Origin of the Chachapoyas

According to the analysis of the Chachapoyas's objects made by the Antisuyo expeditions of Amazon Archaeology Institute, the Chachapoyas do not exhibit Amazon cultural tradition. Their cultural goods have Andean roots. Although in certain cases they present a particular physiognomy, the investigations show that it is only a question of forms that suffered modifications due to geographical factors and a probable relative isolation.

The anthropomorphous sarcofagi do not seem to be another thing than the imitation of funeral bundles provided with a wooden mask proper of the so-called Horizonte medio, when it reigned culturally on the coast and the highlands what is known as Tiahuanaco-Huari or Wari culture. The "mausoleums" are equally modified expressions from the chullpa or pucullo, architectural element of funeral character that has a big diffusion in Peru and also inserted in the cultural frame Tiahuanaco-Huari.

If we look for an answer to the question: why people who live in the mountain range of the Andes occupied zones of the Amazonian Andes, the reason will be that such occupation was an answer to the need of extending the agrarian border. This need can only have its explanation in the geographical environment, not only from the Andes but also from the coast, characterized by its extensest desert areas that are translated in suitable soils for agriculture, limited and insufficient to sustain a population like the ancestral Peruvian people. People dedicated, for three thousand years, to the intensive growing of the land and, for this reason, had supporting an increasing demographic rate.

This dissertation has received the epithet of "serranización of the rainforest", that is seen in both: the geographical part and in the cultural one. On one hand, when the scenery of the Amazonian Andes changed, after the fell of the tropical forests, into a barren one that resembles the mountain range of the Andes; and, on the other hand, when the Andean people carried their cultural Andean baggage to places that were originally filled with Amazon verdant grove. This phenomenon, which is still current, repeated itself in the southern Amazonian Andes in times of the Inca Empire, with the mountain projection to the zone of Vilcabamba that raised haughty Inca architecture exponents like Machu Picchu.

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