So glad you are covering such an amazing culture from my country. Fun fact: It is said that Maria Reiche had an accident in Cusco in which she lost part of her middle finger, some time before discovering the lines. Coincidentally, the figures of the monkey and the hummingbird also depict only nine fingers. It is said that she interpreted it as a sign that her destiny was deeply tied to those lines.
Learning about the Nazca and Paracas in the Ancient Andes class I’m taking for my M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. How serendipitous! Thanks for your content.
Thanks again as always for being such a wonderful Ally @Ancient Americas to the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere. You work weaves the fine path between informative and entertaining and makes your videos so accessible. From your friends at Indigenous Podcast, much love!
@@TheHortoman considering how much doesn't make it into public school textbooks, and how few people try to learn beyond that, or even don't pay attention to the textbooks at all, he's one of the good ones
Yeah sorry, got to agree with the other guy. It's just historical literacy. Plus, if anything, the amount of times I hear "human sacrifice" in these videos furnishes me with the opinion that maybe the white man wasn't so bad after all.
One of the greatest achievements of the Nazca people is no doubt the water management for the crops and their own use and consumption just like the Incas did in Machu Picchu with their ingenious design. I have been in both sites and they are impressive. Good video, thanks!
I remember learning about ancient Peru while in High School in Peru. Each civilization was as amazing as the last. My history course on the Nazca culture was pretty spot on what's in this video, truly an amazing culture. The best of all studying there, it seemed no matter were you were, there was an ancient ruin around a corner. One of the classes we visited this Pucllana ruin just two blocks away, as part of studying the Lima-Wari culture.
Another excellent video. The art, pottery and textiles are gorgeous. I enjoy this channel, partly because it's a great break from the endless over-emphasis on Egypt, Rome, Napoleon, and such on many streaming services and history websites. Of course I enjoy those too....
Interesting video, thanks for creating! 10:00 fascinating short section on Nazca musical instruments (I'm a palaeomusicologist). Tried searching for performances of these instruments but all that came up was a modern band calling itself Nazca and a dumbed-down video on Andean instruments generally. If there is a video of authentic performances on these instruments I'd love to know about it!
Oh my... A new video the day I start reading "The dawn of everything" and begin pondering all the knowledge americans have amassed throughout millenia of thriving here? Yes, please, feed my new obsession. Thank you for taking the time and effort to research and write these videos. They go a long way to show the people of ancient times were no "savages" and we can learn so much from their experiences and history.
"The Dawn of Everything" is such an amazing book; I have read it twice now, and still am finding new things that interest me. I learned more from that book about the history of the area I live (British Columbia) than I did in 12 years of school... which is a pretty sad indictment of the Euro-centric North American history education.
I know it will never happen, but I would absolutely adore an episode done by you, in your style, on the current Western culture. What would a documentary about shopping malls and laptops sound like?
Had never heard before of the nazca aqueducts, or of their pottery, or anything regarding their culture. Have seen countless shows and read countless articles about the lines over the years, wherein people mused about their purpose, and never said a word about the people who made them (or they said nothing is known about them, which i believed up until today). Just goes to show how little time was spent on research to prepare for the shows we watched over the last 50 years. And the incredible value that lone individuals can now do in bringing us this info via u tube etc. its often said, but have to say it again, that this kind of video has more value than 40 years of discovery channel content was ever able to produce. Thanks very much...!
^This.^ I could not agree more. I remember when I first learned about Nazca culture rather than the lines and I was absolutely floored by how interesting and rich it was. Since then, I've always thought that the lines are one of the less interesting things about Nazca and I've wondered how the heck no one else noticed.
I am absolutely blown away by the beauty and vibrance of the art you showed from the Nazca peoples. I could watch pictures of them for hours ! !! Are your sources available online for us non academic/american folk?? I totally want to save some high quality pics and print them out to put on my wall 😍
Of course! All the sources (including images) are in the sources and bibliography document in the video description. The same goes for my other videos as well. If you're looking for good photos, the online collection that impressed me the most during my research was the Nazca collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. They have a large collection that you can access online for free. The photos are high quality and best of all, they are in the public domain so you can do whatever you want with them!
Once again the timing of these videos is always perfect for me! This episode is right on time to save me from cabin fever because I have covid and have been stuck in my apartment for days.
Thank you for another fascinating episode. I’m one of the people who was only familiar with the famous lines, not the rest of the rich Nazca culture, so extra thanks are due!
I love that you picked the underground canal/irrigation system as the Nazca greatest achievement. I always find these "mundane" but extremely important invention to be much more fascinating than great monuments. Yeah big pyramids are cool but these enviromental engineering to make inhospitable place more liveable are much more important. Some of these places changed permanently and alsohelped other life to thrive as well.
I love learning about these ancient cultures in the Americas, especially rock art sites including the rock shelters at Toca do Boqueirao da Pedra Furada and at Toca da Bastianna. They’re just so old that it forces people to realize that the cultures here weren’t primitive, but as filled with as much history as European & Asian cultures were/are!
20:50 You know, I just realized that "disasters ruined the credibility and power of the religious authorities" does not necessarily have to mean superstition. For instance, we might know that a new disease is caused by a virus, and isn't a divine judgement on a leader. But a leader's mishandling of a disease can still ruin their credibility. Perhaps the Nazca didn't lay the blame for earthquakes on their religious or political leaders, but turned to those leaders for support and were left sorely disappointed. I have an impression that ancient people were always superstitious and spiritual, but I want to try to counter that, because it may not be true and feels a little self-congratulatory. Maybe they didn't know about plate tectonics, but they may also not really have cared why the earth shook - only that their house fell down, and their leader isn't showing any sympathy.
Didn’t know how to suggest a video topic, but have you thought of doing one on the Hopewell tradition? I’ve heard it variously called a cult, a religion, a cultural phenomena. Wikipedia calls it a “material tradition,” So I guess tools and art thing, like architectural schools today. Was it a meme, or like an idea going viral? I heard it was probably not a single conquering people. What gives? I’m never sure how to describe it when I mention it. (Usually when I’m describing how America is also an ancient land) Wasn’t sure if this was on your list of topics, but I hope it is :-)
@@hallowacko I've been dying to do a Hopewell episode. I've even visited several Hopewell sites. There will be one someday, it's just a matter of when.
