The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (24 page)

One large shell heap near the southern Peruvian city of Ilo formed a ring 85 feet in diameter. This strongly suggests that the Archaic people had arranged their shelters in a circle, just as some Mexican and Near Eastern foragers did. First occupied more than 7,500 years ago, the Ring site took on its distinctive form 5,000 years before the present.

Foragers in the Andean highlands encountered a different set of resources. Armed with spear-throwers, they stalked game through wooded valleys and high-altitude meadows of bunch grass. At elevations of 8,000 to 10,000 feet they pursued the white-tailed deer and the guanaco, a wild member of the camel family. At 12,000 to 14,000 feet they stalked the
taruca,
or huemul deer, and the vicuña, a smaller relative of the camel. These highland hunters lived sometimes in open-air camps, sometimes in caves and rockshelters. They slow-cooked their prey in
pachamancas,
or earth ovens, like those of Ice Age Europe.

At the start of the Archaic period Peru’s hunter-gatherers seem to have had an immediate-return strategy. There is much, however, that we still do not know about them. In the Near East we can show that foragers harvested the wild ancestors of wheat and barley for thousands of years before they produced domestic varieties. In the Andes we know what the earliest domestic plants were, but we have less information on the period when their wild ancestors were being harvested. Part of the problem is that plant preservation is poor in the highlands, where many of the wild ancestors lived. An equally significant problem is that the area involved was huge, and Andean peoples had eclectic tastes. Some of the domestic plants they adopted were native to the coast; some were native to intermontane valleys; some were native to high-altitude tundra; and some came from as far away as Brazil and Paraguay.

The Pacific coast of Peru is one of the world’s most extreme deserts. Thousands of square miles of the coast could not possibly have been farmed in the Archaic. At various points, however, rivers carrying water from the snowcapped peaks of the Andes descended to the sea. Each of these rivers was a green, linear oasis in the beige desert, not only creating an alluvial floodplain but even supporting marshes, seeps, and canebrakes. Once domestic plants had reached the coast, the Archaic fishermen could turn these localized patches of humid soil into gardens.

We suspect that, just as in Mexico, the first Peruvian domestic plant was the bottle gourd, followed not long afterward by squash. Early Peruvian squash did not, however, belong to the same species as the earliest Mexican squash; it belonged to a species whose wild ancestor lived in Colombia. That squash was brought from its native habitat and grown in Ecuador and Peru almost 10,000 years ago.

Cotton grew wild on the coastal plains of southwest Ecuador and northwest Peru and was soon domesticated there. The combination of bottle gourds and cotton meant that Archaic people were no longer limited to fishing with hooks and spears. They could now use nets of cotton cordage, with net floats made from gourds. Nets were particularly useful for harvesting anchovies and sardines, two small fish that were available in enormous numbers.

Many of the key Andean domestic plants were grown for their roots, bulbs, tubers, or other underground parts. Wild manioc, or cassava, is native to the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso, Rondônia, and Acre, and it was probably first domesticated there. That same region may have produced both the jack bean
(Canavalia)
and a species of chile pepper, different from the peppers domesticated in Mexico. Peru welcomed those foreign plants. The peanut grows wild in forest and savanna environments between southeast Bolivia and northern Paraguay. It may have reached the Peruvian coast 7,000 years ago.

The high altiplano of Peru is a land rich in edible tubers, protected from frost by their below-ground development. The best known of these is the wild potato, probably domesticated somewhere in the southern highlands. Potatoes and manioc gave Andean farmers the carbohydrate source they needed for sedentary life. Another product of the altiplano was a weedy plant called quinoa, whose tiny seeds could be ground into flour. It reached the Pacific coast during the Archaic period.

Some plants from the Amazon jungle and the high tundra of the Andes reached the north coast of Peru even before they had undergone sufficient genetic change to be recognizable as domestic varieties. The only reason we consider them cultivated plants is because they had clearly been brought hundreds of miles from their native habitats. The spread of such crops suggests that Archaic foragers traveled long distances and had trading partners with whom they eagerly exchanged products.

