Incan civilization

The Andean civilizations were a patchwork of different cultures and peoples that developed from the Andes of Colombia southward down the Andes to northern Argentina and Chile, plus the coastal deserts of Peru and northern Chile. Archaeologists believe that Andean civilizations first developed on the narrow coastal plain of the Pacific Ocean. The Norte Chico civilization of Peru is the oldest known dating back to 3200 BCE.

Despite severe environmental challenges, the Andean civilizations domesticated a wide variety of crops, some of which became of worldwide importance. The Andean were also noteworthy for monumental architecture, textile weaving, and many unique characteristics of the societies they created.

Less than a century prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, the Incas united most of the Andean cultures into the Inca Empire which encompasses all of what is usually called Andean civilization. The Muisca of Colombia and the Timoto Cuica of Venezuela remained outside the Inca orbit. The Inca Empire was a patchwork of languages, cultures and peoples.

Spanish rule ended or transformed many elements of the Andean civilizations notably influencing religion and architecture.

Andean civilization was one of five civilizations in the world deemed by scholars to be "pristine", that is indigenous and not derivative from other civilizations. Due to its isolation from other civilizations, the Indigenous people of the Andes had to come up their own, often unique solutions to environmental and societal challenges.

Andean civilization lacked several characteristics distinguishing it from the pristine civilizations in the Old World. First, and perhaps most important, Andean civilizations did not have a written language. Instead, their societies used the quipu, a system of knotted and colored strings, to convey information. Few quipus survive and they have never been fully deciphered. Scholars differ on whether the knotted cords of the quipu were able only to record numerical data or could also be used for narrative communication, a true system of writing. The use of the quipu dates back at least to the Wari Empire (600-1000 CE) and possibly to the much earlier Norte Chico civilization of 2,500 BCE.

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