Definition of Paracas Culture

Just over 300 km from the city of Lima is the Paracas Peninsula. It was in this territory where in 1925 the Peruvian archaeologist, anthropologist and doctor Julio César Tello discovered some human settlements of an ancient civilization pre-Inca. These are known as the Paracas Culture, which developed between the Vll century BC. C and II century AD. C.

According to most research, this civilization comes from the Chavín Culture and is the precedent of the Nazca Culture.

Daily life

The different excavations carried out over the years have allowed us to know what daily life was like in the Paracas Culture. Its inhabitants had extensive knowledge about the exploitation of water and this allowed them to dedicate themselves to farming, specifically to culture of cotton, corn, lima beans and beans (to improve the fertility of the land they used bird droppings as compost)

Also, they took advantage of natural resources of the sea and mastered the techniques of navigation. They were not isolated communities, since they maintained commercial relations with the peoples that inhabited the mountains.

They had a high sense artistic, which is evident in ceramics and textiles. In both forms of crafts, iconographic elements with mythological beings appear, such as the flying feline and other strange creatures.

From the point of view of human organization, society was divided into three main groups: priests who ruled in the name of the gods, warriors who represented the noble classes and farmers and craftsmen.

Funerary mantles and cranial operations

In this culture the corpses were mummified using sophisticated techniques. The mummy was wrapped in a shroud surrounded by a series of tissues and then placed in a wicker basket in the fetal position. Along with the mummies, objects of daily life have been found, such as vessels, cloth and other ornaments. The package that made up the mummy is called a funerary bundle. These remains were found in the Wari Kayan necropolis.

The mummification process was very similar to that of Ancient Egypt. In this sense, the organs of the body and the brain were extracted from the cranial structure and to keep the mummy in good condition, ground salt, tar, lime and other ingredients were used. Previously, the size of the corpse was reduced by subjecting it to a slow fire.

Trepanning signs appear on many of the skulls found. It was about one intervention surgical procedure that could have three objectives: to heal fractures in the bone walls, to relieve headaches or to combat mental illnesses (in this sense it is very probable that they believed that when the skull was opened, the evil spirits that caused evil). For this they used tools made of obsidian, silver and gold. Apart from these operations, they also performed cranial deformations.

From the medical field, the coca leaf was used as an anesthetic substance.

Photos: Fotolia - Vadim_petrakov / Ana