Nazca culture

The Nazca culture is a lost Indian civilization in Peru dar. is named after the southern Peruvian city of this culture Nazca (also Nasca ).

Their centers possessed the culture in the river oases of the Rio Grande in the coastal desert on the Pacific. It developed between 200 BC and 600 AD on the Pacific coast under extreme climatic conditions. In the driest desert in the world often falls for decades no rain. In winter, the fog banks of the ocean to expand into the interior where they ensure as much moisture that even grow plants.

The Nazca culture was strongly influenced by the preceding Paracas culture. In the late phase of the Nazca culture ( 7th and 8th centuries ), there are dominant influences of the Wari culture.

The settlements of the Nazca were made of light wood and reed buildings. More massive buildings made ​​of dried clay bricks Reed (Adobe) were found almost exclusively in the lost city Cahuachi in Nazcatal.

The people of Nazca was not centrally administered empire, but was made up of small tribes together. They practiced agriculture and irrigated their fields on an artificial underground canal system. To supply they planted to beans, potatoes, pumpkins, cassava, avocados, peanuts and chili. Cotton, reeds and rushes provided the basic material for everyday life. You already used nets for fishing and hunting seals. The Nazca understood to weaving and made her thin-walled ceramic works, which they decorated with bright colors with scenes from everyday life.

An elongated head shape (long skull) was in the Nazca ideal of beauty. Even the babies were tied to his forehead to deform the skull during growth boards. They knew also trepanation. Many of the operated patients survived the procedure relatively long. The dead were wrapped in gorgeous cloths and buried in a sitting position in the dry desert floor. The extreme dryness mummified the dead. Some of them are still well preserved. Looters destroyed many of these graves.

On the plateau between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, the Nazca created enormous figures, the Nazca Lines (also Nasca lines ), they shuffled into the gravel desert. The researcher Maria Reiche in Dresden discovered over 50 characters and over 1,000 lines of up to 20 kilometers in length.

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