@@AncientAmericas I will absolutely be here for it :) The thing I love most about it is that it really communicates how old the continent is - not by the age of the phenomena itself, but because it shows that Indigenous North Americans did not just get here and gradually develop into the nations they were in at the time of the Columbian Exchange - No, there were successive cultures, people conquering other people, rises and falls of empires, a *history* just as rich as "the old world," or Central America. It just got ignored, plowed under farmland, and forgotten about (though a lack of written records really doesn't help. I've said this elsewhere: I get that writing doesn't make your civilization complex, *but I still wish you did it so we can hear your own words.* Not that it helped us with Linear A...) Just the fact that a culture arose and spread out means that it necessarily had to displace a previous civilization, like how we can infer probably dozens of pre-PIE European cultures from the mere existence of the Basque. Hopewell probably made some previously existing cultures obsolete, before that culture themselves declined. It sounds like an epic history of Rome, but with so many more missing pieces (and not necessarily spread through conquering. My money is on it being mainly a religion, religions can be fairly good at spreading with humans - But I would also call certain modern movements religions as well).
Very interesting! Thanks for bringing attention the fact the Nazca achieved more than just the geometric lines in the desert. The puquios, according to research by Lasaponara & Masini, their funnel shape captured the wind and concentrated it so as to "push" the water along. The earliest mention of the Nazca lines was in Pedro Cieza de Leon's "Cronica del Peru (c.1533), and as early as 1586 a Spanish colonial report by Monzon describes them as trails, which is correct in a broad sense because they are now thought to be ritual pathways. The anthromorphic lines are from a different era to the straight lines and trapezoid lines, because one is constructed right over the top of the other, and are thought to have been built several centuries apart. The animal figures such as the hummingbird were formed using a post and string method, much like modern surveyors use (and pranksters use to construct crop circles). Maria Reiche found some of these wooden posts and even calculated a standard unit they used, something akin to a yard or metre. Some theories say the rectilinear lines point to water sources, now dried up after tectonic events, others say the animal figures could represent zodiacal figures of the southern constellations. BTW the American explorer Hiram Bingham, who brought Machu Picchu to the world's attention, bought a collection of looted Nazca pottery and shipped them to the Peabody Museum under an assumed name (see Kim MaQuarrie's 2015 book "Life and Death in the Andes" , p168).
Thank you! I'd actually been told about the theories of wind pushing water down the puquios but none of my sources mentioned it so I left it out. I appreciate you citing the authors. If I ever return to the topic, I'll want to give them a look!
So glad you uploaded, last week the Greek reporter had an article about in China they discovered mummies in a province in what could be ancestors of the ancestors of the indigenous people of the USA and the people of the Indo European people (Iranian or what some people could say Persian) also I think I watched an episode of absolute history upload about the same thing, but I was just listening but the article grab my attention.
Not sure if you mistyped, but that article is exceedingly clear that the mummies (which were uncovered 100 years ago) were recently found to be ancestors to Siberian people who later became indigenous Americans, and NOT Proto-Indo-Europeans like was previously thought. Those two groups do not have common heritage outside of both simply being human.
@@nonyabidness1838 they're not. People making those articles are attempting to take away the culture, heritage, and beauty of the native Americans and their heritage. Stop being a stupid racist supremacist.
Thank you for making this! One of the characters in a story I've been working on is an ancient Nazca (having been magically mummified and later revived), but it's been very hard to find any information about the Nazca other than the famous geoglyphs in my research. This video was helpful.
I'm always deeply happy when I see a notification from your channel. All the videos are very high quality. But man, when the notification is for a South America civilization, or anything south America related, the happiness go over the top! I live in Portugal, but um Brazilian and had visited both Peru and Chile ( sadly not Bolívia), and man, I can't even start to describe the awe seeing some of the culture. At the time of my visits (2013 peru 2017 Chile), I doesn't knew like 5% of the things I know today, so sometimes, specially after your videos, my mind instantly carry me to those days. I even go see the pictures, specially the museum ones, to kind of guess ehat culture they belong. Hahahhah Thanks. Again!
@@AncientAmericas They will, as your enlightening and exciting videos get out, I'm sure. It all takes time to seep into the collective consciousness. As someone else above mentioned, history of Egypt gets a little boring as the videos pound us into submission. I have hungered most of my life to understand more about the ancient cultures of the Peruvian coast. My interest has just been titillated since reading 1491, which primed my mind for your gratifying work. Thank you SO MUCH for all of your delving into the known and becoming-known of that fascinating land. And also, it is so refreshing that you pronounce the names correctly!
Just so appreciate your treating viewers as being sufficiently intelligent to absorb your content. No mention of ancient astronauts or reliance on now absent high technologies that today makes mere mention of 'archeology' seem like an invitation to 'knock, knock jokes. Thanks for providing solid answers and questions based on the solid available resources out there.
I believe these heads could be the result of ritual 1v1 combat because they're local also they preserve them and carried by they're gods and a hell of a reminder who's the more experienced fighter thus more respected but idk never seen there weapons or methods
Glad to hear about the Nazca culture & history beyond their lines. Great title btw. You should somehow add another word starting with "A" into your channel name because your content is truly triple A stuff.
It must have been so hard for you to sit on this amazing title for the time it took to actually make the video. Spectacular. Which I guess makes it a good representation of the video itself. 11/10 I still think my favourite theory about the nazca lines was presented in a donald duck comic, which posited that they were landing signs for traders from the highlands coming in on gliders. Is it plausible? No it's from donald duck. But is it more plausible than d*nicken? I'm gonna say yes, yes it is
12:01 Now, that's interesting. Because slip-decoration and burnishing a pot takes a very, _very_ long time. It's a lot of slow, meticulous work. I know; it's one of my favorite techniques [ceramics is my hobby]. This means that the Nazca either had enough (1) spare-time that they could devote to making these pots; or (2) surplus crops that they could support an entire profession of potters who could devote the time to making these. This means that the Nazca weren't simple subsistence-farmers, just from the fact that they had the time to produce burnished pots in such numbers. Nope, there was a complex social and economic support-structure making it possible to burnish all of those pots. That the pots weren't restricted to an upper class says even more about the civilization supporting the artisans making all of those pots.
