization - as
  civilizations began.
• Huaricoto, 2000 - 200 BC
• Small ceremonial center in the highlands with
  the same architectural and iconographic style as
  Chavin de Huantar.

• Chavin de Huantar, Central Peru, 850 - 200 BC
• Chavin art style was a "mother culture" for all
  later Andean civilizations.
• Temple area is terraced, with a truncated
  pyramid on the uppermost level.
• Chavin priests "transformed" themselves into
  supernatural jaguars and crested eagles.
• Chavin art reflected the tranformations jaguar
  motifs predominate humans, gods, and animals
  have jaguar-like fangs.
• Animals depicted in the art motifs (jaguars,
  caymans, snakes) are forest animals, suggesting
  the art originated in the tropical forests of the
  Andes.

• Chavin de Huantar was one of the largest and
  most influential centers of its time, but it
  failed to develop into a fully urban
  civilization.
• Remains are primarily a small town and a
  persistent art style and iconography.
• Chavin de Huantar was a coalescence of traits
  from the coast and forest.

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• Paracas Textiles and Coastal Prehistory
• Initial Period and Early Horizon sites are
  remarkable for the fine textiles.
• Animal and plant (especially cotton) fibers were
  plentiful.
• The most spectacular early textiles come from
  cemeteries of mummies at the dry, desolate
  Paracas peninsula, and from the Chinchorro
  culture of southern Peru/northern Chile.
• Mummy wrapping cloths are often perfectly
  preserved, and date to 4500 BC, shortly after
  cotton was cultivated.
• Most of the textiles found in the coastal tombs
  were made on backstrap looms like those still in
  use in Peru today.

7

• Complex Society in the Southern Highlands Chirpa
  and Pukara
• Chiripa, southern shore of Lake Titicaca, 1400 -
  100 BC
• Remained a small village until 1000 BC, when a
  platform mound was built, which would be modified
  many times over the century.
• Carved stone plaques set into the walls depicted
  serpents, animals, and humans in the earliest
  appearance of a stone-carving tradition.
• Chiripa architecture - stepped doorways, sunken
  courts, nichelike windows - are ancestral to the
  later Tiwanaku architectural tradition.

8

• Pukara, 400 BC - AD 100
• Northwest of Lake Titicaca.
• Intensive agriculture using raised fields and
  shallow ponds that filled seasonally and had
  crops planted along its edges as the water dried
  up.

9

• The Early Intermediate Period
• Larger settlements, such as Cerro Arena, covering
  more than a square mile by 200 BC.
• The irrigation projects required much labor to
  construct and maintain.
• The Moche State, 200 BC - AD 700
• Great ceremonial centers, huge irrigation works,
  finely modeled clay pots, and human burials.
• Burials are a prime target for commercial grave
  robbers.
• Sipan
• Recent discovery of undisturbed elite Moche
  tombs dating to AD 400.

10

• Moche warriors went to war specifically to take
  captives.
• Captive's throats were cut, and the warrior
  priest and others would drink the blood of the
  captives as they were dismembered.

• Most of what is known about the Moche comes from
  undisturbed burials and scenes on Moche pots.
• Burials suggest that Moche was a hierarchical
  society of warrior priests, doctors, artisans,
  and the mass of the agricultural population.
• Pots accurately depict what the Moche wore.

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• Moche became expert metal workers, working gold
  and copper into exotic objects.
• Greatest efforts of the Moche people on erecting
  vast monumental temples and platforms.
• Cerro Blance Huaca de la Luna, (Temple of the
  Moon), AD 600
• Temples of the Sun and Moon were massive temples
  in the Moche Valley.
• Moche civilization consisted of ambitious
  irrigation systems linking numerous valleys.

12
Moche civilization existed at the mercy of
droughts and El Nino. Devastating droughts
occurred between AD 564 and 594. El Nino flooded
the capital just before AD 600. An earthquake
struck the Andes between AD 650 and 700, causing
massive landslides and sending large amounts of
silt into the ocean, only to be washed ashore and
blown inland to form huge sand dunes, leading to
damaging sandstorms. Another El Nino also hit
the coast at this time with catastrophic effects,
and Moche civilization collapsed.
13

• The Middle Horizon Tiwanaku and Wari
• Tiwanaku, AD 450 1200, southern side of Lake
  Titicaca
• Fine llama country, and they were expert
  irrigation farmers.
• Tiwanaku was a major population center and the
  economic and religious focus of the region by AD
  450.
• Developed prosperous trade relations around the
  Lake by AD 600.
• Tiwanaku art style was related to the earlier
  iconography found at Pukara.
• Pumas, condors, and anthropomorphic gods.
• Tiwanaku obtained much of its food from large
  community based raised field systems surrounded
  by irrigation canals.
• Tiwanaku inexplicably collapsed in AD 1200.

