Mike picked today's adventure which was the pre Inca ruins Huaca (pyramid) Pucllana. (http://huacapucllanamiraflores.pe/historia) Located in modern day Miraflores, Lima, Peru. It is located at Calle General Borgono caudra 8, open from 9-5 and comes with a free tour guide who offered Spanish and English tours. Not sure about other languages. Price was 12 sol per person and had discounts for students/teachers and children. It is very easy to get to from Av. Arequipa.
Arturo our guide.
Most people do not expect to see ruins in Lima but there they are.
This ceremonial centre was built by the Lima Culture between 200 and 700 AD (depends on who you to talk toor what you read). "Lima Culture" were the people living in the valley area pre Inca. They were farmers, fisherman, hunters, gatherers, textile weavers and potters. They ate typical foods that were plentiful in the area, corn, beans, squash, potato (3,000 varieties) and guinea pigs. All still consumed today. FYI: Guinea pig is "cuy" on a menu.
They also raised alpaca (brown) and llamas (white) for wool.
In this valley area pottery was of great importance not only for cooking, storing, and decoration but for sacrifice. They painted or sculpted their pieces to include the two headed shark (they liked symmetry and ate shark meat) which represented religious ideas.
This is a representation of a typical piece of pottery. The colors of the two-headed sharks were red, black and white. The man with the rock is going to smash the pottery to honor their gods. The debris becomes part of the next level's foundation.
They also sacrificed females between the age of 12 to 25 for fertility reasons. The holes are where the bodies were found.
This complex was comprised of 2 sections; the administrative area and the ceremonial area. The common people lived on the coast. The admin section was where they prepared and cooked meals, created the bricks and pottery, and dealt with day to day events.
The bricks were made from the clay earth and shaped by each potter. You can see different sizes in the walls confirming they did not use molds. They would lay the bricks to dry which took a long time in Winter as the sun does not "shine". They layered the bricks in a V formation with small gaps to withstand earthquakes. Pretty intelligent for the time.
The walls are/were 9 meters high.
The ceremonial area was where they sacrificed the pottery and woman. The priests and rulers were buried on the top level of the pyramid. There are seven levels, seven tombs found so far. Every 30 years they would need to renovate a section or build a new level. The seven levels denote roughly 300 years of renovations.
Archaeologists discovered many walls that would have separated rooms and passageways. Some of the rooms have been identified based on what was found in the rooms; storage, preparation, kitchen, etc...
They also discovered beams, made out of local trees, presumably for roof coverings.
Wait! Why doesn't it all just wash away if it is clay? We have woken up every day to 64 degree weather and clouds. Looks like rain but has not done so as of yet. We learned that Lima receives a yearly average of .3 inches of rain a year.
We meandered back to our area, had suppah and wrote this post.
No comments:
Post a Comment