Hehe, I read a few von Däniken's books when I was a young teenager. Later I got bored, as he just republishes the same old stories, and I discovered the real SciFi literature much more interesting and varied.
The Nazca throphee heads had been linked as other stuff as sort of a relation with modern Amazonian groups at the Ecuador-Peru regions nearby to the Andean mountains which maybe had a wisepread culture than it´ll became later on after the Spanish conquest and cultural influence over the centhuries later on. (During the 20th centhury it seemed that only the Jibaro/Schuar people of Ecuador kept the traditon of it.)
Man I got sick and binged all your videos, excellent work! I've shared your channel with friends and can't wait for more content! Very clear and concise, thank you for your hard work!
What a work ! , Amazing even for me who is peruvian . In the northern amazon region of Peru was Mayo-Chinchipe-Marañon culture. There has been found *the oldest chocolate in Americas* 1,700 years before than in Mesoamerica. This recent discovery has been widely covered by Science . It was made 5,300 years ago ! This culture also coverred the northern amazon in Ecuador and was before jesus christ. It is important to know that "chocolate" in this case means cacao beans fermented and toasted as drinkable beverage , not as the solid bar of chocolate that was invented in Europe
@@AncientAmericas Yeah, Yupana is the Inca Calculator. It has been deciphered the last years. Some good information on youtube on that matter ( in spanish )
The upheaval at the end of the Cahuachi Period coincides well with 536 CE, when some major event (usually explained as one or more volcanic eruptions) caused adverse weather conditions across the globe, leading to widespread crop failures and famine, and possibly resulting ultimately in the Justinian Plague. Maybe the Nazca felt their gods had abandoned them, and so they ditched their holy city and erased those treacherous gods from their iconography. The Mayan civilization also appears to have experienced a cataclysm around this time. You say that this transition started around 450 CE but is this absolute dating or relative dating based on pottery sequence?
Delighted to have a new video from you to watch. I just saw Wakanda Forever and ran home to re-watch some of your older videos so that I could prolong the joy I felt during the movie as its plot addressed some of the topics you cover. :)
Thanks for another one of your captivating videos. I sensed some reluctance to covering the "Wari"(?),makes me even more curious about them.Guess we'll find out why when you do.?????
There's actually a reason for that. I don't want to go into too much detail on the wari (or any other contemporary culture) because I'd like to cover them more fully in their own episode.
0:24 this is also a major problem about how Prehistoric Native Americans are discussed in the US. I knew about Poverty Point and Cahokia since about 4th-5th Grade, but no one ever really bothered to tell what it was like. The focus was always on what these prehistoric people left behind. They would tell us some people built mounds, and then kind of leave that topic aside. The odd thing is, my school didn't try to cover up the mistreatment of the Natives, and we weren't given the false impression that there aren't any left today. It's just that they mainly focused on Natives like Pontiac and Tecumseh. That's neat, but basically we learned about the indigenous equivalent of post-apocalyptic warlords and regional strongmen, compared to the Mississippian Chiefs, Calusa Kings, and other authorities from the prehistoric and proto-historic periods. What also sucks is that we only learned about 3 early historic tribes of our state of Michigan, and not those who would have lived where we did before the Beaver Wars. We never learned about any of the mounds still extant, and nothing even about the 2 petroglyph sites in Michigan. We just learned that in the prehistoric period, Natives mined copper on Isle Royale and in the Upper Peninsula in general.
Thank you for all your hard work bringing these incredible subjects to us. So......head-hunting isn't a thing anymore? Even for a housemate that never cleans the kitchen? I should have watched this 2 days ago.....
My father, for a school anthropology project, made a fake shrunken head. He took a baseball, wrapped it with leather, sewed the lips shut, and gave it horse-tail hair. Then he soaked and dried it to make the leather shrink. It was so realistic and disturbing that he got sent home. But he got an A on the project.
18:55 You're too kind ... Really Noted "conman", "scammer" and "Shht peddler" is closer to accurate. I understand you dont want to stir the pot but I have no qualms calling bad actors out since I dont have a channel to ruin.
I thoroughly enjoy your content, please keep it up. I'm a registered Cherokee and I'd love to see more content on my tribes ancient history. Sites like Moundville I believe are hypothesized to an ancient home to the civilized tribes, and I assume once western disease spread these large complicated sites were completely abandoned for smaller clan villages. Another "out there" theory I've thought about often is the relationship between South and North American ancient civilizations. Beyond trade, I know there must be deep religious connections due to the connection to feathers and leaders displaying such. A feathered bird/snake god like Quetzalcoatl I think may have been followed in both continents, even the connection to snakes shows itself in Serpents Mound. Mounds are also like simple pyramids, so there may be connection between both continents monuments. The large open areas around the monuments are the same. Is this just from normal spread of people, ideas, and government practices or was this because people moved from south to north or vise versa because of colonization? Did both populations stay mostly independent or did they have Mayan colonist or Toltec Missionaries? Both are so similar I feel all of these things had to be true, and repeatedly happened throughout history. I'm pleased your previous videos have shed some light on some of these questions already, but please keep elaborating in further work. The thirst for knowledge is strong and I feel a cultural connection to all of the people of the Americas because of my native blood. I hope someday we get all the answers, it seems like the most interesting mystery to me. Thanks!
Thank you! Those are very interesting thoughts and quite a few scholars have tried pulling on those strings. There's a lot of really neat evidence out there. We'll definitely get to the Southeast in due time.
Everytime a new episode comes out I think "well that's it!....how could this be topped? There can't be another tribe thats been missed out"... So glad to be wrong, almost embarrassed to have over looked the nazca
I wouldn't put author in quotes when talking about Von Daniken. He certainly wrote books and sold them. In fact those books were very entertaining when I was 10 or 12.
