Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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Two conquering empires and more than 500 years of colonial rule failed to erase the cultural and genetic traces of indigenous Peruvians, a new study finds. This runs contrary to historical accounts that depict a complete devastation of northern Peru’s ancient Chachapoya people by the Inca Empire.
The Chachapoyas—sometimes referred to as “Warriors of the Clouds” because they made their home in the Amazonian cloud forests—are mainly known today for what they built: fortified hilltop fortresses and intricate sarcophagi overlooking their villages from sheer, inaccessible cliff sides. The little we know about their existence before the arrival of the Spanish comes to us via an oral history passed along by the Inca to their Spanish conquerors—in other words, the winners’ version of history.
Now, a study tracking the genetic and linguistic history of modern Peruvians is revealing that the Chachapoyas may have fared better than these mainstream historical accounts would have us believe. As Chiara Barbieri, a post-doctoral researcher from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, puts it: “Some of these historical documents were exaggerated and a little bit biased in favor of the Inca.”
Many of these early reports stem from two historians who essentially wrote the book on the Inca Empire during the time period from 1438 to 1533: Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of a conquistador and Incan princess who published chronicles on the Inca Empire in the early 17th century, and Pedro de Cieza de Leon, a Spanish conquistador from a family of Jewish converts who travelled through the area in the mid-16th century, and wrote one of the first lengthy histories of the Inca people and Spanish conquests.
According to Cieza de Leon’s account, it was in the 1470s, about midway through the Inca Empire, that paramount leader Túpac Inca Yupanqui first attacked the Chachapoyas in what is today northern Peru. He quickly found that the Warriors of the Clouds were not the type to give up without a fight. Cieza de Leon described the first battle between Yupanqui and the Chachapoyas in the first part of his Chronicle of Peru:
...Then, a colleague heard a local dialect spoken in the area. Researchers with their team found fewer than 10 people who actually spoke the Chachapoyas variant, and confirmed it to be distinct from other Quechua languages spoken in the Andes to the south of the Chachapoyas region and north in modern day Ecuador.
“We collected and transcribed actual recordings so that anyone can ‘confirm’ the differences by listening on our website,” Heggarty says.
Read more: When Genetics and Linguistics Challenge the Winners’ Version of History | Science | Smithsonian
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An interesting read. I can't "confirm" any of the recordings obviously but it was kind of cool to check it out.
The Chachapoyas—sometimes referred to as “Warriors of the Clouds” because they made their home in the Amazonian cloud forests—are mainly known today for what they built: fortified hilltop fortresses and intricate sarcophagi overlooking their villages from sheer, inaccessible cliff sides. The little we know about their existence before the arrival of the Spanish comes to us via an oral history passed along by the Inca to their Spanish conquerors—in other words, the winners’ version of history.
Now, a study tracking the genetic and linguistic history of modern Peruvians is revealing that the Chachapoyas may have fared better than these mainstream historical accounts would have us believe. As Chiara Barbieri, a post-doctoral researcher from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, puts it: “Some of these historical documents were exaggerated and a little bit biased in favor of the Inca.”
Many of these early reports stem from two historians who essentially wrote the book on the Inca Empire during the time period from 1438 to 1533: Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of a conquistador and Incan princess who published chronicles on the Inca Empire in the early 17th century, and Pedro de Cieza de Leon, a Spanish conquistador from a family of Jewish converts who travelled through the area in the mid-16th century, and wrote one of the first lengthy histories of the Inca people and Spanish conquests.
According to Cieza de Leon’s account, it was in the 1470s, about midway through the Inca Empire, that paramount leader Túpac Inca Yupanqui first attacked the Chachapoyas in what is today northern Peru. He quickly found that the Warriors of the Clouds were not the type to give up without a fight. Cieza de Leon described the first battle between Yupanqui and the Chachapoyas in the first part of his Chronicle of Peru:
...Then, a colleague heard a local dialect spoken in the area. Researchers with their team found fewer than 10 people who actually spoke the Chachapoyas variant, and confirmed it to be distinct from other Quechua languages spoken in the Andes to the south of the Chachapoyas region and north in modern day Ecuador.
“We collected and transcribed actual recordings so that anyone can ‘confirm’ the differences by listening on our website,” Heggarty says.
Read more: When Genetics and Linguistics Challenge the Winners’ Version of History | Science | Smithsonian
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! Give the gift of Smithsonian
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
An interesting read. I can't "confirm" any of the recordings obviously but it was kind of cool to check it out.
