In 2015, a large archaeological exhibition of the Andean peoples was held in Lima, the capital of Peru. The richest collection of exhibits associated with the mysterious Chachapoya Indians, whom the Incas called "those living behind the clouds" or "warriors of the clouds", because they lived in villages located on the slopes of the mountains, was presented there for the first time.
Abandoned world
Chachapoya is a pre-Columbian Indian culture, one of the most developed in the ancient Amazon. It existed between about 800 and 1500, although its origins can be traced back to the 4th century. Representatives of this ancient culture lived on a mountain plateau - the territory of the modern Peruvian region of Amazonas. The question of the origin of the Chachapoyas and their ethnicity is relevant to this day. Inca legends testify that the "dwellers of the clouds" were very beautiful, tall, fair-haired and fair-skinned. Some Spanish sources also say that this people had fair skin.
The peculiar natural conditions reliably isolated the lands on which the mysterious people lived from the rest of the world. The Chachapoya civilization developed and existed in a kind of triangle. Two sides of it were formed by the turbulent rivers Huallaga and Marañon, and the third - by rocky mountain ranges and impassable jungle. It was possible to penetrate into this lost world either along the turbulent mountain streams, or through the deep jungle and the rugged Amazonian Andes.
Already by 800, the light-skinned Indians had formed a fairly developed civilization, and their jungle-covered plateau was densely populated. The culture was predominantly based on agriculture - the "behind the clouds" were skilled farmers who cultivated their fields on stepped terraces. In the harsh mountain climate, they also developed handicraft skills - the chachapoya were masters of pottery and weaving. The finds of archaeologists confirm that they knew how to work with metals and stone, were highly skilled builders, architects and artists.
Several hundred settlements were built on the inaccessible cliffs of the chachapoya. Some of them numbered hardly a dozen buildings, while others up to a thousand. Large settlements were fortified with powerful defensive structures. In 1964, American archaeologists, led by Gene Savoy, discovered a huge fortress with a rampart and stone walls about a kilometer long in the lands of the sky-high inhabitants. This structure is clearly one of the most remarkable throughout South America. During the construction of the fortress, twice as many granite blocks were used than during the construction of the Cheops pyramid in Egypt!
21 years later, the Savoy group made another phenomenal discovery. Not far from the fortress, under the dense cover of the jungle, a huge city was discovered - an area of about 80 square kilometers. Its architecture is completely unlike the Inca style. Gene Savoy dated the period of its construction to 800. During the research, archaeologists often met tall blue-eyed blondes and blondes among the local population. Savoy said: “They were very superstitious and considered the found ruins enchanted. Many of them talked about a seven-headed snake that entwined everyone who tried to penetrate the ancient settlement, after which people turned to stone."
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Under the heel of the conquerors
According to the Peruvian writer and Inca historian Rarsilaso de la Begu (1539-1616), in the second half of the 15th century, during the reign of Tupac Inca Yupanqui, the Chachapoya state was conquered by the Incas. According to many testimonies, the light-skinned Indians were brave warriors, and the Incas did not manage to conquer their country for four centuries. There are many historical evidences of the war of the Chachapoya with the Incas, especially many of them can be found in the manuscripts of Pedro Cieza de Leon (1518-1554) - a Spanish priest, historian, geographer and ethnographer, one of the first chroniclers of the era of Spanish colonization of South America.
In all large settlements "living behind the clouds" the Incas placed large inns and warehouses. The chachapoy kept temples where they made sacrifices to their gods; they had huge flocks of sheep. Light-skinned Indians made luxurious clothes for the Incas and unusually beautiful, exquisite carpets. However, enmity between neighbors flared up from time to time with renewed vigor, and the war continued until the city of Cuelap, the stronghold of the Chachapoia, fell. The survivors were forcibly displaced from their homelands to remote corners of the Inca empire, which stretched, in modern parameters, from Chile to Ecuador.
In the middle of the 16th century, the Spanish conquistador Alonso de Alvarado, the captain of the expedition of the famous Francisco Pizarro, the "gravedigger" of the Inca empire, entered the lands of Chachapoia. The conquistadors found in the remaining "warriors of the clouds" loyal allies in the struggle against the warlike Incas. However, the alliance with foreigners served the chachapoia a disservice: too many light-skinned Indians died from diseases brought by the conquistadors from overseas. Over the 200 years that have passed since the death of the Chachapoia state, the number of this people has decreased by almost 90 percent - war and disease have not spared anyone. The surviving handful of "living behind the clouds" could not maintain their identity, and the Chachapoia gradually merged with other Indian peoples. And only the extraordinary beauty of their women continued to amaze the local Spanish nobility.
Are they from the Mediterranean?
The very existence of the civilization of light-skinned Indians can cast doubt on the fact of the long-term isolation of the New World. All the same archaeological group Savoy in 1986 made an amazing find. Earlier, their leader heard rumors that during the conquest the people of Chachapoia hid "talking stones" in some caves. Historians, however, did not believe in these legends, believing that writing did not exist in ancient Peru. But then one day Savoy, climbing the cliff above the ancient city, came across an equally ancient tomb, which hid many bones and pieces of pottery. Three stone slabs with inscriptions were inserted into the walls of the tomb. After studying them, Jin Sawoy and his companions were simply amazed. It turned out that the first on the slabs were the words of the Hebrew language, as far as one can judge, from the ancient Egyptian,Israeli and Phoenician sources. Savoy believes that these plates were brought to Peru from Ophir, a mysterious semi-legendary country in eastern Africa or South Asia, where the biblical king Solomon sent his ships.
The found letters posed many questions for scientists. How in the city of the Chachapoya Indians, built in 800, could there be words from works dating back to the 1st millennium BC? How to explain the features of the appearance of "living behind the clouds" - after all, neither Egypt nor Israel have ever been famous for their tall, white-skinned and blond population. It was even suggested that the Chachapoia were Vikings who moved to Peru from the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, where the Scandinavian navigator Leif Erikson equipped an expedition from Greenland. However, this Norman epic dates back to the end of the 10th century, while the Chachapoia civilization originated 600 years earlier.
It is known that the phenomenon of light-skinned Indians of the Peruvian Andes was of great interest to the famous traveler and archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl. The Norwegian researcher noted that this mysterious people did not belong to any of the known racial groups that lived on the South American continent. Heyerdahl found out that the Chachapoyas built their ships using technologies that were almost identical to those of ancient Egyptian. The Norwegian traveler and his associates managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean and reach the shores of South America on the papyrus ship "Ra-2", built exactly according to the method of the Andean peoples. Thus, it was proved that the chachapoya could well have come to these parts from the Mediterranean. Their sarcophagi are also known to resemble the "fetal position" burials characteristic of the pre-Hispanic coastal and highland culture known as the Huari. The "mausoleums" of the chachapoya were varieties of the typical American burial structures "chulpa" and "puculo", also characteristic of the Huari. All this may testify in favor of the local origin of the “transcendental inhabitants”. Therefore, it is very important that at present it is planned to analyze the DNA of the Chachapoya mummies found on the shores of Lake Condor in the Andes, and compare them with the genetic material of modern inhabitants of Peru and the states of the East.and compare them with the genetic material of modern inhabitants of Peru and the states of the East.and compare them with the genetic material of modern inhabitants of Peru and the states of the East.
Valdis PEYPINSH