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LAND OF CONTRAST
The one who thinks of the coastal desert as an endless strip of sand is completely wrong. Here, nature has displayed all its wisdom and has made possible the development of hundreds of creatures who have adapted to survive in this hostile and extreme environment through a process that took million of years. Carob trees, acacias, long-spine acacias, sapotes, foxes, iguanas, dozens of birds and even humans - have learned to live among dunes and...
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MISCHIEF OF A BAD CHILD
The origin of the name El Niño goes back to the northern port of Paita. From day one, traditional fishermen have thus called the warm water current that flows through the area’s water each year when the month of December rolls around. By association, the name of the current is connected with the arrival of God’s son, i.e. Christmas Eve.
At an earlier time, the importance of this current to the Paita men of the sea... |
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A GREAT NATURAL BOOK
From the coasts of Chicama and Huanchaco to the humid forests
of the Marañon basin, all through the inter Andean valleys of
Huamachuco, Otuzco and Santiago de Chuco, the La Libertad
region is a great open book that allows us to get acquainted with
a large portion of Peru's rich geography. This is a journey that
begins, from an eagle's eye view, on the cold waters of the Pacific
Ocean and ends on the high jungle, above a green hill...
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ON GODS AND MUD
The first groups of humans to inhabit La Libertad can be traced
back about 12.000 years, to a time when South America's
first dwellers had arrived; highly specialized hunter-gatherers
who brought a vast experience of development from the Asian
continent with them.
On the coast they used to capture fish using missile points as spears, catch small animals and hunt deer as part of their staple diet. To complement this they gathered... |
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NOSTALGIC FOR TRUJILLO
Despite the fact that I lived just for a few years in Trujillo, I can never
stop thinking about this city. It's part of my skin. My memories
are extraordinary, particularly the ones that take place in the urban
portion of the city. I remember it as enormous, as we all do when
we are young. I can still distinguish the old wall that enclosed the
city, which I began discovering by parts because it was already in
the process of being torn down...
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FESTIVE STORIES OF LA LIBERTAD
In La Libertad, celebrating Christs, saints and virgins is a tradition that
goes back many centuries. These celebrations are filled with a spirit
of faith that is renewed everyday, and with an eternal legend that
talks about miracles and old stories, like the one about the theological
soup during Easter in Moche; or the two virgins in Guadalupe; or
the eggplant marmalade in Huaranchal; or the Marinera Festival in
Trujillo that brings...
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FOOTPRINTS IN TIME
More than 12,000 years ago, at the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene, the current coastal fringe of northern Peru looked very different than it does today: the marine line was fifty meters lower, the rains that followed the end of the last ice age created extensive rolling hills, and the valleys featured dense forests of native tree species like the carob, the sapote, and the long spine acacia. This was the environment that...
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A PAST THAT STILL BREATHES
A trip to the north of the country will enable you to visit several of the most important museums in Peru, where they protect thousands of pieces from the Mochica, Sican, Cupisnique, Chimu, and many other cultures. And, if this is not enough, then you must not miss out on visiting the main archeological centers of the region, which have visitor’s centers and site museums. Begin at Trujillo, in the Moche valley, where the Chan Chan Site...
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SOWING IN THE SAND
Without a doubt, the most important work on the Peruvian coast that ancient humans have passed down to us is the wise utilization of hydrologic resources and the soil. This technology - the product of the systematization of observing natural phenomena through the passage of thousands of years - enabled the first inhabitants of these lands to prevail over their environment and to cultivate huge tracts of land, reclaiming areas from the desert and...
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A WATER CULTURE
The task of bringing water from the sources in the Andes to the desert, through valleys and gorges, was one of the main occupations of humanity along the north coast. The absence of rain on the coast after its desertification around 5,000 B.C. created the need in the recently formed coastal communities of damming the waters that flowed down from the Andes and of channeling them to their valleys. The Cupisnique, who had settled in Lambayeque and...
