Learn about The PARACAS-NAZCA CULTUREs

While the Paracas and Nazca peoples are considered by archaeologists to belong to distinct cultures, there is enough overlap geographically, chronologically, politically and artistically for us to consider them both at the same time.

At first it was thought that the Nazca civilisation emerged from the Paracas. It is now seen as being a more complex process of co-existence and assimilation, with the Nazca culture eventually outliving its Paracas progenitor by several centuries.

Like so much archaeology in Peru, new discoveries continue to be made, which prompt reassessments of timelines and theories.

Paracas Culture:

Paracas, which is Quechua for ‘sandstorms’, is an apt word for a culture which was buried under the drifting coastal sands for two millennia or more.

Starting in 1925, Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello (1880 – 1947) made a series of discoveries on the Paracas Peninsula which shed light on another of Peru’s multiple pre-Inca cultures.

The first discovery, near a hill known as Cerro Colorado, was of 39 tombs in the shape of a long-necked bottle, which Tello named caverns. These were dated as being from between 700 and 200 BC. Each tomb had multiple bodies, in the foetal position, surrounded by funerary offerings.

A stunning Paracas funerary blanket at Larco Herrera Museum, Lima.

In 1927, Tello and his team excavated an area nearby, called Warikayan, discovering 429 mummy bundles wrapped in beautiful blankets. These tombs were subsequently dated from 300 BC to 200 AD.

The quantity and rectangular shape of the tombs, divided into various compartments, led Tello to conclude that the whole area was a necropolis – a city entirely dedicated to the burial and veneration of the dead.

This theory has since been disputed, but whatever the case, ‘Paracas Necropolis’ has yielded some of the finest textiles known in the ancient world. Woven from cotton and wool, the pieces were minutely embroidered with repeating designs, often of a zoomorphic nature.

Paracas skull with evidence of trepanation.

Also discovered were fascinating skulls which showed two traits that the Paracas Culture have become noted for – deformation and trepanation.

Young children’s malleable skulls were deformed by compressing them between tightly bound wooden boards; they grew up with disturbingly elongated skulls … which were considered to be signs of nobility.

Young warriors sometimes suffered from blows to the head which resulted in cranial swelling; the pressure was relieved by trepanning (surgically opening) the skulls.

Prior to the Necropolis period, as it has come to be known, the area was inhabited by people who were influenced by the Chavin horizon, but little is known about them.

Nazca Culture:

The Nazca (or Nasca) culture (200 B.C. to A.D. 600) appeared on the central south coast contemporaneously with the Paracas, and flourished in the centuries after the Paracas declined.

Unlike the Moche, with whom they were contemporary, the Nazca did not leave us with a slew of painted pyramids and personable pots with which to decipher their way of life. Instead, they left us with mysteries.

The ‘monkey’ – one of the Nazca Lines.

The biggest is on a vast scale – mile after mile of baffling designs constructed on the flat desert, begun during the very beginnings of the Nazca period and continuing until the culture died out.

The construction itself was simply a matter of moving aside small stones covered with dark desert varnish and exposing the lighter-coloured soil beneath.

The difficulty lay in maintaining perspective in animal shapes, spirals, and glyphs bigger than a football pitch, and keeping miles of lines perfectly straight and aligned with one another.

And the mystery was why were these lines made, century after century for almost 1,000 years … and what did they mean?

German mathematician Maria Reiche (1903 – 1998), spent over half a century living among and studying the lines, coming to the conclusion that they were an astronomical calendar.

Other theories abound, from the inevitable extra-terrestrial connection, to ideas about maps, ritual spaces, shamanic dreams, and fertility symbols.

The most recent conclusions are that the lines were involved in the veneration of the single most important thing for life in the desert—water.

Paracas-Nazca Cross-fertilisation:

The Llipata Geolyphs at Palpa.

The recent discovery of huge geolyphs at Palpa, which predate the Nazca Lines by several hundred years, has shown that the tradition of inscribing in the desert sands preceded the Nazca culture.

There are other cultural aspects of Nazca culture which show the influence of the Paracas:

Hydrology: Living in an environment with almost no precipitation, it was of fundamental importance to both cultures that they managed the collection of water successfully. This is most strikingly illustrated by the Cantalloc Aqueducts, near the town of Nazca, that brought water from the mountains to the desert.

A Nazca mummy at the Ica Regional Museum.

Mummification: Like the Paracas, the Nazca took advantage of the dry conditions to preserve their dead.

Bodies were placed in the foetal positions and wrapped in sudarios (funerary shawls), the finest of which are beautifully-woven, brightly-coloured and full of detail about the life and beliefs of the time.

Textiles: Aside from sudarios, excavations at Cahuachi and elsewhere have unveiled technically-complex shawls, dresses, tunics, belts and bags made from cotton, camelid wool, human hair and vegetable fibres.

Ceramics: Nazca culture developed the Paracas techniques in pottery. They created bowls, cups, plates and bottles out of clay, some of which were painted with at least 15 distinct colours.

Example of Nazca ceramics at Carlos Dreyer Museum in Puno.

This ‘polychrome’ painting technique shifted over time: the Paracas had painted their ceramics after it had been fired, using resinous substances; whereas the Nazca began adding colouring materials prior to firing.

The designs on the pottery also developed over time, progressing from realistic subjects such as human representations, flora and fauna, to more abstract elements that reflected the Nazcas’ cosmological, mythological and historical iconography.