While all these domestic plants were spreading to the coast, another domestication process was taking place in the highlands. Hunters who for thousands of years had pursued, surrounded, and driven the guanaco and vicuña into cul-de-sacs were beginning to pen up captive animals and tame their young. Archaic highlanders built corrals in caves the way Natufians had built circular huts in caves.

One of the oldest corrals was created more than 4,000 years ago by building a stone wall across the mouth of Inca Cueva 7, a small cave in the
puna,
or high-altitude tundra, of the Argentinian Andes. The penned-up animals had left pellets of their dung on the floor of the cave. Tukumachay, a cave in the puna near Ayacucho, Peru, had a corral roughly as old as the one at Inca Cueva 7.

Corrals were not limited to caves, of course. Archaeologist Mark Aldenderfer excavated an Archaic campsite on a terrace of the Osmore River, 50 miles inland from the aforementioned Ring site. Asana, located almost 9,500 feet above sea level, had been repeatedly used as a campsite for thousands of years by the hunters of guanaco and huemul deer. As long as 6,800 years ago, the hunters at Asana were building small oval structures that may have been ritual sweat houses. The best preserved of these structures had a clay floor, a basin to hold water, and a mass of fire-cracked rock. In such a sweat house, water was poured over heated rocks to create a sauna for rituals of purification.

In a later camp at Asana, occupied at roughly the same period as Inca Cueva 7, the campers built an apparent corral of wooden posts. Forensic analysis of the soil inside the corral revealed the breakdown products of animal dung, although individual dung pellets could not be recognized.

Some of the most compelling evidence for keeping such animals captive was found by archaeologist Jane Wheeler at a cave called Telarmachay. This cave lay in the tundra near Lake Junín in central Peru. The evidence consists of very high levels of infant mortality, typical of domestic herds in the centuries before modern veterinary medicine.

Eventually, two domestic members of the camel family appeared in Peru. One, the llama, was a beast of burden derived from the guanaco. The other, the alpaca, was raised primarily for its fine wool, which according to recent DNA evidence reflects some vicuña genes. Both animals may have assumed their present form more than 3,600 years ago.

The emergence of the llama as a pack animal, in particular, made possible a dramatic escalation in the movement of products from region to region. One could load a llama caravan with highland potatoes and descend to the Pacific coast, where the potatoes would be exchanged for dried anchovies. Such exchanges made every product available to every region.

While all of this was taking place, maize was slowly spreading from group to group on its way south from Mexico to Peru. By the time it reached the north coast of Peru, perhaps 4,000 years ago, it was simply one more plant added to the potatoes, manioc, squash, beans, peanuts, and other crops. The Archaic Peruvians did not see corn as a staple but as a plant whose sugary kernels could be turned into
chicha,
or maize beer. From that point on, chicha took on the ritual importance that rice beer did among the Naga.

From Camps to Achievement-Based Villages with Ritual Houses

Coastal Peruvian societies underwent a transformation similar to that seen in Mexico and the Near East. From seminomadic societies living in circular, semi-subterranean huts, they developed into achievement-based societies living in autonomous villages of rectangular houses.

Two and a half miles inland from San Bartolo Bay on the central Peruvian coast lay the Archaic site of Paloma. Here Robert Benfer and Jeffrey Quilter discovered a semipermanent settlement of 30 to 40 people living in shelters like those at Ohalo. The people of Paloma tended gardens of squash, beans, and gourds during the time period of 6,500 to 5,000 years ago, but the real staples of their diet were anchovies and sardines, augmented by larger fish and shellfish.

The occupants of Paloma salted the corpses of their ancestors to slow down decay. They buried their dead with limbs tightly flexed, wrapped in reed mats. An analysis of 200 skeletons revealed a disproportionately high frequency of men, suggesting that female infanticide may have been practiced. The men had a high incidence of inner and middle ear damage, probably caused by a lifetime of diving for mollusks in the cold ocean water.