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VILLAGES OF MUD AND SALT
The coastal fringe that lies between La Libertad and Lambayeque, the old territories of the Cupisnique, Mochica, and Sican cultures, possesses a discrete charm because of its geography - winding and very fertile valleys - and its proximity to the ocean. This proverbial wealth of agricultural and ocean resources gave birth to important cultural stages, powerful nations that managed to recover lands from the desert for farming through complex...
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THE SINNER
Of all the villages in Lambayeque, Zaña is without a doubt the one with the most history. Founded soon after the first Spanish Encomiendas (lands granted to Conquistadors by the Spanish crown) were established, Zaña became the main city of northern Peru due to its proximity to the ocean and the abundance of its crops; sacked continuously by pirates and devastated by natural disasters, the lovely city had to be abandoned by the...
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MEN OFF THE SEA:
MARITIME CIVILIZATIONS ON THE PERUVIAN COAST Central coast of Peru. 12,000 years ago
At the first light of morning, a thick fog covers the countryside surrounding the hills that, with the passing of every year, form the final slopes of the Andes and which are very close to the coastline. As the morning light grows, a green carpet appears on the horizon, covering the neighboring hilltops. A pair of Least Seedsnipes let loose their melodious song from the sands,... |
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MARINE MYTHS
In her book, Fishing: XVI and XVII centuries, the researcher, Maria Rostworowski, makes the following reflections. “From the Peruvian shore, the vista of the ocean is infinite. The sun rises above the towering mountains to disappear in these restless ocean solitudes. What worries would have stricken the yungas (people who live on the coast) to think that the ocean had, in its bosom, divine entities? What supposed struggles and battles...
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TO THE CONQUEST OF THE SEA:
FISHHOOKS, NETS, HARPOONS, AND OTHER FISHING TOOLS
Even if the use of the very first fishing tackle, fishhooks, lines, and harpoons has not been 100% established because of the lack of archeological evidence, it could still be assumed that the men of the coast used tools to extract their first fish more or less 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. The researcher, Junius Bird, excavated several garbage dumps in the northern part of Chile and found several fishhooks made from the shells of mussels, which...
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WAY OF FISHING IN ANCIENT PERU
From gathering shellfish on the rocks to the large scale fishing done on rafts and caballitos de totora, which congregated thousands of fishermen in the ocean, ways of fishing on the Pre-Hispanic coast evolved, through thousands of years, towards a greater capture rate and a greater amount of community effort, especially when using huge drift nets and large scale ritual fishing done in the north part of the country in the times of the Mochica...
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OPEN SEA:
THE BOATS OF ANCIENT PERU
Perhaps the most important change made by the Pre-Hispanic men of the coast was the invention of the boat. Hermann Buse describes it in this way: “…So, forced to adventure into deep waters, with hands freed to fish (i.e., and this is the important thing, not swimming), he resorted to a chance ‘floating log or to handful of reeds’. He straddled that floating log or that bunch of rushes or dried straw as if he were riding...
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MARITIME TRADE
The anonymous document, Aviso de el modo que havia en el gobierno de los indios en tiempo del inga, recovered by Maria Rostworowski, makes a reference that in the Chincha valley, “there were…six thousand merchants, and each one of them were fairly well off…and with their buying and selling, they went from Chincha to Cusco and throughout all of Collao, and others went to Quito and Puerto Viejo from where they brought many...
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EPILOGUE A FUTURE FOR THE SEA
As it was two thousand years ago, when the Mochica and Nasca societies lived entirely from the sea and the fish, mankind of today has an important source of resources, both nutritional and economical, in the Peruvian coastal waters. Peru is the second largest producer of fish flour in the world; however, the table of the coastal dweller receives a minimal part of the biomass captured in their waters. An opposite case is that of the Amazon, where...
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THE WHITE-WINGED GUAN
BY WALTER H. WUST
Held to be one of the best examples of a comeback by an animal species once on the brink of extinction, the white-winged wild guan (Peneiope albipennis) was rediscovered for the world in 1977 after it was believed to be extinct for a century. Today, thanks to the backing of the Backus ProFauna Foundation, the possibility of reintroducing these guans into their natural habitat will soon be a... |