@@AncientAmericas it will amaze you! The Manteño Huancavilca were the first to have contact with central america and knew about people living on islands close to new zeland
it amazes me how people can think of different ways to get water and stuff from one place to another. And here I am with all the access to knowledge in the world with the click of a button, an' I struggle with basic math. SMh
Great work, as always! Thank you so much for this channel!!! Still waiting for Wari though... :) :) :) Sudden collapses don't come from changing climate (that takes centuries, if not millennia, even the present one), but from conquering empires and other political events! :) Von Däniken was simply being racist. And... Nobody builds huge ceremonial centers without any people in them (check Rome, Jeruzalem or Mekka). That's just archaeologists being from extremely religious countries like Peru or the US... They focus way too much on temples, having their own churches "watching them"... They thought the same about Teotihuacan or the Maya cities... They were huge but empty with just a couple of wandering, star-watching priests in them... We know better now, right? Especially thanks to Lidar (see the latest on Calakmul for example).
Thank you. Regarding the part about the comment about empty ceremonial centers, 90% of the time, I would agree with you. The term "ceremonial center" has been used in the past to dismiss a lot of indigenous achievement but there are instances of large centers that do not have permanent populations and Cahuachi is one of them. If it had a huge population, it would be impossible to miss in the archaeology. Another good example of this is Chaco Canyon. Lots of buildings and roads, very few actually living there, which is why its so fascinating!
@@AncientAmericas my question(s) would still be: -how do we know these buildings were not for people to live in? Did they do microscopic tests like they do in the many teotihuacan rooms? (for remnants of food items for example). For some reason I doubt that Cahuachi, and even Chaco, gets more research than Teotihuacan or, let's say, Tikal. In general there are too few of us (professionals being interested in pre-columbian America) & too many assumptions based on 19the century ideas or ones own (religious) background. -do most archaeologists focus on huge temples and pyramids or on "unimpressive" houses (they can even look like huts to us, made not from bricks, stone, or adobe)? Unfortunately, even nowadays, we still focus more on the temples (or, what we see as temples) -if huge ceremonial places were empty... A) who built them then? & b) why build them if there's nobody to praise them? In other words, if there was nobody living in them, where DID the people live then? Another, yet unidentified city? Possible (especially, again, with the magic of lidar...) Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good scholars and researchers out there, and I don't want to dismiss the work they're doing. I'm also sure that there are some good people working on Cahuachi. People who know a lot more about it than I do (in South America, I focus more on Ecuador and the Peruvian North coast). But in general, I think the questions above should be asked. And also, I said it before : we need more people (students 😉), more funding, and more interest from the general public (school books, documentaries, and even films! I mean Apocalypto... Isn't it sad that it is still the only one that was made about the Americas, while there are tons and tons about Rome, Greece, Vikings, China, India, etc, etc...? How cool would it be to make a film about the pre-columbian Andes, right ?)
Next time someone starts talking about nazca lines we can interrupt and say "yeah nice pottery and textiles and what incredible aqueducts!"
Exactly!
So glad you are covering such an amazing culture from my country. Fun fact: It is said that Maria Reiche had an accident in Cusco in which she lost part of her middle finger, some time before discovering the lines. Coincidentally, the figures of the monkey and the hummingbird also depict only nine fingers. It is said that she interpreted it as a sign that her destiny was deeply tied to those lines.
Thank you! I did not know that!
Godda be careful there are evil gods who live under the Nazca lines that like to play card games!
They were the earliest Grateful Dead followers.
Learning about the Nazca and Paracas in the Ancient Andes class I’m taking for my M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. How serendipitous! Thanks for your content.
The elongated Paracus skulls are very exciting
Thanks again as always for being such a wonderful Ally @Ancient Americas to the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere. You work weaves the fine path between informative and entertaining and makes your videos so accessible. From your friends at Indigenous Podcast, much love!
Thanks Stephan! I hope you're catching the live cast tonight!
Ally? Hes just historically accurate bruh
@@TheHortoman considering how much doesn't make it into public school textbooks, and how few people try to learn beyond that, or even don't pay attention to the textbooks at all, he's one of the good ones
@@masterd1mwitt830 wouldnt you know dagoth boy
Yeah sorry, got to agree with the other guy. It's just historical literacy.
Plus, if anything, the amount of times I hear "human sacrifice" in these videos furnishes me with the opinion that maybe the white man wasn't so bad after all.
One of the greatest achievements of the Nazca people is no doubt the water management for the crops and their own use and consumption just like the Incas did in Machu Picchu with their ingenious design. I have been in both sites and they are impressive.
Good video, thanks!
Thank you!
You literally cannot pump out content fast enough! This is so stellar to watch and learn about.
You're telling me. There's too much to cover and not enough time.
@@AncientAmericas I guess your the Willy Wonka of History :)
The wait is always worth it though.
I remember learning about ancient Peru while in High School in Peru. Each civilization was as amazing as the last.
My history course on the Nazca culture was pretty spot on what's in this video, truly an amazing culture.
The best of all studying there, it seemed no matter were you were, there was an ancient ruin around a corner. One of the classes we visited this Pucllana ruin just two blocks away, as part of studying the Lima-Wari culture.
That sounds awesome! I wish I could have learned about all this in high school.
How magical your learning experience sounds! Even a boring teacher could not dampen the joy of discovery of your country!
Your videos are a big inspiration! I am currently an anthropology student.
Thank you! I'm honored!
So glad you’re covering this culture! Thank you for these informative videos!
You're welcome!
Another excellent video. The art, pottery and textiles are gorgeous. I enjoy this channel, partly because it's a great break from the endless over-emphasis on Egypt, Rome, Napoleon, and such on many streaming services and history websites. Of course I enjoy those too....
Thank you!
Interesting video, thanks for creating! 10:00 fascinating short section on Nazca musical instruments (I'm a palaeomusicologist). Tried searching for performances of these instruments but all that came up was a modern band calling itself Nazca and a dumbed-down video on Andean instruments generally. If there is a video of authentic performances on these instruments I'd love to know about it!
Thank you!
Thank you, AA for yet another phenomenal material.
Thank you!
Oh my... A new video the day I start reading "The dawn of everything" and begin pondering all the knowledge americans have amassed throughout millenia of thriving here? Yes, please, feed my new obsession.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to research and write these videos. They go a long way to show the people of ancient times were no "savages" and we can learn so much from their experiences and history.
Thank you! Enjoy the Dawn of Everything! It's an engrossing read with a lot of food for thought.