Nine miles from Paloma, the Chilca River empties into the Pacific Ocean. Two miles inland lay another Archaic camp, this one occupied 5,500 to 4,500 years ago. At the Chilca camp, archaeologist Christopher Donnan discovered a number of conical huts. While most were made of canes, the upright posts of at least one hut were rib bones salvaged from a beached whale. The families living at Chilca caught their fish with cotton nets or with hooks carved from mollusk shells. They also took advantage of the high water table near the river, creating small vegetable gardens by digging down to the humid soil just below the surface.

By this time the rugged canyons through which many Peruvian rivers approached the coast had been recognized as optimal for small-scale irrigation. In each canyon there were places where farmers could divert water into small canals that descended in elevation more slowly than the river itself, allowing them to irrigate most of a river terrace. The village of La Galgada lay in just such a location.

One of the mightiest watercourses on the north coast of Peru was the Santa River. Fifty miles from the ocean its flow was augmented by a tributary called the Tablachaca River, which carved its way through a dusty canyon 3,300 feet above sea level. Roughly 4,400 years ago the village of La Galgada was founded on a terrace of the Tablachaca, and its families began irrigating gourds, squashes, chile peppers, common beans, jack beans, lima beans, peanuts, cotton, and orchard crops such as guavas and avocados. Corn had arrived but was still too rare to be considered a staple. The villagers also hunted deer and traded for dried fish and shellfish from the coast.

While most crops grown at La Galgada were foods, the wealth of the village was based on cotton. According to C. Earle Smith Jr., the botanist who analyzed its plant remains, “the volume of cotton recovered at La Galgada indicates that it must have been a crop produced for export.” There was reason to believe that La Galgada had also added value to those exports by converting the cotton into textiles before sending it on.

According to archaeologists Terence Grieder and Alberto Bueno Mendoza, the villagers of La Galgada lived in circular houses large enough to accommodate a nuclear family. The walls were made of stones, set in mud mortar, and the peaked roofs were thatched with grass. The fact that most residences preserved the circular plan of earlier times made it easy to recognize ritual houses at La Galgada: the latter were rectangular, with slightly rounded corners at first (
Figure 20, top
), which then became fully rectangular over time.

The La Galgada ritual houses were small, and it appears that several might have been in use at any one time. Their accumulated remains created two earthen mounds, called the North Mound and the South Mound. The North Mound began growing first; the South Mound began growing later, and from that point on the two were occupied simultaneously. In both mounds there were ritual houses painted pearly white with a mineral called talc.

We see at least three possible scenarios for La Galgada’s multiple ritual buildings. In one scenario La Galgada might have maintained multiple men’s houses for the same reason the Mountain Ok did, to provide venues for potentially contradictory parts of their cosmology. In a second scenario there might have been multiple lineages or descent groups at La Galgada, each of which built its own men’s house. In a third scenario men and women might have maintained separate ritual venues as the Ok did. The data do not permit us to decide among these alternatives.

The earliest ritual houses at La Galgada were only about seven by nine feet in size. The walls, which in one case had survived to a height of five feet, were of broken fieldstones set in mud mortar, plastered over with clay and painted white. Some walls were decorated with rows of niches, and the roofs were of acacia poles plastered with clay. Each floor consisted of a rectangular sunken area, surrounded by a bench wide enough for sitting or sleeping. A crucial feature of the sunken area was a circular hearth, connected to the outside world by a vent below the floor. This vent would have provided oxygen to keep the hearth burning, even if the building’s door was closed to maintain ritual secrecy. Archaeologist Michael Moseley suspects that the sunken floors and hearths reflect a widespread Andean cosmology, one in which the first humans ascended to the earth’s surface through caves, springs, and holes in the ground.

Later ritual houses in the North and South Mounds, built perhaps 4,000 years ago, continued to feature benches, sunken floors, and central hearths similar to the earlier versions. These buildings, however, had small variations in wall decoration, either because they were built by different social units or because they addressed different ritual needs.