Peru 2: A Cradle of Civilization

Spirates, guts, and the Peruvian Jello orchid

I have neither standing nor desire to criticize any of our guides' English--they were great. I, on the other hand, spent about three days referring to Keith as ‘my wife’ (esposa) before I remembered that he is, in fact, my husband (esposo.)

Still, I have to tell how the guides’ accents entertained us.

One member of our group mentioned to me that she spent several minutes trying to imagine why the ancient Peruvians were concerned with 'spirates' (pirates, with an s) before she realized the guide was talking about spirits.

In Koricancha, our guide told us that when we looked into the next room, we would see the “fine Inca wools.” I was going to be very surprised if we saw bolts of 15th-century fabric and, sure enough, a few sentences later, he explained how the 'fine wools' gave the building structural integrity. Walls.

At Inkaterra, the luxury resort near Machu Picchu, the guide for our nature walk pointed out a “Jello orchid.” (They also come in red, white and orange.) Jello orchids are surprising enough, but other guides had pointed out Jello boulders and Jello houses, which are much more amazing when you think about it.

But my favorite was when a guide was explaining the native Peruvians' agricultural accomplishments. The pre-Columbian natives, he said, used corn, quinoa and other grains as “offerings to their guts.”

Well fancy that! So do I!

Peru’s Pre-Columbian natives

As we were sorting out our thoughts during the trip home, Mike said Ted had remarked that while Machu Picchu was everything he had hoped it would be, it was the rest of Peru that was a revelation. I agree. (I’m going to refer to members of our group only by first name; not everyone likes to have his or her full name on the Internet.)

Peru has literally tons of impressive archeological sites. At many places in the Sacred Valley and some in the altiplano (never mind the coastal areas and the north, which we did not visit), it seemed as if you could not throw a stone without hitting some ancient retaining wall or foundation. And to get a stone to throw in the first place, you might have to pull it from an ancient wall.

I exaggerate, of course, but I was astounded by the number of apparently pre-Columbian walls that are still functioning as erosion control or being used as agricultural terraces. I lost count of the minor archeological sites we simply rode by for want of time. Machu Picchu is just the icing on a very large cake.

Modern-day Peru takes its archeology seriously. We were not yet on the ground in Lima before the in-flight video was encouraging us to “Preservar nuestro patrimonio.” I saw that word, ‘patrimonio’ on several billboards, including one for a presidential candidate.

They are protecting the legacy of their own ancestors. Jose, our guide for Cuzco and the Sacred Valley (which includes Machu Picchu), is proudly mestizo, a mix of native and Spanish ancestry. Our final lecturer, Carlos Siebt, informed us that fully 82% of Peru’s citizens are descended wholly or in part from the pre-Columbian natives of the area.

Jose is tri-lingual: he speaks his mother's native Quechuan, 
his father's Spanish, and English.

 But above that, Peru appreciates the fundamental value of their ancient artifacts to the whole of humanity. The subtitle on the entrance sign to Machu Picchu is “Patrimonio Cultural de la Humanidad.”

Finally, Peru is aware of the economic advantages of sitting on the archeological Mother Lode of the Western Hemisphere. Jose told us that while it is true that Pizarro found gold mines for Spain, Hiram Bingham (the Yalie who put Machu Picchu back on the map) “found an American-dollar mine for Peru.”

Our lecturer on the Pre-Columbian cultures, Ulla Holmquist (a Peruvian, despite her name) and Hernando, our guide for Lima and the National Museum of Archeology, Anthropology, and History, helped us appreciate that, given the archeological discoveries of the 20th century, we can no longer exclude this area when we think of the cradles of human civilization.

The natives of ancient Peru can hold their own against Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

This is Ulla, explaining to us how we can decipher pre-Columbian pottery decoration.

 To start at the beginning of the Peruvians’ story, we need to go back 12,000 years. Really. The first signs of human habitation in Peru are cave paintings, which have been found at several coastal sites and dated to around 10,000 BCE. We didn’t go there; we saw them only in the museum.

Around the time these paintings were made, similar pictures were being drawn in caves in Europe and Asia, but no one in the world was yet cultivating crops on a large scale. The very first stone structures were being built in Jericho, and Wisconsin was just emerging from underneath its last glacier.

By 2500 BCE (4,500 years ago), the residents of an area around Caral in central Peru were not only living in buildings made of thatch, wood, stone, and mud bricks, they were creating the earliest known cities in the Western Hemisphere, which had temples, amphitheaters, and houses. These folks were building pyramids at around the same time as the people in Egypt.

The civilization that built Caral was also cultivating crops for both food and fiber, weaving cotton into cloth, and carving bones into flutes.

Additional Peruvian archeological sites have produced evidence of agriculture by 6000 BCE. By 2000 BCE, ancient Peruvians had domesticated llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs, and were cultivating corn, quinoa, potatoes, pumpkins, chilies, green beans, lima beans, gourds, peanuts, guavas, avocadoes, plums, and other vegetables whose names I did not recognize. Again, for reference purposes, at around 2000 BCE, Stonehenge was about done and Sumerians were ascendant in Mesopotamia.

Peruvian culture went through several stages of fragmentation into local tribal cultures, followed by the ascendancy of more unifying cultures, followed by a return to regional tribes. The Chavin culture (1000-300 BCE) was the first culture to influence broad areas around what is now Peru.

Judging by the iconography on their carvings and pottery, they apparently worshiped birds of prey, felines (jaguars and pumas), and snakes. This started a 3-level organization of the sacred universe that came all the way down to the Incas: the sky divinities, the earth divinities, and the underworld divinities.

For the purposes of museum-going, things don’t get truly photogenic until the Ceramic period, which started around 1800 BCE in Peru.


Regional cultures developed again around 300 BCE. The best pottery seems to have come from the Moche culture, which also built massive platform mounds.

One thing about Moche pottery: I might be violating the rules of this blog-hosting service if I post photos of the more amusing Moche pots. Go to Google images and type in "Moche sex pottery" if you want to see some raunchy pots!

Around 600 CE (Dark Ages in Europe), the Wari and Tiwanaku cultures again imposed broad cultural and political organization on the area that is now Peru. The Wari culture controlled the north, and the Tinwanaku the south. The Wari, in particular, are said to have developed the methods of building and maintaining an empire (road-building, regional outposts, communications, political organization) that paved the way for the Incas and later the Spaniards to gain and maintain control of Peru's various regional tribes.

Please notice that I haven't even touched the Incas or Spaniards yet. By the time the Incas got their empire game going in the middle of the 15th century, the Peruvian natives had mastered monumental architecture, metal-working technology and artistry up through gold, silver, copper, and bronze, but not yet iron or steel.

Their agricultural practices were arguably better than those used in Europe. They wove fine, intricate fabrics--up to 300 threads per inch!

They had developed methods of social organization, including an extensive network of highly functional roads and regional outposts, but not yet (tragically for both them and us) written language.

Next post: the Incas.