Trujillo and vicinity
Trujillo is a pleasant city with a nice Plaza Mayor and former mansions which are now owned by banks and in which art exhibitions take place. I also visited the various archeological sites around Truillo.
I spent the entire day walking around what remains of Chan Chan - ruins of adobe city built by the Chimu kings. Chimu was a kingdom which stretched 1,000 from north of Lima to Guayaquil and which was conquered by Incas around 1471. Only some of the big city can be visible today - it was destroyed by floods and earthquakes. Citadadela of Tschudi was nicely restored. Within the citadela are various palaces which were lodging of kings during their lifetime and after their death were turned in mausoleums: the king was buried together with his sacrifieced wives, servants, guards and animals and with household object and jewelry. And a new palace was built for a new king... I also visited the Moche piramids (Moche was a culture which occupied the territory before the Chimu) - on the walls there are well preserved carvings of warriors holding in one hand a knife and in the other a human head. The piramids where places where animals and humans were sacrificed to the various dieties.
It seems that all these highly civilized cultures which built impressive buildings, temples and cities, invented complicated systems of recording the past and ideas, complex systems of communication between the places in which they resided, and created paintings, pottery and jewelry of sophisticated designs, were very bloody, cruel and merciless cultures. And that goes to any highly civilized culture, also the Romans and all others which followed in their footsteps. Usually the ones who actually built these impressive buildings were slaves or people forced to work on them. Usually the system is such that there is a ruling class, which consists of the government and priests as almost always religion and politics are intertwined, the middle class and the poor. The money for erecting the impressive buildings comes from the natural resources but most of all from the work and taxes imposed on the poor by the rulers who control them by instilling fear of dieties and force of army and police. I am reading a book I found in a book exchange in Huaraz entitled "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" about the extermination of North American Indians by whites and I think the best culture doesn't leave any trace during it's existence: no buildings to admire by the tourists centuries later. Let me explain. Indians of North America didn't own land. They roamed the land in search of grains and animals and they only took and killed what they needed to survive. There was no hierarhy. There was a Chief responsible for the lives of members of its tribe but he was a chief as long as he had the support of his people and all main decisions were discussed with the tribe anyways. There were disagreements between the tribes, fights and even wars but not to the point that one nation would exterminate the other. They lived in accord with nature and the seasons. They fought the whites so fiercely to maintain their way of life because they loved it. They didn't want to adopt the white man's way of life because they could see how full of deceipt, dishonesty, tratchery and corruption it was. They were happy people and they knew that they were happy; they understood that their happiness came from living according to the laws of nature and the freedom coming from it. Who could then, in those "higly civilzed nations" say they were happy? Who can, in nowadays civilized nations, say he or she is happy? People do ALL kinds of things to find happiness and ask the "eternal" question "how to live" and "what's it all about." The pharmaceutical companies do just great selling prozac and all other anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs curing all kinds of phobias, anxieties and the many different "syndromes." The only truly happy people living on this earth are still the ones who don't possess anything and live in accord with nature, in the Amazonian jungle which, however, shrinks rapidly and which will be gone soon... In Buenos Aires I met Helena who is Spanish and who studied anthropology in Cuzco for four years and she says that yes, the indians of Amazonia are truly happy people but they are going to be extinct in not too distant a future because the white man needs to expand the terrority he possesses and uses every way possible to get the land and its resources - the story of extermination continues. It is so sad... It is so sad that the North American Indians got exterminated and degradated and that their culture diseappered... The book is really heartbreaking. So it seems to me that those who don't built anything and roam around in the nomadic style of life are the best. They don't have to ask the question how to live because they found the best way to live. I don't know much about Celts but I think that the peoples of what is Eastern Europe now were such happy peoples before the Christianity was brought to them and which turned fearless warriors hunting game into farmers fearful of hell and turned women who were warriors equal to men into housebound slaves.
I spent the entire day walking around what remains of Chan Chan - ruins of adobe city built by the Chimu kings. Chimu was a kingdom which stretched 1,000 from north of Lima to Guayaquil and which was conquered by Incas around 1471. Only some of the big city can be visible today - it was destroyed by floods and earthquakes. Citadadela of Tschudi was nicely restored. Within the citadela are various palaces which were lodging of kings during their lifetime and after their death were turned in mausoleums: the king was buried together with his sacrifieced wives, servants, guards and animals and with household object and jewelry. And a new palace was built for a new king... I also visited the Moche piramids (Moche was a culture which occupied the territory before the Chimu) - on the walls there are well preserved carvings of warriors holding in one hand a knife and in the other a human head. The piramids where places where animals and humans were sacrificed to the various dieties.
It seems that all these highly civilized cultures which built impressive buildings, temples and cities, invented complicated systems of recording the past and ideas, complex systems of communication between the places in which they resided, and created paintings, pottery and jewelry of sophisticated designs, were very bloody, cruel and merciless cultures. And that goes to any highly civilized culture, also the Romans and all others which followed in their footsteps. Usually the ones who actually built these impressive buildings were slaves or people forced to work on them. Usually the system is such that there is a ruling class, which consists of the government and priests as almost always religion and politics are intertwined, the middle class and the poor. The money for erecting the impressive buildings comes from the natural resources but most of all from the work and taxes imposed on the poor by the rulers who control them by instilling fear of dieties and force of army and police. I am reading a book I found in a book exchange in Huaraz entitled "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" about the extermination of North American Indians by whites and I think the best culture doesn't leave any trace during it's existence: no buildings to admire by the tourists centuries later. Let me explain. Indians of North America didn't own land. They roamed the land in search of grains and animals and they only took and killed what they needed to survive. There was no hierarhy. There was a Chief responsible for the lives of members of its tribe but he was a chief as long as he had the support of his people and all main decisions were discussed with the tribe anyways. There were disagreements between the tribes, fights and even wars but not to the point that one nation would exterminate the other. They lived in accord with nature and the seasons. They fought the whites so fiercely to maintain their way of life because they loved it. They didn't want to adopt the white man's way of life because they could see how full of deceipt, dishonesty, tratchery and corruption it was. They were happy people and they knew that they were happy; they understood that their happiness came from living according to the laws of nature and the freedom coming from it. Who could then, in those "higly civilzed nations" say they were happy? Who can, in nowadays civilized nations, say he or she is happy? People do ALL kinds of things to find happiness and ask the "eternal" question "how to live" and "what's it all about." The pharmaceutical companies do just great selling prozac and all other anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs curing all kinds of phobias, anxieties and the many different "syndromes." The only truly happy people living on this earth are still the ones who don't possess anything and live in accord with nature, in the Amazonian jungle which, however, shrinks rapidly and which will be gone soon... In Buenos Aires I met Helena who is Spanish and who studied anthropology in Cuzco for four years and she says that yes, the indians of Amazonia are truly happy people but they are going to be extinct in not too distant a future because the white man needs to expand the terrority he possesses and uses every way possible to get the land and its resources - the story of extermination continues. It is so sad... It is so sad that the North American Indians got exterminated and degradated and that their culture diseappered... The book is really heartbreaking. So it seems to me that those who don't built anything and roam around in the nomadic style of life are the best. They don't have to ask the question how to live because they found the best way to live. I don't know much about Celts but I think that the peoples of what is Eastern Europe now were such happy peoples before the Christianity was brought to them and which turned fearless warriors hunting game into farmers fearful of hell and turned women who were warriors equal to men into housebound slaves.
posted by Asia Kabat at 6:11 PM
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