Lima Culture - Early Development and Expansion

Early Development and Expansion

The history of early Andean culture is essentially the story of a long process in which man learned to dominate nature, turning a desert into a green oasis. Within the Central Coast there is a strong pattern of architectural evidence that suggests organized communal and cultural activity during the Preceramic and Early Horizon Periods. This set the foundations for development of the Lima culture in the Early Intermediate. Despite the desert conditions prevailing in the coastal region, two factors enabled to areas earliest inhabitants to live off the land. First, the proximity to the sea which provided these groups with a diet of fish and shellfish. The second was the varied climate: from May to October moisture trapped by the hills fed vegetation in the slopes, which early populations could use to supplement their seafood diet.

Later populations were able to develop a limited and primitive agriculture in low lying areas, irrigated by nearby rivers and freshwater springs. During the Early Horizon Period, groups began to have the advantage of regular rainfall, and they learned how to domesticate plants and animals. A population surplus also led movement towards the coast. This brings us to the Early Intermediate period, where the Lima culture (among many others within a close time period) began to flourish. These cultures learned how to control nature, creating expansive irrigation systems and artificial canals. These systems provide further evidence of the sophistication of the social organization of the Lima culture, which would have been needed to construct, run, and maintain these irrigation systems.

In Coastal Peru, the middle group of rivers of Rimac, Chillon, and Lurin (which flow through what is now metropolitan Lima) serve as the backdrop for the culturally complex and inter-related Lima culture. Small, village scale pyramidal structures in the beginning of the Early Intermediate would slowly transform into the well-organized focus of the successive Lima culture. Evidence of the expansion of Lima culture in ceramics and textiles can be found in surrounding valleys, allowing archaeologists to track the progression of the culture over time.

At the start of the Early Intermediate, population was focused in the upper portion of the Lurin valley, characterized by isolated free standing-houses and short irrigation canals. The population gradually expanded, moving down the valley, and utilizing longer irrigation canals to inter-connected dwellings, and eventually major cities and cultural centers. Elite structures on hilltops also began to occur, which would ultimately become the important Huacas of Lima culture. Near the end of the Early Intermediate Period the Lima culture became entirely dominant. Perhaps the most important center of the culture was the Huaca of Pachacamac, which would continue to be important to many cultures for the next 1000 years.