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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
Thu Sep 2, 2021, 11:28 PM Sep 2021

SHREWD WATER USE HELPED SOUTH AMERICA'S FIRST EMPIRE THRIVE. SO WHY DID A DROUGHT DESTROY IT?

“Conquest by hydraulic superiority” helped Wari state expand
16 APR 2020 BY LIZZIE WADE

When Wari colonists arrived in the Moquegua Valley of southern Peru some 1400 years ago, people already living there were likely nervous. The Wari state, with its capital city of Huari high in the Andes near what is now Ayacucho, Peru, had been expanding its reach. The Wari takeover was violent in places; the invaders sacrificed local people and displayed their heads as trophies.

But this time the Wari colonists did something unexpected. Rather than trying to seize the fertile valley floor, where people already lived, the newcomers occupied high, dry land that no one else had figured out how to use. They constructed their government and religious buildings on top of a high mesa, now called Cerro Baúl, and erected canals and aqueducts that carried water much farther than any previously attempted in the valley. They carved mountain slopes into agricultural terraces, which efficiently trapped and distributed water from rain and snowmelt to plots of maize, quinoa, and peppery berries called molle. People from several other regions moved to the new farms and towns, forming a powerful labor force that helped maintain the sprawling water infrastructure.

Remote Cerro Baúl is home to some of the best preserved Wari canals and terraces, but the remains of their sophisticated water infrastructure have been found in both the Wari heartland and in several of the state's many colonies, including around the Wari center of Pikillacta near present-day Cuzco and in the Huamachuco region, more than 700 kilometers to the north of Huari. Such innovative hydraulic engineering enabled Wari—which some scholars argue was South America's first empire—to expand and thrive for some 400 years despite an often dry, drought-prone climate, recent studies suggest. (Archaeologists refer to this state as "Wari," not "the Wari," similar to the names of modern nations like Peru or France.) Wari colonists and those who joined their community were able to "settle empty zones and make them productive," says Donna Nash, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Archaeologist Patrick Ryan Williams of the Field Museum calls the Wari strategy "conquest by hydraulic superiority."

Those studying the Wari state's rise and fall, however, confront a puzzle. Its end, about 1000 years ago, appears to have coincided with a severe drought. Across history, the pattern might seem familiar; other ancient civilizations, including the Classic Maya and the Old Kingdom of Egypt, appear to have collapsed in a time of drought. But how could drought have doomed Wari, a society that had been built on learning to take maximum advantage of limited water, and had seemingly even expanded through previous dry spells? To find an answer, researchers are trying to reconstruct two intricate, fragmented narratives—the human and the environmental—and weave them together. The history of climate "in the Andes is extremely complicated," says Benjamin Vining, an environmental archaeologist at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. "And the only thing more complicated is human behavior."

More:
https://www.science.org/content/article/shrewd-water-use-helped-south-america-s-first-empire-thrive-so-why-did-drought-destroy

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Wikiwand from Wikipedia

Cerro Baúl (Spanish: Cerro "hill", Spanish: Baúl "trunk" (i.e. a place to store treasured items)) is an ancient political outpost and ceremonial center settlement in Peru established by the pre-Incan empire called the Wari. Cerro Baúl is a terraced mountain, 2000 feet above its surroundings, with a settlement on the cliff tops themselves and in the immediate surroundings. Among other finds are the remnants of a brewery and large buildings that may have been used for ceremonial feasting. There is evidence of damage that has been interpreted as a careful and deliberate destruction, by the city's own people, of several buildings prior to the mesa's being vacated.

