INFORMATION ABOUT PERU

ORIGIN OF THE NAME PERU

There are a number of stories about the origin of the name PERU. One says that around 1516 a Spanish ship had crossed the equator and was sailing down to the coast of present-day Peru or Ecuador when they saw and Indian at the mouth of a river. The Spaniards captured the Indian and got him on board. Then they asked him what was the name of the land. It's said that the Indian replied 'Beru' and added the word 'Pelu'. It's probable that the Indian meant that his name was 'Beru' and the river 'Pelu' or the other way around, but the Spaniards understood that he was referring to the name of the land, and took the two words and came up with PERU.

ANCIENT PERU

The American Indians did not originate in the Americas. Their ancestors migrated from Siberia to Alaska across what is now the Bering Strait some 40000 years ago, followed by a dispersal southward until the entire American continent was filled; even though we do not know how direct this movement was.

We know that 13000 years ago humans had reached the southern Chilean site of Monte Verde.

The early Americans were mobile bands of hunters and foragers who preyed on the big game animals of the Ice Age: mammoth and mastodon, the Pleistocene bison, horse, giant ground sloth, and the early relatives of the South American llamas and guanacos.

By 9000 B.C., the large animals became extinct. Possibilities for hunting ceased to be satisfactory and man had to look in a different direction to supplement his diet. Food gathering techniques were already anticipating agricultural development.

It’s very unlikely that the first groups of humans entering the South American continent migrated directly into the high Andes.

More likely people moved along the Pacific rim and settled progressively on the coasts of what are now Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile around water sources and the mouths of rivers from the Andes that emptied into the Pacific ocean.

The Andean landscape they encountered was unlike that seen today. The Pacific Ocean was significantly lower and broad coastal plains were found along the shore. What is now desert along the northern coastline of Peru was then a moist tropical environment. Glaciers reached lower altitudes in the Andes and the climate was colder. The eastern lowlands were grasslands rather than rainforests.

Colonization of the high mountains probably took place at the end of the Ice age in a long and gradual process of acclimatization to high altitude.

The change from a hunting-and-gathering to a farming-and-fishing society occurred on the coast of what is now Peru by 3000 B.C. The Indians fished as well as farmed in the early Peruvian coastal settlements.

The South American Indian cultures in the Central Andes evolved from these early settlements of the third millennium BC to culminate almost four thousand years later, in the network of cities, roads and state installations built and managed by the Inca Empire.

Chavín de Huántar was the first large-scale regional culture and developed in the north central highlands of the upper Marañon Valley around 900 B.C. This Chavín culture quickly spread over the area now comprising the Peruvian departments of Ancash, Lima, Huánuco, and adjacent regions.

The Chavín peoples, like the Olmecs in Mexico, worshipped sky, earth, and water deities represented in stone images.

The local culture in the Inca heartland at this time was Marcavalle near the city of Cusco. Very little is known about these people. They were probably farmers living under a simple political system. The Marcavalle peoples seem to be related to those of the Lake Titicaca basin to the south.

Around 200 B.C. the Chavín cult began to languish. The centuries that followed the decline of Chavín influence were marked by the florescense of many strong regional cultures culminating around the turn of the millennium in the rise of two of Peru’s best known pre-Inca societies: Moche on the north coast and Nazca in the south. In the Cusco region at this time, there was a culture called Chanapata.

The Moche culture prospered from around A.D. 1 to 700. It was in many ways a continuation of the Cupisnique, Salinar and Gallinazo cultures that successfully lived on the north coast from around 1500 BC.

While Moche flourished on the north coast, the Lima culture emerged in the central Rimac Valley. And in the adjacent Lurin Valley to the south, Pachacamac gained prestige. The oracle and its priesthood endured for more than a thousand years. Along with the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca, Pachacamac remained one of the most sacred places in the Inca realm until it was sacked by Pizarro’s men.

Inca Pachacuteq

Farther south, the Nazca people produced vivid polychrome pottery as well as fine textiles. They are also famous for their desert ground drawings

The Nazca society dominated the south coast from about 100 B.C. to 700 A.D.

During the time that the Nazca and Moche cultures were at their height on the Peruvian coast, other cultures were beginning to rise in the highlands of Peru and Bolivia.

At some point between A.D.100 and 300, a ritual center of the first order developed in the Lake Titicaca Basin. It was the magnificent city of Tiawanaku. By about AD.500, Tiawanaku was the capital of an expanding empire that maintained its power for some 500 years more before finally disintegrating around A.D.1000

By AD 600 the Nazca region came under the influence of the Wari peoples from the Ayacucho highlands. While Moche and Nazca would fall, and a new state, Wari, would arise in Peru, the Bolivian metropolis of Tiawanaku reached its florescence.

The Tiahuanaco state eventually controlled all southern Peru from Arequipa south to highland Bolivia and Chile. The Wari territory bulked even larger, its rulers conquering both coast and highlands as far north as the Chicama Valley and Cajamarca, and south to the Tiahuanaco frontier

The La Raya pass south of Cusco apparently served as a buffer zone between the two empires.

In the Wari empire, numerous regional urban centers developed. The largest and best preserved of these provincial administrative centers is the site of Pikillacta, located in the Valley of Cusco to the south.

Wari lasted for more than 400 years, until it collapsed quickly and completely sometime between AD 1000 and 1100.

The large, ethnically and ecologically diverse regions controlled by both Wari and Tiawanaku foreshadow the scale of the Inca empire some 500 years later. Indeed, the Inca borrowed knowledge of statecraft from both of them.

With the disaperence of Wari and Tiwanaku, regional cultures thrived anew for the next hundreds of years.

The period of regional cultures led to a great florescence, especially on the north coast. Apparently descendants of the Moche people, the Chimú developed there the powerful Chimor kingdom beginning around AD.900. By the time the Incas began their quest for territory and power, the Chimor kingdom was the largest state to oppose them.

Between 1200 and 1400 many societies, large and small, also emerged in the highlands. In the Titicaca basin, the Lupaca and the Qolla emerged as Tiwanaku’s most distinguished successors.

In Cusco, the Inca heartland, there were numerous small kingdoms contesting for supremacy. By about AD1438, the Incas defeated the Chanca confederation from Apurimac in the north of Cusco, and thus extended their hegemony overnight over a large segment of the south-central highlands. After this victory, a turning point in their history, the Incas were able to launch their Tawantinsuyo Empire that extended some 2500 miles over the Andean area of South America. At the time of the Spanish invasion in the sixteenth century the Inca ruled the largest empire in the New World.

The Incas conquered other peoples, consolidated their domain, and were themselves suddenly subjugated within a single century.

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