CULTURE: ART. THE ORIGINS

Only starting from the thirties of the century. XX a methodical study of all the Peruvian finds was carried out by distinguished American archaeologists, such as WC Bennett, who established accurate chronological sequences, based on precise stratigraphic research. In Peru the most ancient finds belong to the civilization of Paracas and date back to 7000-6500 BC. C. But only in the century. XIV a. C. began the first true ceramic styles, that is Ancón and Paracas Cavernas, and we still have to wait for the century. XIII a. C. to see the protohistoric culture of Chavín rise in the mountainous part of Perude Huantar, which later emerged on the coast with Cupisnique pottery (ca. 800 BC). In the last phase of the Formative Period the civilizations of the coastal valleys began to take on importance (3rd century BC-2nd century AD), with the ceramic styles of the Valle del Virú, Paracas Necropolis and Recuay (Valle del Santa). The civilizations of the Peruvian coast are known above all from the Classical Period (200-1000 AD). It is a rich period, in which the first adobe cities with public buildings (temples, palaces, etc.) arise. The warlike Mochica civilization (North Coast), the refined Nazca culture (South Coast), the sanctuary of Pachacamac are well known. (Valle del Lurín) and Cajamarquilla (Valle del Rimac). In the Postclassic Period (1000-1532) the artistic styles spread forcefully with military conquests. On the northern coast the kingdom of the Chimu was particularly important and on the southern coast the kingdom of the Chincha. But the civilization of the most popular by far was undoubtedly that of the Incas, which had as the center from the valley of Cuzco and was then literally wiped out by the conquistadors Spanish. An extraordinary example of Inca architecture is still visible in the remains of the city of Machupicchu.

CULTURE: LITERATURE

Center of irradiation of the richest and most evocative, perhaps, of all pre-Columbian cultures, as a country of South America defined by a2zgov, com, Peru became after 1543 the most cultured and prosperous viceroyalty of Hispanic America. By marginalizing millions of Indians in the Andes and in the jungle, Spanish language and culture, institutions and customs triumphed in the new urban centers created especially along the coast (starting with Lima). Viceroys, aristocrats and often refined (or poets, like Esquilache) wanted the University in the capital (1551), many schools and colleges, printers (the first printer was the Italian Antonio Ricardo; over 4000 works were published in the colonial age), public theaters (from 1559 onwards), news gazettes (from the first half of the 17th century), poetry competitions, academies, etc. Many, therefore, ecclesiastical and lay writers, Pedro Cieza de León, A. de Zárate, Sarmiento de Gamboa, Jerez, etc.); and even too many poets, admirers not only of the Spanish greatest, from Cervantes to Lope de Vega and Calderón, but also of Ovidio and Dante, Ariosto and Tasso. The religious (especially for the history and studies of indigenous languages) and mestizos or pure Indians such as Juan Santa Cruz Pachacuti, Titu Cusi Yupanqui and the singular Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala (d. After 1613) contributed to such fervor of production. first exalter of the Inca civilization. The first great Peruvian writer was Garcilaso de la Vega known as el Inca, author of the Comentarios Reales de los Incas and La Florida, fictionalized history of the conquest. In the seventeenth century there was not a single genre in vogue in the mother country that did not have immediate and widespread success in Peru: from baroque lyric (especially with Juan de Espinosa Medrano, poet in Castilian and Quechua and a great admirer of Góngora) to Quévez satire (Juan del Valle Caviedes, ca.1652-ca.1697); from the theater (Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo; Espinosa, Ana Morillo, Valle Caviedes, etc.) to the heroic and religious poem (Pedro de Oña, author of El Arauco domado, who lived in Peru although Chilean; Diego de Hojeda author of La Christíada) to the short story (Miscelánea Austral, by Diego Dávalos, 1602) to the popular satirical sainete (F. del Castillo, J. de Monforte), etc. In the eighteenth century Enlightenment thought penetrated, culminating in the figure of Pablo de Olavide, also famous in Spain, and in the singular Lazarillo de ciegos caminantes (1775 or 1776), as well as in a new flowering of theater and satirical and popular poetry, at the time of viceroy Amat and the famous actress Micaela Villegas, known as la Perricholi. At the beginning of the century. XIX, a delicate love poet, the half-caste Mariano Melgar (1791-1815), shot by the Spaniards at the age of twenty-four, led the way, with his pre- romantic Yaravíes, to the rebirth of indigenous opera. Shortly thereafter, political independence and romantic influences opened new horizons to the country’s poetry, history, journalism and theater.