"The Dawn of Everything" is such an amazing book; I have read it twice now, and still am finding new things that interest me. I learned more from that book about the history of the area I live (British Columbia) than I did in 12 years of school... which is a pretty sad indictment of the Euro-centric North American history education.
Nazca pottery designs look so strangely modern, they almost feel like anime designs.
it is the same idea(abstraction and reduction for aesthetic flow) so that is hardly a surprise~
@@technopoptart - that necessitates a _shared_ aesthetic between the peoples. So the question remains as to how that came to be.
I know it will never happen, but I would absolutely adore an episode done by you, in your style, on the current Western culture. What would a documentary about shopping malls and laptops sound like?
Ah yes, the episode where I would alienate everyone with my culture criticism.
Had never heard before of the nazca aqueducts, or of their pottery, or anything regarding their culture. Have seen countless shows and read countless articles about the lines over the years, wherein people mused about their purpose, and never said a word about the people who made them (or they said nothing is known about them, which i believed up until today).
Just goes to show how little time was spent on research to prepare for the shows we watched over the last 50 years. And the incredible value that lone individuals can now do in bringing us this info via u tube etc. its often said, but have to say it again, that this kind of video has more value than 40 years of discovery channel content was ever able to produce. Thanks very much...!
^This.^ I could not agree more. I remember when I first learned about Nazca culture rather than the lines and I was absolutely floored by how interesting and rich it was. Since then, I've always thought that the lines are one of the less interesting things about Nazca and I've wondered how the heck no one else noticed.
I am absolutely blown away by the beauty and vibrance of the art you showed from the Nazca peoples. I could watch pictures of them for hours ! !! Are your sources available online for us non academic/american folk?? I totally want to save some high quality pics and print them out to put on my wall 😍
Of course! All the sources (including images) are in the sources and bibliography document in the video description. The same goes for my other videos as well. If you're looking for good photos, the online collection that impressed me the most during my research was the Nazca collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. They have a large collection that you can access online for free. The photos are high quality and best of all, they are in the public domain so you can do whatever you want with them!
Once again the timing of these videos is always perfect for me! This episode is right on time to save me from cabin fever because I have covid and have been stuck in my apartment for days.
Glad I could help even if its just a little bit.
So excited with each new Ancient Americas video!
I really like the creamy and coffeelike hues they used in their pottery art.
I believe those cream and buff colors are from the clay itself so anything made from that area should have them unless it's been completely painted.
19:50
but, but muh alienz! 🤣
Great video as always mate.
Thanks!
Thank you for another fascinating episode. I’m one of the people who was only familiar with the famous lines, not the rest of the rich Nazca culture, so extra thanks are due!
Always a great day when an Ancient Americas video drops
Glad I could make your day!
Their early pottery is incredible to look at. I loved this episode, thanks so much! Enjoy your vacation.
Thank you!
I love that you picked the underground canal/irrigation system as the Nazca greatest achievement. I always find these "mundane" but extremely important invention to be much more fascinating than great monuments. Yeah big pyramids are cool but these enviromental engineering to make inhospitable place more liveable are much more important. Some of these places changed permanently and alsohelped other life to thrive as well.
Developments like those attest to how good ancient people were at solving problems.
love to see more stuff on andean cultures! keep up the awesome videos
Thanks Fella! Always love seeing your comments!
But really, nice learning more about them.
I love learning about these ancient cultures in the Americas, especially rock art sites including the rock shelters at Toca do Boqueirao da Pedra Furada and at Toca da Bastianna. They’re just so old that it forces people to realize that the cultures here weren’t primitive, but as filled with as much history as European & Asian cultures were/are!
What a cheeky name!
"Mythical Killer Whale" is my next band's name
20:50 You know, I just realized that "disasters ruined the credibility and power of the religious authorities" does not necessarily have to mean superstition. For instance, we might know that a new disease is caused by a virus, and isn't a divine judgement on a leader. But a leader's mishandling of a disease can still ruin their credibility. Perhaps the Nazca didn't lay the blame for earthquakes on their religious or political leaders, but turned to those leaders for support and were left sorely disappointed.
I have an impression that ancient people were always superstitious and spiritual, but I want to try to counter that, because it may not be true and feels a little self-congratulatory. Maybe they didn't know about plate tectonics, but they may also not really have cared why the earth shook - only that their house fell down, and their leader isn't showing any sympathy.
That is a very good point! It could very well be true and I like your attitude!
Didn’t know how to suggest a video topic, but have you thought of doing one on the Hopewell tradition? I’ve heard it variously called a cult, a religion, a cultural phenomena. Wikipedia calls it a “material tradition,” So I guess tools and art thing, like architectural schools today. Was it a meme, or like an idea going viral? I heard it was probably not a single conquering people. What gives? I’m never sure how to describe it when I mention it. (Usually when I’m describing how America is also an ancient land)
Wasn’t sure if this was on your list of topics, but I hope it is :-)
@@hallowacko I've been dying to do a Hopewell episode. I've even visited several Hopewell sites. There will be one someday, it's just a matter of when.
@@AncientAmericas I will absolutely be here for it :) The thing I love most about it is that it really communicates how old the continent is - not by the age of the phenomena itself, but because it shows that Indigenous North Americans did not just get here and gradually develop into the nations they were in at the time of the Columbian Exchange - No, there were successive cultures, people conquering other people, rises and falls of empires, a *history* just as rich as "the old world," or Central America. It just got ignored, plowed under farmland, and forgotten about (though a lack of written records really doesn't help. I've said this elsewhere: I get that writing doesn't make your civilization complex, *but I still wish you did it so we can hear your own words.* Not that it helped us with Linear A...)
Just the fact that a culture arose and spread out means that it necessarily had to displace a previous civilization, like how we can infer probably dozens of pre-PIE European cultures from the mere existence of the Basque. Hopewell probably made some previously existing cultures obsolete, before that culture themselves declined. It sounds like an epic history of Rome, but with so many more missing pieces (and not necessarily spread through conquering. My money is on it being mainly a religion, religions can be fairly good at spreading with humans - But I would also call certain modern movements religions as well).
YAY a great way to spend some of my Sunday.
