- Peru is a marvelous country, and one of the greatest trip destinations in the world. A travel guide described Peru as the Egypt of the Americas. I went there just knowing about the Incas, but they one just one among dozens of civilizations. It blows your mind.
The greatest sadness is to see the amount of wonders destroyed by the Spanish invaders.
by mekdoonggi
0 subcomment
- If they are similar to khipus (used for accounting) perhaps we're looking at the invention of a central bank.
Think about it, the village has a hard year, so they collectively borrow grain from another village. How do you settle disputes about exactly how much was borrowed? You build a big thing on the edge of town that everyone can see and can't destroy without a bunch of effort.
- I think this comment is substantially more informative than the article itself:
https://newatlas.com/environment/5-200-holes-peruvian-mounta...
Each hole is constructed- dug out and lined with rock.
These are not mining holes, nor used to store things.
If you want to store stuff, you would put these pits
along the bottom of the hill, not running a long distance
up the hill.
They tried to keep the lines somewhat straight, crossing
gullies. I can't guess what valid use they might have had,
other than religious. They seem pointless.
by FrameworkFred
0 subcomment
- It would make sense that the holes were a convenient way of thinking and speaking about large quantities of goods such that tribes of people might want to exchange. It would be a very visual way of comparing dissimilar goods, like "1 hole has 50 alpaca skins and I need 200 for the shelter I'm planning to build, so I need 4" and "1 hole has 8 baskets of dried fish which can last 3 families thru the winter, so I need 3 for the nine families on the farm", etc.
And I bet they paid a bit of rent for the privilege. Pretty cool.
by yomismoaqui
1 subcomments
- The first thing that came to my mind:
https://imgur.com/gallery/lni-enigma-of-amigara-fault-junji-...
- COMEX warehouse? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Mercantile_Exchange#E...
- So is that 1.04 Albert Hall holes?
- Maybe they were looking for a chest containing jewels, deeds, and promissory notes.
- "And here on this mountainside, we store roman dodecahedrons..."
- The holes were created without concern for slope angle or whether there was a drainage arroyo. To me this does not indicate something of secular practical usage. I'd lean toward a ritualistic behavior that had to happen in a certain place, tied with previous performances of the ritual, and performed many times. Question: can they date the holes at either end?
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