Description of site
The summit of Cerro Baúl is located in the Moquegua Valley. Both Cerro Baúl and the adjacent Cerro Mejia were under Wari control. The Wari had introduced the agricultural technology of terracing the mountainside and digging long canals across the land. A 6.2 mile canal was built from the Torata River through the El Paso Divide between Cerro Baúl and Cerro Mejia, where it split to irrigate the terraces that flanked both hills.[1] Also along the terraced slopes we find the homes of the majority of the center's citizens.[2] At the top of the mountain we find the public and elite living spaces. There are two D-shaped temples, in the Wari style, on the eastern and middle sections of the site. Also along the eastern side are one-story domiciles similar to the ones along the terraces. These are considered to be the artisan residence area by archaeologists. The central sector seems to be the ceremonial core, while the western sector comprises the two story dwellings of the elite.[3] Sprinkled throughout this city we find the most common architectural form used by the Wari civilization, which is an enclosed plaza flanked by impressive stone halls. The halls included residences of governors and wealthy citizens, government offices, and beer houses for state-held parties.



example of terracing

Asociación Contisuyo
Asociación Contisuyo (in Quechua: Kunti Suyu), literally translated to Association "Bias West or West Region", is an assemblage of Peruvian and American scholars with interests in the mapping and excavation of Cerro Baúl. Founded in 1981 directors Robert Pritzker and Dr. Michael Moseley, then of The Field Museum of Natural History combined their resources with the Southern Peru Copper Corporation to further their research at Cerro Baúl.[4] Prior to the first excavations it was believed that the Wari civilization had obtained the area subsequent to Tiwanaku control; however, it is now known from archaeological artifacts found in the area, such as kero (a ceremonial cup), in the hybrid styles of both Wari and Tiwanaku, that they had occupied the areas at the same time. It is believed that the two cultures employed the close space rather peacefully, as there is no evidence of warfare and evidence of shared culture and styles from about A.D. 600 to 1020. The scholars, armed with the annals of a Spanish chronicler and two seasons of excavations, were able to find evidence that supported the Inca siege and capture of the Wari political outpost.

Wari political outpost and ceremonial center
The Wari (Spanish: Huari) culture of Peru in the Middle Horizon period (400 AD-1000 AD) was one of several Andean cultures before the rise of the Inca that can be termed "empires." They were not just city states, but actually exerted their influence over neighboring groups (or subjugated them). The Wari area of influence lay in what is now the central highlands of Peru and their area of influence overlapped that of another culture, the Tiwanaku. The Wari made their bold thrust into the Tiwanaku area of control by seizing both Cerro Baúl and the adjacent Cerro Mejia. By terracing and irrigating the areas for the sustainment of the city's populace, they managed to make the Tiwanaku at least partially dependent on their society[1] as the water streaming from the mountain rainstorms had to pass by a Wari canal before it reached Tiwanaku fields. The relationship, however, seemed to be some positive interaction between the two peoples as seen in the Tiwanaku-style drinking vessel used in ceremonies that was among the Wari's most sacred ceremonial offerings found at the site.

With the demise of the Wari and Tiwanaku civilizations, the people of the Chiribaya culture lived in the area until they were conquered or colonized by the Inca.





More:
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cerro_Ba%C3%BAl

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SHREWD WATER USE HELPED SOUTH AMERICA'S FIRST EMPIRE THRIVE. SO WHY DID A DROUGHT DESTROY IT? (Original Post) Judi Lynn Sep 2021 OP
The Ancient Peruvian Fortress of Cerro Bal Judi Lynn Sep 2021 #1
Burning down the brewery: Establishing and evacuating an ancient imperial colony at Cerro Bal, Peru Judi Lynn Sep 2021 #2
It's amazing what The Wari did to survive on a limited amount of water. But abqtommy Sep 2021 #3

Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
1. The Ancient Peruvian Fortress of Cerro Bal
Thu Sep 2, 2021, 11:50 PM
Sep 2021

FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2019

In an area to the far south in Peru, just north of the Atacama Desert, lie the ruins of Cerro Baúl, an ancient political outpost and ceremonial center settlement in Peru occupied by the pre-Incan empire called the Wari, a powerful culture which began in the early AD period. The terraced mountain is 2,000 feet above its surroundings, with a settlement on the cliff tops themselves and in the immediate surroundings, a prominent stronghold that was the southernmost outpost of the Wari, one of the great empires of the Andes.