Very interesting! Thanks for bringing attention the fact the Nazca achieved more than just the geometric lines in the desert. The puquios, according to research by Lasaponara & Masini, their funnel shape captured the wind and concentrated it so as to "push" the water along. The earliest mention of the Nazca lines was in Pedro Cieza de Leon's "Cronica del Peru (c.1533), and as early as 1586 a Spanish colonial report by Monzon describes them as trails, which is correct in a broad sense because they are now thought to be ritual pathways. The anthromorphic lines are from a different era to the straight lines and trapezoid lines, because one is constructed right over the top of the other, and are thought to have been built several centuries apart. The animal figures such as the hummingbird were formed using a post and string method, much like modern surveyors use (and pranksters use to construct crop circles). Maria Reiche found some of these wooden posts and even calculated a standard unit they used, something akin to a yard or metre. Some theories say the rectilinear lines point to water sources, now dried up after tectonic events, others say the animal figures could represent zodiacal figures of the southern constellations. BTW the American explorer Hiram Bingham, who brought Machu Picchu to the world's attention, bought a collection of looted Nazca pottery and shipped them to the Peabody Museum under an assumed name (see Kim MaQuarrie's 2015 book "Life and Death in the Andes" , p168).
Thank you! I'd actually been told about the theories of wind pushing water down the puquios but none of my sources mentioned it so I left it out. I appreciate you citing the authors. If I ever return to the topic, I'll want to give them a look!
Enjoy the holiday season! I'll be eagerly awaiting what you'll be teaching us in 2023!
Thank you!
So glad you uploaded, last week the Greek reporter had an article about in China they discovered mummies in a province in what could be ancestors of the ancestors of the indigenous people of the USA and the people of the Indo European people (Iranian or what some people could say Persian) also I think I watched an episode of absolute history upload about the same thing, but I was just listening but the article grab my attention.
Not sure if you mistyped, but that article is exceedingly clear that the mummies (which were uncovered 100 years ago) were recently found to be ancestors to Siberian people who later became indigenous Americans, and NOT Proto-Indo-Europeans like was previously thought. Those two groups do not have common heritage outside of both simply being human.
@@HessianHunter They're were another set of mummies as well along with the Red headed one's.
L
@@HessianHunter interesting 🤔 Ive seen several articles hailing The black people of america to be its indigenous descendants.
@@nonyabidness1838 they're not. People making those articles are attempting to take away the culture, heritage, and beauty of the native Americans and their heritage. Stop being a stupid racist supremacist.
Thank you for making this! One of the characters in a story I've been working on is an ancient Nazca (having been magically mummified and later revived), but it's been very hard to find any information about the Nazca other than the famous geoglyphs in my research. This video was helpful.
This is the greatest youtube channel
It's ok I guess. 😉
Love your Videos man! Thanks for a great 2022, looking forward to seeing you again in '23!
Thank you!
I'm always deeply happy when I see a notification from your channel. All the videos are very high quality. But man, when the notification is for a South America civilization, or anything south America related, the happiness go over the top!
I live in Portugal, but um Brazilian and had visited both Peru and Chile ( sadly not Bolívia), and man, I can't even start to describe the awe seeing some of the culture.
At the time of my visits (2013 peru 2017 Chile), I doesn't knew like 5% of the things I know today, so sometimes, specially after your videos, my mind instantly carry me to those days. I even go see the pictures, specially the museum ones, to kind of guess ehat culture they belong. Hahahhah
Thanks. Again!
Thank you! Glad to see someone loves the South American videos. They never get as much attention as the others.
@@AncientAmericas They will, as your enlightening and exciting videos get out, I'm sure. It all takes time to seep into the collective consciousness. As someone else above mentioned, history of Egypt gets a little boring as the videos pound us into submission.
I have hungered most of my life to understand more about the ancient cultures of the Peruvian coast. My interest has just been titillated since reading 1491, which primed my mind for your gratifying work.
Thank you SO MUCH for all of your delving into the known and becoming-known of that fascinating land. And also, it is so refreshing that you pronounce the names correctly!
Just so appreciate your treating viewers as being sufficiently intelligent to absorb your content. No mention of ancient astronauts or reliance on now absent high technologies that today makes mere mention of 'archeology' seem like an invitation to 'knock, knock jokes. Thanks for providing solid answers and questions based on the solid available resources out there.
Thank you!
this is one of the best channels on youtube
Thank you!
Those heads are so scary 😳, but I loved their pottery art!
Great episode!
Thank you. Those heads creeped me out too.
man you are cranking videos out
I was this year but now its time for a month or two of rest.
@@AncientAmericas still faster than i make content
Its always a good day when you upload. Thanks man. I appreciate your work.
Thank you!
Thank you. Im so tired of commercial reporting. i subscribed easily and gratefully
Thank you for subscribing!
I believe these heads could be the result of ritual 1v1 combat because they're local also they preserve them and carried by they're gods and a hell of a reminder who's the more experienced fighter thus more respected but idk never seen there weapons or methods
That's an interesting idea!
Splendid stuff, and wonderful ceramics. 👍
Glad to hear about the Nazca culture & history beyond their lines. Great title btw.
You should somehow add another word starting with "A" into your channel name because your content is truly triple A stuff.
Amazing Ancient Americas!
Thanks for captioning
It must have been so hard for you to sit on this amazing title for the time it took to actually make the video. Spectacular. Which I guess makes it a good representation of the video itself. 11/10
I still think my favourite theory about the nazca lines was presented in a donald duck comic, which posited that they were landing signs for traders from the highlands coming in on gliders. Is it plausible? No it's from donald duck. But is it more plausible than d*nicken? I'm gonna say yes, yes it is
Funny you say that because I had this title in mind long before I ever started writing this episode up.
Amazing video, I love learning about the ancient American cultures!
Thank you!
12:01 Now, that's interesting. Because slip-decoration and burnishing a pot takes a very, _very_ long time. It's a lot of slow, meticulous work. I know; it's one of my favorite techniques [ceramics is my hobby].
This means that the Nazca either had enough (1) spare-time that they could devote to making these pots; or (2) surplus crops that they could support an entire profession of potters who could devote the time to making these.
This means that the Nazca weren't simple subsistence-farmers, just from the fact that they had the time to produce burnished pots in such numbers. Nope, there was a complex social and economic support-structure making it possible to burnish all of those pots. That the pots weren't restricted to an upper class says even more about the civilization supporting the artisans making all of those pots.
