Arthur Kemp’s Blog

“Her face startled me at first. I wasn’t expecting to find anything like that,” said Peruvian Miguel Angel, 19, a worker at Huaca Pucllana who helped unearth one of the more spectacular archaeological finds of last year – the Wari mummy near the city of Lima.

What really startled Miguel was the mask which the mummy was wearing — two big, bright blue orbs in her eye sockets.

The pre-Incan culture existed in what is today called Peru between 600 and 1100 AD, or so the experts tell us.

Their capital was near modern-day Ayacucho, in the Andes, but they travelled widely and are known for their extensive network of roads.

So far, about 30 tombs have been found at Huaca Pucllana, which is within stone’s throw of Lima’s streets.

Digs in other parts of Peru have also revealed traces of this lost civilisation, who, it is claimed, gave much of their culture over to the Incas, including roads, buildings and even the “quipu” way of accounting of livestock and goods.

In northern Peru, at the five kilometre wide archaeological site of Cerro Patapo, located on the Pacific Ocean coast, a whole city has been discovered which they also believe is linked to the Wari culture.

The Wari capital was close to the city of Ayacucho, in the Andes, but they built an extensive road network all over the region.

The best-preserved Wari ruins are to be found at Pikillaqta, a short distance south-east of Cuzco en route to Lake Titicaca (image alongside).

There they developed terraced field technology – much copied by the Incas and others, and first developed the stone road network which “provided a significant legacy for the Incas when they began to expand several centuries later.”

* The Wari culture is not to be confused with the modern ethnic group and language known as Wari’, with which it has no known link.

Earlier, American archaeologists uncovered an ancient Wari brewery in the Andes. Located at Cerro Baul, it is believed to have been used to brew vast quantities of a spicy, beer-like alcoholic drink, made with corn and called chichi.

The University of Florida said its archaeologists from the Field Museum in Chicago have found at least 20 ceramic 38- to 57-litre vats at the site of the brewery.

“You get the idea that this is massive production, not just your basic household making beer to consume by itself,” Susan deFrance of the University of Florida said.

The brewery, some 2,440m up in the Peruvian Andes, could produce as much as 1,000 litres of the drink a day.

They also found fire pits fuelled with animal dung apparently used to boil water and other ingredients including fruits, grains and seeds used to make the chicha.

And the blue eyes of the mummy’s mask?  I suppose we will have to wait and see if they carry out any tests on the mummy itself before any final call can be made on the racial origins of the Wari people.

However, the existence of all sorts of other evidence for early European-type involvement in the pre-Columbian Americas is relatively well-known, and this could yet be one more part of the puzzle.

The discovery of yet another rock cliff dwelling deep in the Peruvian Amazon forests, built by the so-called ‘Cloud People’ has once again highlighted the mysterious existence of a sizeable light-skinned fair-haired pre-Inca population on that continent.

Little is known about these people who had vanished by the end of the 16th century. However, enough mummies exist to confirm Inca stories of their existence.

In the latest discovery, archaeologists have uncovered a fortified citadel in a remote mountainous area of Peru known for its isolated natural beauty. It is thought this settlement may finally help historians unlock the secrets of the ‘white warriors of the clouds’.

The tribe had white skin and blonde hair – features which intrigue historians, as there is no known European ancestry in the region, where most inhabitants are darker skinned.

The citadel is tucked away in one of the most far-flung areas of the Amazon. The main encampment is made up of circular stone houses overgrown by jungle over 12 acres, according to archaeologist Benedict Goicochea Perez.

Rock paintings cover some of the fortifications and next to the dwellings are platforms believed to have been used to grind seeds and plants for food and medicine.

The Cloud People once commanded a vast kingdom stretching across the Andes to the fringes of Peru’s northern Amazon jungle, before it was conquered by the Incas. Named because they lived in rainforests filled with cloud-like mist, the tribe later sided with the Spanish-colonialists to defeat the Incas.

But they were killed by epidemics of European diseases, such as measles and smallpox.

Much of their way of life, dating back to the ninth century, was also destroyed by pillaging, leaving little for archaeologists to examine.

Remains have been found before but scientists have high hopes of the latest find, made by an expedition to the Jamalca district in Peru’s Utcubamba province, about 500 miles north-east of the capital, Lima. The buildings found on the Pachallama peak are in remarkably good condition, estimated to be over 1,000 years old.

Until recently, much of what was known about the lost civilisation was from Inca legends. Even the name they called themselves is unknown. The term Chachapoyas, or ‘Cloud People’, was given to them by the Incas.

Their culture is best known for the Kuellap fortress on the top of a mountain in Utcubamba. Two years ago, archaeologists found an underground burial vault inside a cave with five mummies, two intact with skin and hair.

Chachapoyas chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon wrote of the tribe: ‘They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas’ wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.”