Cerro Baúl sits atop a high mesa in southern Peru

Archaeologists discovered Cerro Baúl in the early 1980s and conducted preliminary excavations in 1989. Extensive investigations have been underway for the past five years at this site that sits about 250 miles south of Cuzco. In early July, Dr. Ryan Williams, an anthropological archaeologist who works on the earliest expansionist states of South America, and his colleagues from the Field Museum and the University of Florida, discovered more than 20 preparation vats and the remains of what were once open-hearth fire pits. In the fire pits, hot-burning llama and guinea pig dung, along with other refuse from the settlement, were used to boil water and other ingredients to make chicha. These fire pits revealed ash and broken shards of the large ceramic preparation vats, which held 10-15 gallons.

Also discovered was at the center of this mountain fortress was the plaza of the sacred stone, an architectural compound built around a large boulder at the center of the summit. Sacred stones were prominent features of Peruvian cosmology, and a similar structure has been uncovered near the Wari site of Pikillacta in the Cuzco region. These stones were the centers of ritual and received offerings of special libations or of sacred items.

The most common architectural form at the capital and other early cities in Peru was an enclosed plaza flanked by impressive stone halls. These halls included residences of governors and wealthy citizens, government offices, and houses for state-held parties that rewarded the loyalty of important subjects. The most interesting of the long halls that have been excavated so far contained a burnt deposit of classic vessels and keros, some of which were decorated in a hybrid Wari-Tiwanaku style. Six fine necklaces were also recovered from this burnt offering. Each had an average of 970 shell beads, some with a few lapis lazuli or chrysocolla tube beads as well. The evidence suggests the fire that destroyed the hall was intentionally set, and the beautiful ceramic vessels, many of them probably brought more than 500 miles from the Wari capital, were deliberately smashed and thrown into the smoldering flames.



Ruins of Cerro Baúl atop the high mesa

Within these remnants of large buildings that were likely used for ceremonial purposes, there is evidence of damage that has been interpreted as a careful and deliberate destruction, by the city's own people, of several buildings prior to the evacuation of the mesa. The summit of the mountain is located in the Moquegua Valley, and adjacent to Cerro Mejia. Moquegua is a department in southern Peru that extends from the coast to the highlands.

. . .



The long, difficult climb to the top of Cerro Baúl

More:
http://nephicode.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-ancient-peruvian-fortress-of-cerro.html


Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
2. Burning down the brewery: Establishing and evacuating an ancient imperial colony at Cerro Bal, Peru
Fri Sep 3, 2021, 12:03 AM
Sep 2021

Michael E. Moseley, Donna J. Nash, Patrick Ryan Williams, Susan D. deFrance, Ana Miranda, and Mario Ruales
See all authors and affiliations

PNAS November 29, 2005 102 (48) 17264-17271; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0508673102
Contributed by Michael E. Moseley, October 4, 2005

Abstract
Before the Inca reigned, two empires held sway over the central Andes from anno Domini 600 to 1000: the Wari empire to the north ruled much of Peru, and Tiwanaku to the south reigned in Bolivia. Face-to-face contact came when both colonized the Moquegua Valley sierra in southern Peru. The state-sponsored Wari incursion, described here, entailed large-scale agrarian reclamation to sustain the occupation of two hills and the adjacent high mesa of Cerro Baúl. Monumental buildings were erected atop the mesa to serve an embassy-like delegation of nobles and attendant personnel that endured for centuries. Final evacuation of the Baúl enclave was accompanied by elaborate ceremonies with brewing, drinking, feasting, vessel smashing, and building burning.

