by When you see the north coast of Peru for the first time, it is difficult for you to believe that it is one of the driest deserts in the world.
Parts of the region receive less than one inch rain in a year. But water and green are everywhere. This is the nation’s agro industrial core, and thanks to the irrigation channels, almost every centimeter of the floodplains is covered in lucrative export cultures such as sugar cane, asparagus and blueberries.
However, the obvious success of this system masked an underlying fragility.
The region has been plagued by the region for centuries, and now modern climate change in combination with agricultural industrial practices has further intensified. In response to this, the Peruvian government has invested billions of dollars in irrigation infrastructure in recent years to deliver more water from a resource more than 100 miles: glaciers in the Andes.
But the Anden glaciers disappear when the global temperatures rise. Peru has lost more than half of its glacier surface since 1962. At the same time, floods, which are often associated with the wet El Niño years, increase both the frequency and the intensity. These floods often destroy or hinder the critical irrigation infrastructure.
As an archaeologist who examines social reactions to environmental and climate a distophes in Peru, I am interested in stringing the history of complex systems in order to understand how similar systems can improve today. In order to understand the weaknesses of the Peruvian core country, it helps to look into the deep past.
Most of the modern sewer network originally dates more than 1400 years ago before the Hispan era. However, there is indications that the channel systems of the past looked similar to that of the present, but they worked in more efficient and flexible ways. The key to adapting to our current and future climate could be to understand the past – not only the equipment, technology or infrastructure, but also the way people use them.
An environment of extreme
The north coast of Peru is an environment of the extreme.
In this desert, thousands of years ago, the companies met with many of the same challenges of the modern climate crisis: expansion of dry areas, water shortages, food production systems in need of protection and frequent, intensive natural disasters.
Nevertheless, the people of this area not only occupied for thousands of years, they also bloomed in it. The companies of Moche and Chimu have created demanding, complex political and religious institutions, art and technology and one of the largest pyramid structures in America.
When the Spaniards arrived on the north coast of Peru shortly after 1532 AD, early chronicler noticed on the green, green valleys throughout the region.
The Spaniards immediately recognized the importance of the sewer network. They had used similar channel technology in Spain for centuries. So they started to turn indigenous workers and adapt the irrigation system to their goals.
Just a few decades later, historical records describe sand dunes and sayings that penetrate the green valleys, water shortages and a massive flood of El Niño, which almost ended the young colony.
How was the indigenous operation of this landscape successful, where the Spaniards and the modern agricultural industrial were repeated repeatedly?
Culture was of crucial importance for old channel systems
Old beliefs, behaviors and norms – the archaeologists as culture – were generally integrated into technological solutions in this part of Peru in antiquity. The isolation and removal of the tools from this knowledge made them less effective.
Scientists, political decision -makers and stakeholders who are looking for models for sustainable agriculture and climate adjustments can deal with the archaeological records. The successful use of previous practices on today’s challenges requires learning about the cultures that work effectively for so long.
The pre-Hispanic societies of Peru developed agricultural principles around the realities of the desert, which included both dry and fall floods.
A large -scale irrigation infrastructure was combined with inexpensive, slightly modified channels. Aqueducts doubled as sedim cases to catch nutrients. Channel branches channeled both river water and floods. Even check-lady-small dams to control floods with high energy-functioned people in different ways. Usually from lifting coverings and gravel, they reduced the energy of fall floods, captured rich sediments and loaded the water table.
The view of the drone on sugar cane fields shows a pre-Hispanic adobe aqueduct on the right and small feeder channels in the modern fields. Ari Caramanica
The initial failures of the Spaniards on the north coast illustrate the problem of the experiment to take on technology without understanding the cultural knowledge behind it: Although they are identical, a Spanish channel is not a Moche channel.
Spanish channels were operated in a temperate climate and were managed by individual farmers who could maintain or increase their water flow. The channels of Moche and Chimu were bound to a complex work system that synchronized the cleaning and maintenance and prioritized the efficient use of water. In addition, Moche channels worked together with flooding steering channels that were activated at El Niño events in order to create niches of agricultural productivity under disasters.
A handmade gate on a modern channel in the north of Peru does not seem to be different from the old channels, but the pre -dispanic sewer systems were generally more conceptually more complex and interconnected. Ari Caramanica
The desert agriculture required flexibility and multifunctionality from its infrastructure. Achieve that it often meant leaving incomplete materials and permanent designs, which is in a strong contrast to the way modern water management work is built.
Copying the old practices without culture
Today, the Peruvian government pushes a decades of several billion dollars to deliver water to the north coast of a river fed with glaciers.
The Chavimochic project promises great transformation and transforms desert into productive arable land. But it may be that long -term resilience sacrifices for short -term prosperity.
The project feeds on the temporary frequency of glacier -melting water. This creates a water boom when the ice melts, but it will inevitably follow a devastating water bust when the glaciers almost disappear, which the scientists could appreciate by the end of the 21st century.
In the meantime, sustainable land management practices of former local residents continue to support hundreds and even thousands of years later, ecosystems. Studies show a higher level of biological diversity, crucial for the health of ecosystems, near archaeological bodies.
On the Peruvian north coast, the pre -panic infrastructure continues to capture floods during the events in El Niño. When their modern fields are flooded or destroyed by these events, farmers sometimes move their harvests into areas that surround archaeological remains, where corn, pumpkin and bean plants can knock in the enclosed water and the sediments into the captured water and sediments without being necessary.
Critics could indicate the difficulty of scaling old technologies for global applications, finding them rudimentarily or prefering the design without dealing with the understanding of the “cultural stuff”.
But this frame misses the larger point: what made these technologies effectively was cultural stuff. Not only the tools, but also, as used by the companies that they operate. As long as modern technical solutions are trying to update old technologies without taking into account the cultures that you have to work, these projects will fight.
Understand the past
Archaeologists play an important role in building an air -conditioned future, but every sensible progress would benefit from a historical approach that takes into account several options for understanding the environment, when operating an irrigation channel and organizing an agricultural economy.
In my opinion, this approach begins with the rescue of the indigenous languages, in which cultural logic is deeply embedded, as well as archaeological and holy sites and the creation of partnerships that have worked on trust with the people who have worked with the country and whose cultures have worked their practices on the change climate for thousands of years.
This article will be released from the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and trustworthy analyzes to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Ari Caramanica, Vanderbilt University
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Ari Caramanica receives funds from the National Foundation for the Humanities.
