Peruvian history

LAND OF GOLD AND MYSTERY

Peru lies in a tropical zone and has got a maze of forests, immense sandy deserts and mountains covered with perpetual snow. In spite its rough and often inhospitable nature, Peru is one of the biggest centre of ancient culture in the world. The first hunters and anglers arrived at least 10.000 years ago, and by 3000 B.C. fishing villages were gathered all over the dry coast, while in the oasis in the desert and in the fertile valleys of the Andean mountains little farming settlements flourished. An impressive legacy of thousands of archaeological sites is spread out all over the country; ranging from 14.000 year's old nomadic camps to the monumental buildings of sixteenth century Inca Cusco.

Though the Inca culture is probably the best known, the Andean mountains generate a long chain of high civilized cultures that flourished thousands of years earlier.
The numerous Peruvian museums houses an unimaginable number of gold, ceramics and textile created by pre-Inca cultures such as Chavín, Paracas, Moche and Nazca.

Around 1000 B.C. along the Peruvian south coast, the Paracas civilization, world famous for their brilliant art textile, developed. Their successors, the Nazca people, renowned for the enigmatic figures, ruled around 100 AD the desert south of Lima. At the same time arises the Moche culture, which extends its power over the entire northern desert; the legacy left by the Moche consist of monumental buildings, filigree gold work and excellent ceramics. The Moche burial site of Sipan, around Chiclayo, bears witness to these periods of grand-masters.

Half way the 15th century the Inca's, settled in the valley of Cusco, started with a systematically expansion of their domains, and in less than a hundred years they succeeded to forge together an Empire as vast as the Roman Empire. Once the Inca's had the power, their culture reached its height; metallurgy, pottery and textile came to aesthetic and technical perfection.

Stone-masons manufactured heavy, with great precision sculpted work of art. Inca nobles ruled the Andean mountains until 1528 when emperor Huayna Capac died of smallpox; a virus left by the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro, after an expedition along the Peruvian coast.

The Inca Empire collapsed with the arrival of the Spaniards in 1532. The legacy of colonial Peru is found in the many churches, palaces and mansions. Lima became the place where the Spanish vice regal settled to rule the Andean territories, until the country obtained independence from Spain in 1821.