Chachapoya culture

The Chachapoyas are a prehistoric Andean people (indigenous peoples of South America ). The name was given to them by the Incas and means in Quechua "cloud people " or " fog warriors."

History

From when we can speak accurately of a Chachapoyas culture is uncertain. Even when the huge fortress of Kuelap, the most famous evidence of this culture was built, is controversial. Earlier estimates were usually made from 800 AD. But the charge of the excavations in Kuelap since 1986 Peruvian archaeologist Alfredo Narváez came to the question of when Kuelap was built, based on new radiocarbon analyzes now to a different conclusion: " The oldest datings that we have comes from the 6th century, that is, about the year 500 AD But we suspect that the work started earlier, perhaps around 400 AD "

The since the early 1980s, living and researching in the Chachapoyas region, Peruvian, German -born anthropologist Peter Lerche concluded from the fact that for such a construction must be certain conditions that the Chachapoyas culture much earlier, possibly began 2000 years ago. The same statement also met lark in March 2013 in a statement for a documentary production of the TV channel Arte on the origins of the Chachapoyas culture.

Presumably, the Chachapoyas were organized into a loose federation of states. Only the Inca conquered the Chachapoyas around 1475, shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards. At that time, they still need to have numbered about 500,000 people. A large part of the population was deported, some to Cusco.

60 years later, the remains of the people with the Spanish conquistadores against the Inca allied.

1549, 17 years after the arrival of the Spaniards, the total population had declined by measles and smallpox to 90,000. Shortly thereafter, she died from largely.

Archeology

1965 discovered the archaeologist Federico Kauffmann Doig - the Purunmachus ( Old men ) referred clay figures, the Chachapoyas sarcophagi. Up to thirty of about 60-110 cm tall, stand in narrow rocky niches of the Andes. Make the connection to the ancestors dar.

In the 1990s, a larger burial ground was in the north- east of Peru, near the Condor lake, with mummified bodies have been found. In these and previously discovered tombs of Chachapoyas the dead which were previously buried after Chachapoyas - type, were dug up and reburied after been Inca Art - perhaps to break the resistance of the Chachapoyas against the Incas. Since 2000, the mummies and other finds from the Chachapoyas culture in the museum Centro Mallqui are exhibited in Leymebamba.

In 2004, a research team discovered under the direction of the U.S. researcher Sean Savoy at Ocumal in the province of Luya a huge city complex, spread over at least 65 square kilometers, surrounded by a wall equipped with watch towers. Overall, the city insisted on the hills along the river Huabayacu from at least six plants, which are connected with paved roads. The city was named Gran Saposoa.

An important fortress of culture is the Kuelap is located nearby the city of Chachapoyas. The grave figures of Karajia were not far from recently discovered. Some of the more southern in the National Park Río Abiseo archaeological sites of the Chachapoyas culture are also allocated.

On the Origins of the Chachapoyas culture

The Chachapoyas were " whitest and finest Indians of Peru " by the Spanish chronicler Pedro de Cieza de León as the described. These and other similar observations Spanish chroniclers were and are interpreted quite differently. That may have helped that - as the current site of the " British Museum " - the Chachapoyas be regarded as "one of the least understood ancient cultures of South America" ​​.

There are different regions of Latin America considered the Chachapoyas region of origin: Central America, northern Colombia, Peru's Pacific coast, the central Andean highlands and lowlands of Amazonia. Since 1985, the Chachapoyas researching American archaeologist Warren B. Church of Columbus State University has such theories analyzed and shows a lack of compelling cultural parallels.

Church calls a further, decisive in his opinion argument against all such theories. As part of an elaborate, from the University of Colorado Boulder, USA, archaeologists from the University of Trujillo, Peru, and the Peruvian government supported excavation project in the south of Chachapoyas zone he analyzed nearly 100,000 pottery shards and almost as many stone tools and linking the analysis with ethnographic culture compare and ethnohistorical studies. He came to the conclusion that the region has been inhabited since before more than 4,000 years and that there has been long-distance trade between the Amazonian lowlands and the Andes for thousands of years. The Chachapoyas culture - he derives from his studies - was around important junctions of these trade routes in the mountain forests of the northeastern Andes of Peru slope in the catchment area of ​​the river Huallaga, a large Amazonian river source, emerged. At least have there - in the cultural exchange with trading partners among neighboring Indian nations - the ceramic tradition of Chachapoyas to about 400-200 BC developed and survived the entire duration of the Chachapoyas culture.

Concluded from this Church, that all theories that see the origin of the Chachapoyas culture in an immigration of a people from another region in the Chachapoyas region, must be wrong.

Alternative theories of origin

The German cultural theorist Hans Giffhorn shares the considerations of Church, insofar as they relate to the analysis of findings. However, it considers the origins of other components of the Chachapoyas culture, such as the striking and typical construction as well as, inter alia, the causes of tuberculosis findings in Chachapoyas mummies clarified to be unsatisfactory, and he suspects that a limiting itself to Latin America specialist discussion here has limitations.

Giffhorn therefore proposes to consider also the influence of people outside America into consideration, and it checks in the context of the currently most widely used statements to the age of the Chachapoyas culture. His conclusion: Various features of this culture could much earlier than previously believed by most archaeologists have emerged in the Chachapoyas area. Below Giffhorn examined under consideration of common counterarguments, whether and under what conditions a contact of people outside America with the ancestors of Chachapoyas might have been possible and for which crops would come into question. From the studies he infers that most of the facts of the Carthaginian - Celtic- Iberian influenced culture room talking on the territory of Spain, during the period before the final Romanization of Spain nearly 2,000 years ago.

It is in this cultural space to this period were particularly striking and in such amount and degree of detail in any other culture to discover existing similarities with typical phenomena of the Chachapoyas culture, such as the living and fortress architecture, with special traditions of the trophy head cult, the slingshots and the skull holes.

Taken as a whole - so Giffhorn - allow the evidence formulating a working hypothesis that a higher explanatory value for significant parts of the Chachapoyas culture possess than the present until then theories. Further studies on tuberculosis in the Chachapoyas and various indications of a possible mixing some Chachapoyas Indians with Celts from north-west Spain as well as the results of DNA analyzes alive today, fair-haired native, have the Chachapoyas among their ancestors, speak in addition to a contact of the Indian ancestors Chachapoyas with the ancient cultures of the Southwest Europe.

Gene Savoy the Chachapoyas saw as descendants of the Phoenicians and the sites of the Chachapoyas as residents of El Dorado, and thus also the legendary land of Ophir, from which the gold of Solomon was delivered. He sees parallels in architecture, grave ritual and iconography, but forgets that the Phoenicians were not light-skinned.