Early South American civilizations shared some important cultural practices. They practiced their religions in a similar way, and they used some of the same artistic methods.
Early South American civilizations also had a lot in common with the civilizations that first developed in other parts of the world. Select two regions from the map and compare the early civilizations in those regions to early civilizations in South America. Then explain why you think civilizations that never had contact with one another had so much in common. Your answer should be two paragraphs long.
Answers
Answer:
The Moche were less of a state or empire and more of a society—they lived in a general geographic area and shared cultural values, but were not governed under a uniform political system.
The Moche practiced a number of religious rituals, some of which involved human sacrifice.
Moche art appears in a variety of mediums, such as ceramics, architecture, and textiles, and lends insight into their beliefs and culture.
Key Terms
Huaca: A large, pyramid-like structure made of adobe bricks and used as a palace, ritual site, temple, and administrative center.
vicuña: A wild South American camelid that lives in the high alpine areas of the Andes. It is a relative of the llama, and is now believed to be the wild ancestor of domesticated alpacas, which are raised for their coats.
Moche: A city in modern-day Peru, which is also where the Moche culture was centered.
Decapitator: A Moche icon, usually depicted as a spider, and associated with ritual sacrifices and the elements of land, air, and water.
The Moche (also known as the Early Chimú or Mochica) lived in what is modern-day Peru, near Moche and Trujillo. Their civilization lasted from approximately 100 to 800 CE. The Moche shared cultural values and social structures within a distinct geographical region. However, scholars suggest this civilization functioned as individual city-states, sharing similar cultural elite classes, rather than as an empire or a single political system.
The Moche cultural sphere centered around several valleys along the north coast of Peru, and occupied 250 miles of desert coastline that extended up to 50 miles inland. Moche society was agriculturally based, but because of the arid climate, they invested heavily in the construction of a network of irrigation canals. These ornate canals diverted river water to crops across the region. The Moche are also noted for their expansive ceremonial architecture ( huacas ), elaborately painted ceramics, and woven textiles.
Religion
Both iconography and the discovery of human skeletons in ritual contexts seem to indicate that human sacrifice played a significant part in Moche religious practices. These rites appear to have involved the elite, both ruling men and women, as key actors in an elaborate spectacle. These rituals included:
Costumed participants, including elite priests and priestesses, many of which also ruled the city-states;
Monumental settings, including the pyramid-like structures called huacas; and
Likely the consumption of human blood and possibly flesh as a part of a renewal ritual.
The Moche may have also held and tortured the victims for several weeks before sacrificing them, with the intent of deliberately drawing blood. The sacrifices may have been associated with rites of ancestral renewal and agricultural fertility.
Moche iconography features a figure, which scholars have nicknamed the “Decapitator” or Ai Apaec. It is frequently depicted as a spider, but sometimes as a winged creature or a sea monster. Together, all three features symbolize land, water, and air. When the body is included, the figure is usually shown with one arm holding a knife and another holding a severed head by the hair. It has also been depicted as “a human figure with a tiger’s mouth and snarling fangs.”
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