Hehe, I read a few von Däniken's books when I was a young teenager. Later I got bored, as he just republishes the same old stories, and I discovered the real SciFi literature much more interesting and varied.
The Nazca throphee heads had been linked as other stuff as sort of a relation with modern Amazonian groups at the Ecuador-Peru regions nearby to the Andean mountains which maybe had a wisepread culture than it´ll became later on after the Spanish conquest and cultural influence over the centhuries later on. (During the 20th centhury it seemed that only the Jibaro/Schuar people of Ecuador kept the traditon of it.)
Man I got sick and binged all your videos, excellent work! I've shared your channel with friends and can't wait for more content! Very clear and concise, thank you for your hard work!
Thank you!
Thank you for another great video
You're welcome!
Thank you for your respectful explanation of their culture and accomplishments (besides the "lines").
Excellent, informative video. Thanks for sharing all of this extra background on the Nazca people.
Thank you!
Appreciate the timeline shown on left, and the chapter index, as well as the wonderful content of course. Puts you a notch above similar channels.
Thank you!
I was waiting for this!
I hope it was worth the wait!
Interesting and fun work my man. Totally enjoy the content.
I love your videos!!!!!!!.....wish growing up in school I would have learned all this....Keep making more please
Thank you!
What a work ! , Amazing even for me who is peruvian . In the northern amazon region of Peru was Mayo-Chinchipe-Marañon culture. There has been found *the oldest chocolate in Americas* 1,700 years before than in Mesoamerica. This recent discovery has been widely covered by Science . It was made 5,300 years ago ! This culture also coverred the northern amazon in Ecuador and was before jesus christ. It is important to know that "chocolate" in this case means cacao beans fermented and toasted as drinkable beverage , not as the solid bar of chocolate that was invented in Europe
Thank you! I actually read that not too long ago. It really changed what I knew about the history of cacao.
@@AncientAmericas Yeah, Yupana is the Inca Calculator. It has been deciphered the last years. Some good information on youtube on that matter ( in spanish )
Thank you for the information about cacao. I look forward to reading about that!
That was awesome. Thank you for the great video. I look forward to seeing more of your work.. - the only addison
Thank you!
I have attended two courses taught by Helaine Silverman in UIUC this year，her classes often mention Nasca.
I read a LOT of her research making this video. She does good work.
@@AncientAmericas I totally agree.
Great video as always. I'd love to learn about the Charrua who inhabited what is now Uruguay.
Thank you! The charrua would be an interesting topic someday.
The upheaval at the end of the Cahuachi Period coincides well with 536 CE, when some major event (usually explained as one or more volcanic eruptions) caused adverse weather conditions across the globe, leading to widespread crop failures and famine, and possibly resulting ultimately in the Justinian Plague. Maybe the Nazca felt their gods had abandoned them, and so they ditched their holy city and erased those treacherous gods from their iconography.
The Mayan civilization also appears to have experienced a cataclysm around this time. You say that this transition started around 450 CE but is this absolute dating or relative dating based on pottery sequence?
It's based on carbon dating at the site. Also classic Maya culture thrived until about 800-900.
Libbathegreat, Justinian's Flea is a well investigated, well written book about that first plague, solid scholarship.
These videos are fantastic. Thankyou. Had to clamber through a lot of nonsense before finding these informative gems.
Thank you! South American cultures are sadly often hijacked by quacks.
Delighted to have a new video from you to watch. I just saw Wakanda Forever and ran home to re-watch some of your older videos so that I could prolong the joy I felt during the movie as its plot addressed some of the topics you cover. :)
I love this channel!
Thank you!
HELLL YEEAAHHH NAZCAAAA
Thanks for another one of your captivating videos. I sensed some reluctance to covering the "Wari"(?),makes me even more curious about them.Guess we'll find out why when you do.?????
There's actually a reason for that. I don't want to go into too much detail on the wari (or any other contemporary culture) because I'd like to cover them more fully in their own episode.
@@AncientAmericasX-cellent! Looking forward to it.Happy Holidays
0:24 this is also a major problem about how Prehistoric Native Americans are discussed in the US. I knew about Poverty Point and Cahokia since about 4th-5th Grade, but no one ever really bothered to tell what it was like. The focus was always on what these prehistoric people left behind. They would tell us some people built mounds, and then kind of leave that topic aside. The odd thing is, my school didn't try to cover up the mistreatment of the Natives, and we weren't given the false impression that there aren't any left today. It's just that they mainly focused on Natives like Pontiac and Tecumseh. That's neat, but basically we learned about the indigenous equivalent of post-apocalyptic warlords and regional strongmen, compared to the Mississippian Chiefs, Calusa Kings, and other authorities from the prehistoric and proto-historic periods. What also sucks is that we only learned about 3 early historic tribes of our state of Michigan, and not those who would have lived where we did before the Beaver Wars. We never learned about any of the mounds still extant, and nothing even about the 2 petroglyph sites in Michigan. We just learned that in the prehistoric period, Natives mined copper on Isle Royale and in the Upper Peninsula in general.
Thank you for all your hard work bringing these incredible subjects to us. So......head-hunting isn't a thing anymore? Even for a housemate that never cleans the kitchen? I should have watched this 2 days ago.....
My father, for a school anthropology project, made a fake shrunken head. He took a baseball, wrapped it with leather, sewed the lips shut, and gave it horse-tail hair. Then he soaked and dried it to make the leather shrink. It was so realistic and disturbing that he got sent home. But he got an A on the project.
The lines were made by the Nazca Highschool Senior classes... "Goooooo SPIDERS!"
Never heard of them! How exciting.
Lets goooooo :D
Remarkable work....your work is clearly an excellent introduction to all that is ancient in the Americas...
Thank you!
Astonishing engineering.
Right?!
18:55
You're too kind ... Really
Noted "conman", "scammer" and "Shht peddler" is closer to accurate. I understand you dont want to stir the pot but I have no qualms calling bad actors out since I dont have a channel to ruin.
I'll leave it to the audience to spell out.
