The Regions: South America

The following objects originated in South America:

Amazonia

People have lived in the vast tropical river systems of the Amazon and its tributaries for over 15,000 years. Some groups live by the rivers, fishing and farming on fertile soils brought down by the river waters. Others are associated with the forest and the more open uplands.

In the forest there is a profusion of plant and animal raw materials. Belief in the spirituality of all living things has led to the use of these materials without much adaptation or processing Ð feathers in head-dresses, peccary teeth in necklaces. Animals become human; humans also become animal, through beliefs and rituals.

Many innovations thought to be typical of the Andean region originated in these tropical lowlands - pottery, textiles, also shamanism, helped by the use of hallucinatory drugs.

The first European contacts began nearly 500 years ago with the Portuguese by sea and the Spanish a little later from the Andes. During this period slaves from West Africa were shipped in to Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil to work the plantations of tobacco and sugar. Native American groups by the coast were displaced, destroyed or moved into the forest.

At the time of initial European contact there were about 15 million Amazonians. At the turn of the 20th century the population was estimated at 3,500,000. Today, fewer than 200,000 indigenous people remain in the region. Poverty, disease and the denial of human rights continue to threaten remote groups particularly where they live on land that has been earmarked for timber or mineral exploitation.

Some groups are seeking to retain their close association with the land, and all the plant and animal species living within their area.

Visit the Orinoco site to see a wealth of Amazonian artefacts and history of its people and places.

Andean Cultures

Moche was the earliest large-scale Andean state, lasting from 2000 years ago for more than 500 years. Later states grew in the Lambayeque valley in the north and the Chancay valley in the south. Chimu dominated the area from its vast capital of Chan-Chan. The mighty Inca empire spanned 3500 miles north to south, with a network of roads and uniformity of stone buildings. It lasted for 100 years, destroyed by the Spanish invasion and European diseases in the years after 1532.

The civilisations of the Andes were famous for gold, ceramics and complex textiles, such as the early examples from Paracas, on the coast that are 2300 years old.

Read about Veitch and Treffry who collected these aretefacts