Continuing
from the previous post, the question was raised, who were the Chachapoya that
are credited with building Kuelap and Gran Pajaten, and other major sites in
northern Peru?
First of all, we don't know what
the Chachapoya called themselves—their history is shrouded in obscurity. What
we know about them comes only from the Inca who conquered them, and the Spanish
who conquered the Inca, and very little from both. Secondly, the word
Chachapoya means “Warriors of the Clouds,” or “Could People,” in Quechua, a
name given these people by the Inca upon first encountering them in their
movement north from Cuzco.
What is known, is that they were a fierce warrior race who fought the
Inca for many years, succumbing just prior to the arrival of the Spanish. They
lived in the cloud forests of Amazonas, were known to the Spanish as only one
of the many nations conquered by the Inca, though they constantly resisted the
Inca even after being defeated. Since the Incas
and the Spanish conquistadors were the principal sources of information on the
Chachapoyas, there is little first-hand or contrasting knowledge about them.
As the Inca Empire swept across
South America about 500 years ago, any enemy that dared oppose them was crushed
into submission, with one notable exception. In the cloud forests of northern
Peru, the Inca army came up against a fierce group of warriors known as the
Chachapoya. But after years of rebellion, the Chachapoya civilization suddenly
vanished
Writings
by the major chroniclers of the time, such as Garcilaso de la Vega were based
on fragmentary second-hand accounts. Much of what we do know about the
Chachapoyas culture is based on archaeological evidence from ruins, pottery,
tombs and other artifacts. Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon noted that, “after
their annexation to the Inca Empire, they adopted customs imposed by the Cuzco-based
Inca.” By the 18th century, they were no longer a separate people.
However, in the latter 1500s, Cieza also noted that among the indigenous
Peruvians, the Chachapoya were unusually fair-skinned and famously beautiful,
saying, “They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have
seen in [Andes] and their wives were so beautiful that because of their
gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken
to the Sun Temple. The women and their husbands always dressed in woolen
clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos,
which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere.”
The
next question to ask is, did these Chachapoya have the ability to construct
such edifices as Kuelap and Gran Pajaten? The answer lies in the fact that
between about 500 A.D., the last possible date of Chachapoya site construction,
and 1500 A.D., when they were conquered, there is no evidence of anything built
by these people throughout what is considered the Chachapoya region. Yet, this
was no small area—the Spanish called it an Empire, since it covered 503 miles
by 62 miles, without counting the distance upward to Muyupampa, which is
another 93 miles. Clearly, the Chachapoya controlled a very large region,
though only a few major edifices have been found within its boundaries.
Spanish
chronicles from the 16th century tell of a network of seven Chachapoyas cities
strung like a necklace along the heights of the high jungle of northern Peru. Gran Saposoa is the name given to a
series of ruins in the Andean cloud forests (335 miles north of Lima) that
includes hundreds of round stone structures, covers approximately 80 square
miles, and was home to about 20,000 occupants. This pre-Incan metropolis is
located in Peru’s remote cloud forest, and was only discovered in 1999, with a
recent expedition discovering a sixth citadel, at 12,000 feet elevation, with a
64-foot-wide avenue. He said the six interconnected districts discovered during
five expeditions contain hundreds of circular stone buildings.
Gran Saposoa ruins, both square and round, in the Chachapoya architectural
style
Atumpucro
is a complex of over a hundred and fifty circular Chachapoya-stye buildings
within an impressive stone fortification, similar to the Kuélap fortress, and perched
on Atumpucro hill along the western shores of the Utcubamba River in the
province of Luya. The city extends for more than two hectares, at an altitude
of over 11,000 feet with the structures built on large terraces dug along the
ridge of the mountain, with the old city surrounded by a wall 165 feet long and
ten feet wide, with the complex described as being in a good state of
preservation. The discoverer, explorer Martin Chumbe, said, “It is a beautiful
place. All the houses have rectangular windows, niches and friezes all around.”
One of the round buildings at
Atumpucro built on a terrace dug into the hill, with architecture in the
Chachapoya style
“The
architecture and the skilled work that has gone into building the site has
allowed the building to survive for all this time despite their precarious
location,” Chumbe said. This should suggest to anyone that the nature of the
construction was beyond the level of such a group who had not advanced beyond
the level of the Chachapoya culture.
The same type of stonework is found
on all of these Chachapoya sites, showing a degree of art beyond simple
brickwork
The
point of all this is simply that all these “Chachapoya” structures, Kuelap,
Gran Pajaten, Gran Saposoa, Atumpucro, and the few others, were, first, built
by the same people, using the same architectural design of their buildings,
etc., and second, would have been built around the same time. There are two
very important points made from this: 1) The carbon dating of 200 B.C. for the
people who settled these areas is far too early for any Chachapoya longevity
(1600 years before their conquest, and 1800 years before their demise), and 2)
The Chachapoya was
not a nation, or an empire, but some sort of federation of small states
centered on numerous settlements scattered across their mountainous territory,
and thus unlikely to have had the same design ideas, abilities, interests, let
alone the manpower of a single group to build such edifices as Kuelap and the
others.
Thus, we come back to the
question, who built these impressive cities, fortresses, and complexes?
Kuelap, itself, along with the
others, are in a region so distant and neglected until recently, that little
archaeological research has been done at these important sites, and our
knowledge of them remains vague. An adjacent site named La Mallca, larger
though less dramatic than Kuelap, has not been studied at all.
Consequently, while we cannot
attribute these magnificent constructions to the Chachapoya, who evidently
never duplicated these efforts over the claimed 1600 years of their existence,
we have no knowledge of any other group between the demise of the Nephites and
the coming of the Spanish, capable of building such edifices. So why not place
the construction where we have written records of a people capable of building
such cities, and a written record of their building numerous others?
The Nephites.
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