Locally known as the “Masada of the Andes,” Cerro Baúl is a commanding geological mesa that towers over the Torata River in the arid sierra of the Moquegua river basin in southern Peru (lat 17.116°S, long 70.85°W) (Fig. 1). For many indigenous people, the 600-m-high promontory is a sacred mountain, or apu. Devotees arduously climb 1 h or more to reach the sheer-sided summit, where they use loose pebbles to make votive offerings depicting small farmsteads with houses, fields, and corrals. This article describes the monumental ruins of the mesa left by imperial colonists from the capital of Wari located 600 km to the north of Cerro Baúl (Fig. 1). The remote summit was uninhabited before and after Wari times because it was a highly impractical place to live, requiring that all necessities be hauled up with great effort. Wari colonizers likely chose this economically impracticable place on the basis of three considerations: defense, sanctity, and politics. Cerro Baúl is a natural bastion. However, during the Inca conquest, local people reputedly fled to the impregnable top of a grand natural bastion but surrendered upon depletion of summit food and water stores to the invaders camped below (1). In the past, expansive Andean states often usurped sacred places for their own aggrandizement, and the Inca imperium incorporated hallowed places ranging from apu peaks to sacred islands (2). Temples around the base of Baúl suggest that it was an apu during Wari times, if not earlier. Finally, the colonization of Moquegua was certainly a political decision made by the central Wari administration that brought direct frontier contact with its largest peer polity. Emphasizing the latter, we hypothesize that the Baúl colony was an embassy-like enclave established atop a sacred natural bastion to emphasize political prowess regardless of economic impracticalities.



Fig. 1.
Map of upper Moquegua Valley, Peru.

When Wari forces entered the region shortly before anno Domini (A.D.) 600, they seized upon the mesa and two adjacent hills, Cerro Mejia and Cerro Petroglifo, to implant the southernmost colony of the empire deep within the territorial sway of Tiwanaku, a southern nation with its capital near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia (Fig. 1). Enduring four centuries with a population numbering >1,000, the outpost was unique because it ensured that Wari and Tiwanaku came into direct contact (3). Elsewhere, the regimes were separated by buffer zones ≈100 km wide (4). The unique juxtaposition of the nations in the Moquegua sierra suggests that the Baúl enclave was established to represent Wari interests to its imperial Tiwanaku counterpart. If this scenario is correct, then a monumental temple complex at the Omo settlement in midvalley was the likely Tiwanaku counterpart (Fig. 1). This temple is the only known imperial-style sanctuary built outside the highland heartland of Tiwanaku, and it may well represent a political response to the Wari colony (5).

Wari is characterized as relatively secular and militaristic, and Tiwanaku as more ecclesiastical and mercantile (6, 7). Both were socially stratified with commoners, principally farmers and herders, supporting artisans, technicians, religious specialists, and a hierarchical class of governing nobles. Distinctions in class and rank were demarcated by differential location and elaboration of living quarters and by differential access to comestible and durable goods. For example, shawl pins, called tupu, were insignia of elite women. People rendering service or tribute to overlords expected reciprocity in the form of food, beverage, and gifts, and some elite households had special facilities to host administrative gatherings (8). The preferred drink was chicha, a fermented alcoholic brew similar to beer. In the Baúl colony, both the quantity and quality of beverage served varied by class and rank, as did food, dining ware, and gift rewards. With little distinction between church and state, each nation had its own religion, and rule was in the name of the gods. Significantly, Wari and Tiwanaku iconography shared a paramount deity with distinctive eye bands and cranial rays, called the “Front-Facing God.”

Moquegua settlements of the two colonizing regimes sometimes lay within sight of one another, but they were segregated by different adaptations to farming the desert sierra that requires irrigation. Following earlier local practices, Tiwanaku people built relatively short canals to reclaim level areas in midvalley flat lands that supported the Omo complex and numerous other towns. The upper, rugged sierra was an undeveloped economic niche that Wari transformed into an agrarian landscape by constructing a high-elevation contour canal system that fed off the large Rio Torata at an altitude of 2,600 m above sea level.

More:
https://www.pnas.org/content/102/48/17264

abqtommy

(14,118 posts)
3. It's amazing what The Wari did to survive on a limited amount of water. But
Fri Sep 3, 2021, 05:23 AM
Sep 2021

in a severe drought when a "limited supply" becomes "no supply" then people have to
migrate.

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