I thoroughly enjoy your content, please keep it up. I'm a registered Cherokee and I'd love to see more content on my tribes ancient history. Sites like Moundville I believe are hypothesized to an ancient home to the civilized tribes, and I assume once western disease spread these large complicated sites were completely abandoned for smaller clan villages.
Another "out there" theory I've thought about often is the relationship between South and North American ancient civilizations. Beyond trade, I know there must be deep religious connections due to the connection to feathers and leaders displaying such. A feathered bird/snake god like Quetzalcoatl I think may have been followed in both continents, even the connection to snakes shows itself in Serpents Mound. Mounds are also like simple pyramids, so there may be connection between both continents monuments. The large open areas around the monuments are the same. Is this just from normal spread of people, ideas, and government practices or was this because people moved from south to north or vise versa because of colonization? Did both populations stay mostly independent or did they have Mayan colonist or Toltec Missionaries? Both are so similar I feel all of these things had to be true, and repeatedly happened throughout history.
I'm pleased your previous videos have shed some light on some of these questions already, but please keep elaborating in further work. The thirst for knowledge is strong and I feel a cultural connection to all of the people of the Americas because of my native blood. I hope someday we get all the answers, it seems like the most interesting mystery to me. Thanks!
Thank you! Those are very interesting thoughts and quite a few scholars have tried pulling on those strings. There's a lot of really neat evidence out there. We'll definitely get to the Southeast in due time.
It would seem a natural next question... Oh, these giant line drawings made in the earth itself are interesting... what kind of culture made them?
I love this channel. If the history channel was entirely replaced by this channel on rerun it would be an improvement.
Thank you!
Wow!!! Complete geniuses!
Right?!?
Woah what are the odds you're covering this topic! I've been drawing out a plan for recreating some of the Nazca Lines in Minecraft.
Hope you got some good inspiration out of this episode!
Could the Nazca lines simply have been an aerial sacrifice to the gods? Or something along those lines?
That's possible.
Loved the video, thank you for all the time and effort you put in your videos!
12:26 oh no
Thanks for video really do enjoy them
You're welcome!
The lost invisable cultures of the Amazon - will they all ever be even as known as the Nazca?
I sure hope so!
The Nazca irrigation system is very interesting. I think they may have discovered it themselves rather than by the Spanish.
ritual art is a good enough an explanation
If you got a better idea, write it up and submit it. The world could always use a fresh perspective.
Everytime a new episode comes out I think "well that's it!....how could this be topped? There can't be another tribe thats been missed out"...
So glad to be wrong, almost embarrassed to have over looked the nazca
Thank you!
I wouldn't put author in quotes when talking about Von Daniken.
He certainly wrote books and sold them.
In fact those books were very entertaining when I was 10 or 12.
The point is that he is not a scientist or archaeologist.
Thanks
Could the Nazca have built lines in places where they eroded away?
Yes, there are lines that have been eroded. Cahuachi has several that have eroded.
I have seen rain measured in inches, feet, millimeters and other linear measurements. Never have I seen it measure in milliliters.
Perhaps I misquoted the figure but I remember having similar thoughts when I wrote it up. I'll have to check.
Het could you do a video about the Manteño-Huancavilca culture in Ecuador please?
I've been getting a lot of requests for Ecuadorian cultures lately...
@@AncientAmericas it will amaze you! The Manteño Huancavilca were the first to have contact with central america and knew about people living on islands close to new zeland
it amazes me how people can think of different ways to get water and stuff from one place to another. And here I am with all the access to knowledge in the world with the click of a button, an' I struggle with basic math. SMh
The smartest people 1000 years ago were just as smart as the smartest people today.
Great work, as always! Thank you so much for this channel!!!
Still waiting for Wari though... :) :) :)
Sudden collapses don't come from changing climate (that takes centuries, if not millennia, even the present one), but from conquering empires and other political events! :)
Von Däniken was simply being racist.
And... Nobody builds huge ceremonial centers without any people in them (check Rome, Jeruzalem or Mekka). That's just archaeologists being from extremely religious countries like Peru or the US... They focus way too much on temples, having their own churches "watching them"... They thought the same about Teotihuacan or the Maya cities... They were huge but empty with just a couple of wandering, star-watching priests in them... We know better now, right? Especially thanks to Lidar (see the latest on Calakmul for example).
Thank you. Regarding the part about the comment about empty ceremonial centers, 90% of the time, I would agree with you. The term "ceremonial center" has been used in the past to dismiss a lot of indigenous achievement but there are instances of large centers that do not have permanent populations and Cahuachi is one of them. If it had a huge population, it would be impossible to miss in the archaeology. Another good example of this is Chaco Canyon. Lots of buildings and roads, very few actually living there, which is why its so fascinating!
@@AncientAmericas my question(s) would still be:
-how do we know these buildings were not for people to live in? Did they do microscopic tests like they do in the many teotihuacan rooms? (for remnants of food items for example). For some reason I doubt that Cahuachi, and even Chaco, gets more research than Teotihuacan or, let's say, Tikal. In general there are too few of us (professionals being interested in pre-columbian America) & too many assumptions based on 19the century ideas or ones own (religious) background.
-do most archaeologists focus on huge temples and pyramids or on "unimpressive" houses (they can even look like huts to us, made not from bricks, stone, or adobe)? Unfortunately, even nowadays, we still focus more on the temples (or, what we see as temples)
-if huge ceremonial places were empty... A) who built them then? & b) why build them if there's nobody to praise them?
In other words, if there was nobody living in them, where DID the people live then? Another, yet unidentified city? Possible (especially, again, with the magic of lidar...)
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good scholars and researchers out there, and I don't want to dismiss the work they're doing. I'm also sure that there are some good people working on Cahuachi. People who know a lot more about it than I do (in South America, I focus more on Ecuador and the Peruvian North coast).
But in general, I think the questions above should be asked. And also, I said it before : we need more people (students 😉), more funding, and more interest from the general public (school books, documentaries, and even films!
I mean Apocalypto... Isn't it sad that it is still the only one that was made about the Americas, while there are tons and tons about Rome, Greece, Vikings, China, India, etc, etc...? How cool would it be to make a film about the pre-columbian Andes, right ?)
@@torrawel Yes! That sounds like a topic for Werner Herzog to dig into!
Used to replace a head lost in battle.
My neck hurts for some reason. 😂