HISTORY

The territory now occupied by Peru was first treated twenty thousand years ago by hands of collectors and hunters that followed the track of the animals they hunted: guanacos, vicuñas wild guinea pigs. Cave paintings (Toquepala, Lauricocha) attest to their existence. These early dwellers, whose most remote foebearers had crossed the Strait of Behringfrom Asia, used stones and bones to make their weapons and utensils. They knew nothing of agriculture, and made almost no impact on the environment. The first arrivals lived together with their small prehistoric horses, and mastodons and megatheres, fauna which survived on this side of the world, several millenniums longer than in Europe, and slowly became extinct. The country was very different. The present coastal desert was highly humid and covered with abundant vegetation. Little by little, however, the weather started to change and gradually converted forests into deserts, and while many species became extinct, many others appeared. Although hunting of land and sea animals continued to be the basic occupation of these early inhabitants, they also started to grow plants that required little care, such as pumpkins. With the passage of time, and under new climatic conditions, they began to consolidate and to expand their knowledge of the land. They grew other plants besides pumpkins, such as beans, corn, sweet potatoes, that were incorporated into their new eating habits. Cotton was used to make clothes and their fishing methods became more sophisticated, by the use of small totora reed boats (the same as those now seen in Huanchaco, near Trujillo), with which they caught sea lions and dolphins. Llama and alpaca herds were also started in order to use not only their meat, but also their wool and to transport small loads. Potato growing as well as its incorporation, together with other cereals –quinua, quiwicha, ollucos- and others – into their staple foods was an event of paramount importance in the Andes. In that thousands year journey, they learned to select and improve plants for human consumption and to raise animals. As a result, they stopped their erratic and hazardous search for food. Their agricultural and cattle raising activities forced them to become sedentary, as they had to live next to their farms and take care of their animals, all of which enabled them to slowly penetrate other new dominions of knowledge.

THE INCAS

The legendary Inca Empire (1200 – 1438) –Two myths are associated with the appearance of the Incas. The first and most popular and known by heart by all Peruvian students refers to the emergence of Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo from Lake Titicaca. His father, the Sun, gave Manco Capac a gold baton and ordered him to found a city where it could sink into the ground without encountering any resistance. This occurred in the Cusco Valley, which for ever after became the sacred capital and the place of origin of the Inca civilization.

The other myth is more complex, and tells of the four Ayar Brothers, each representing a tribe, warring amongst themselves for dominance until Ayar Manco (Manco Capac) after many changing fortunes, emerged triumphant, and became he first of the fourteen Incas that governed the Empire. All this happened in legendary times, which thus cannot, be accurately determined. However, what is certain, is that the Quechua ethnic group, to which the Incas belonged, was based in the region of Cusco in the 12th century, and that this people, -like many others of the time stricken by the final disintegration of the Tiahuanaco- Huari Empire and the ensuing confusion and anarchy, -was fighting for its survival. Historians maintain that the Quechuas jumped to the forefront of the historical regional scene when they defeated their traditional enemies, the hardened and combative Chancas, who came from Apurimac with the intention of dominating them.

The Inca expansion.- the victory over these, which did not occur until 1438, gave them enormous prestige. It was then, just one century before the arrival of the Spaniards, that the incas started an explosive expansion that enabled them to conquer successively the numerous ethnic and regional groups scattered over the Andes. They also penetrated the Coast with identical success, and formed a huge empire which extended from the South of Colombia to the North of Chile and Northwest of Argentina. (And covered 4,000,000 square meters of relative occopation, the largest in the Western Hemisphere).

Several names stand out in this enterprise Pachacutec defeated the Collas and gained the political and military control of the southern Andes before undertaking the conquest of the central inter-Andean valleys up to the region of Cajamarca. He also grave the Empire a system for the administration and management of the newly acquired territories. Tupac Yupanqui, an organizer, legislator and legendary conqueror, continued the expansion subduing the Chimus and extending the empire as far as Ecuador in the North, and part of Chile and northern Argentina in the South. Finally, Huayna Capac achieved minor conquests in Ecuador and promoted his military chiefs to the rank of Incas in detriment to the cuzquenian blooded nobility. He died in 1525 leaving a gigantic empire difficult to control because of the continuous uprisings of the recently conquered populations, and because his two sons disputed the succession to the throne: Huascar, supported by the Cuzquenian nobility, and Atahualpa son of Huayna Capac by a Quitenian princess. This is when the Spaniards arrived.

The Tahuantinsuyo.-The Empire or Tahuantinsuyo (in Quechua, the four directions) was divided into four administrative regions or suyos whose center was in Cusco: Chinchaysuyo in the Northern and Central Andes; Contisuyo (in the West, from Cusco to the Pacific); Collasuyo (in the South, comprising the Peruvian, Bolivian, and Chilean Altiplano, North of Argentina); Antisuyo (in the North and Southeast, towards the Amazon area) These regions were divided into provinces and then into sectors and so on down to the ayllu, the fundamental base of the Inca society.

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