The Inca also built Machu Picchu, a famous and mysterious ancient city in the Andes. They thrived for centuries before being conquered by the Spanish in All rights reserved.
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Return Recover your offer Enter the 4-digit code and your new password 4-digit code. New password. Confirm password. About Peru History. Home About Peru History. Lake Langui Layo - Province of Canas. The Pikimachay cave, which dates to 12, B.
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. The Inca emperors were believed to be direct descendants of the sun god.
The bold Andes Mountains were at least as important in their system of beliefs: The dwelling places of respected spirits, the 7,m 22,ft. The ruling sovereign was properly called the Inca, but today the term also refers to the people and the empire. The Incas' Andean dominance was achieved through formidable organization and a highly developed economic system. The Incas rapidly expanded their empire first through political alliances and absorption, and then by swift military conquest.
The Incas thus succeeded in achieving political and religious unification across most of their domain. The Incas recorded an astounding level of achievement. They never developed a system of writing, but they kept extraordinary records with an accounting system of knots on strings, called quipus. They laid a vast network of roadways, nearly 32,km 20, miles total across the difficult territory of the Andes, connecting cities, farming communities, and religious sites.
A network of runners, called chasquis, operated on the roads, relaying messages and even transporting foodstuffs from the coast to the Andes. Tambos, or way stations, dotted the highways, serving as inspection points and shelters for relay runners.
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