Incas

On the arid central coast of Peru, hundreds of kilometers from the magnificent Amazon rainforest and separated by one of the most important mountain ranges in the world, archaeologists encountered something they did not expect. We are talking about a cemetery of the pre-Hispanic Ychsma culture in Pachacamac and the surprise was specifically in the funeral bundles of the elite that They were adorned with macaw and parrot feathers. that could never have survived naturally in that ecosystem. So… How did they get here? The answers. Faced with this question, archaeologists had to start thinking about it, because seeing a parrot in the middle of an arid mountain range is not the most common thing. Until then, it was believed that ancient people traded only the feathers already plucked from parrots that had been in their natural habitat. However, a new study published in Nature has revealed a much more complex and fascinating reality: the ancient Peruvians transported these live Amazonian birds through the treacherous passes of the Andes. How do you know? It is not that we have a time machine to see what specifically happened, but it is possible to analyze the ancient DNA found in these cemeteries through stable isotopes and spatial modeling of routes. In this way, the study focused on the remains found in 34 funerary bundles from Pachacamac that were dated before the expansion of the Inca Empire. This is precisely where the mummies were provided with “false heads” very well decorated with the mysterious feathers. The results. The genetic analysis in this case indicated that the extracted DNA corresponded to many species of birds that were purely Amazonian, such as the red and green macaw. But the most interesting thing comes when the isotopes are applied to the remains of the birds, because a drastic change is seen in their diet. The chemical fingerprint revealed here that these parrots were born and grew up in their natural habitat in the Amazon eating a natural diet, but in their last months of life they began to have a diet provided by humans themselves, and that did not correspond to what they ate when they were in the wild. It’s a test. This unequivocally demonstrates that the birds were not hunted for their feathers in the jungle, but captured alive, transported across the mountain range and kept in captivity on the coast to be repeatedly “plucked” or sacrificed to make the funerary goods that would end up among the elites of ancient society. It’s not easy. Crossing the Andes today is something that is not easy, which is why it was much less so a thousand years ago. In this way, through landscape models and geographic information systems, the researchers mapped the most probable routes they used from the Amazon basin to the Pacific coast. In this case, the birds had to suffer great stress with drastic changes in altitude, freezing temperatures at the highest points of the mountain and, above all, a diet to which they were not accustomed. In this way, the fact that they arrived alive at Pachacamac underlines the existence of an incredibly sophisticated animal trade network with knowledge about their care. But above all, the great value that this animal must have for the society that mobilized to bring it to its cities despite the difficulties along the way stands out. Why so much trouble? As one of the researchers points out, in the pre-Hispanic Andean world, Amazonian feathers were not a simple ornament, but rather were absolute symbols of political power, status and connection with the divine. And having access to the vibrant colors of the jungle demonstrated the elite’s control over long-distance commercial networks and gave great prestige. This discovery in Pachacamac is not an isolated case, but rather confirms a trend that archeology was already beginning to glimpse. In 2021, a study published in PNAS documented similar finds much further south, in the arid Atacama Desert, where mummies of Amazon parrots that were bred in captivity and routinely plucked were found. Now it is confirmed again. Images | Dmitry Chernyshov In Xataka | 60 years ago we discovered a Dorado hidden in the jungle of Peru. We now know that it was actually much more