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• Wari, AD 800
• Featured huge stone walls and numerous dwellings
  that covered many square miles.
• Wari art styles also show Pukara influence.
• Expert traders who probably expanded their
  domain through conquest commercial enterprise,
  and perhaps religious conversion.
• Wari collapsed at the end of the first
  millennium.
• Wari and Tiwanaku were a turning point in
  Peruvian prehistory, when small regional states
  became integrated into much larger political
  units.
• There was constant and intensive interaction
  between the highlands and the lowlands.

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• The Late Intermediate Period Sican and Chimor
  (Chimu)
• Sican, AD 900 - 1100
• Sican filled the political vacuum left by the
  collapse of the Moche.
• Metals of all kind served as markers of social
  status and wealth and as prestigious mediums of
  political, social, and religious expression.
• At centers like Tecume, (AD 1000) they developed
  massive irrigation works using canals that would
  link to other centers.
• El Nino caused wide spread flooding and
  devastation between AD 1050 - 1100.
• In 1375, the expanding Chimu state overthrew
  Sican and absorbed its domain into a new empire.

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• Chimu State, AD 1375 - 1475
• Chimu people built large water storage
  reservoirs and terraced hundreds of miles of
  hillside to control the flow of water down steep
  slopes.
• So effective were the irrigation techniques that
  the Chimu controlled more than 12 river valleys.
• Chan Chan, AD 1400
• Center of the Chimu state
• A huge complex of walled compounds.
• Each compound was the palace of the current
  ruler of Chan Chan.
• The same compound that served as the palace
  during the ruler's lifetime became the ruler's
  burial place after death.

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• Built roadways that moved trade goods and armies
  throughout the empire.
• The Chimu never invented the wheeled cart, so
  trade goods were generally carried on the backs
  of people or llamas.
• Drought and salinized soils led to a dramatic
  drop in crop yields, allowing the Inca to easily
  conquer the Chimu in the 1460's.

18

• The Late Horizon The Inca State
• Inca empire developed from a small scale
  self-sufficient farming society.
• A kin-based society led to their elaborate
  veneration for the dead.
• Earliest Inca rulers were petty war leaders.
• Inca ruler held court at Cuzco
• A leader name Viracocha Inca rose to power at
  the beginning of the 15th century.
• He turned to permanent conquest, and established
  a small kingdom at Cuzco.
• Viracocha Inca became the living god, and
  instituted a number of religious changes designed
  to shore up his political power.

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• Around 1438 Cusi Inca Yupanqui was crowned Inca
  after defeating the Chanca tribe.
• Renamed himself Pachakuti (he who remakes the
  world) and developed a royal ancestor cult.
• A dead ruler was mummified, but not really
  considered dead.
• He would keep all of his possessions, spoken to,
  "fed", and taken from house to house to visit the
  living.
• The new ruler thus had no possessions, and had to
  build his wealth through new conquests.
• System of continued conquest and taxation was
  thus necessary for each new ruler to build
  wealth.
• Rulers had to convince the people that their
  prosperity was dependent upon his.
• Inca developed an efficient means for
  administering their empire.
• Used the leaders of local families to rule the
  conquered people.

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• Age-graded society
• Population census of the empire recorded using
  knotted strings called quipu.
• Inca controlled as many as 6 million people at
  the time of Spanish conquest.
• The need for more and more conquests caused a
  great deal of military, economic, and
  administrative stress.
• At the time just prior to the arrival of the
  Spanish, the Inca empire was so large that new
  rulers had to seek conquests in the forested
  regions, which was not very successful.
• Communication across the vast empire had become
  problematic.
• The growing noble class devoted to various dead
  rulers led to chronic political factionalism at
  Cuzco.
• The civilization was vulnerable at the time of
  Spanish arrival.

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• The Spanish Conquest (1532 - 1534)
• The first Spanish conquistadors had already
  introduced smallpox to the Inca when Francisco
  Pizarro arrived.
• Inca Wayna Capac had died in an epidemic in
  1525, which led to a civil war and the ascension
  of Atahualpa.
• Pretending to be a diplomat, Pizarro kidnapped
  and murdered Atahualpa.
• A year later, the Spanish were able to capture
  the capital with only a small army, and appointed
  a puppet ruler, Manco Inca.
• Three years later, Manco Inca turned on the
  Spanish in a bloody revolt, the suppression of
  which finally destroyed the Inca empire.
• Isolated factions of Inca, such as those at
  Machu Picchu, continued their culture in
  isolation.