Chavin, Nazca, Moche, Huari and Tiwanaku civilizations | World History | Khan Academy

- [Instructor] The western
or northwestern coast

of South America has
been an interesting place

for ancient civilizations.

We believe it to be one of the places

that agriculture developed independently,

and as we'll see in this
video, and we've talked

about in other videos, it's a place where

we have many significant cultures

and civilizations and empires developing.

Now what's interesting about it,

it is not your classic
river valley civilization

like we have in Mesopotamia
or in ancient Egypt

or along the Yellow River in China

or the Indus River in India and Pakistan.

Instead, this area is really defined

by the Humboldt Current.

The Humboldt Current is
a current that comes up

from the south and off the coast

of what is modern-day
Peru for the most part,

it brings all these nutrients
from the bottom of the ocean.

And what it does is it makes
it a very powerful fishery,

so there's a lot of fish in the ocean

in this part of the world.

And it also has interesting
effects on the climate on land.

So in this region, you
can see even on this map,

there's this thin strip of
desert, and then you get

into the Andes Mountains,
and on the other side

of the Andes Mountains, you start to

have the tropical rainforest.

So if you go to Peru,
especially on the western part

of Peru, the ocean will look like this.

This is actually a picture I took

from a recent family trip to Peru.

Then, as you get right onto the coast,

it will be pretty arid
desert, and then when

you get up into the mountains,
they're fairly high altitude,

you'll have these mountain valleys,

some of them are at
7,000, 8,0000, 9,000 feet.

This is actually another
picture that I took

from my recent vacation
in Peru a few months ago.

And what's interesting

about the ancient civilizations there is

some of them might have
settled on the coast

to take advantage of the
fishing that was available.

There were some rivers, or there
continue to be some rivers,

that go from the mountains
through the desert,

so some early agriculture
developed around that.

But there's also
civilizations that developed

around these high altitude valleys.

And what's really interesting
about these civilizations

is because of the terrain,
they weren't as unified

as things we might see in Mesoamerica.

So one of the first
civilizations in the all Americas

that we have archeological evidence

of is the Caral or Norte
Chico civilization.

And one thing to keep in mind,

as I give the names of
these civilizations,

this is not what they called themselves.

The civilizations tend to be named

after the most significant archeological

locations that people have found.

And now as we get into
the first millennium BCE,

we have what's called
the Chavin civilization.

Once again, it wasn't their name.

This was about 3,000 years ago.

And to be clear, this
is when we just start

to see that civilization
getting quite advanced.

There's evidence that
people had been settled

in this area around
modern-day Peru and Bolivia

and northern Chile and
Ecuador for potentially

thousands of years before that.

But just to get a sense of
the Chavin civilization,

here are some archeological
artifacts discovered.

And they were discovered
at Chavin de Huantar,

thus the name Chavin civilization,

sometimes called Chavin culture.

And what's interesting is
we have these artifacts,

it looks like it was a
religious cultural center.

Some people refer to
it as a religious cult

that really took off in this area,

but we don't believe that
it was a formal empire.

We don't know for certain,
because we don't have

written records, so we're
just trying to figure out

what we can from the
archeological evidence.

Now, near the time that the Chavin culture

started to decline,
and what's interesting,

we believe that a lot of
these cultures declined

either from warfare between themselves

or some type of climate change,
whether it was the El Niño

or some type of drought or
famine and maybe that could

actually cause a lot of the conflict

within a society as well, but
those are some of the leading

theories as to why the Chavin
culture ended around 200 BCE.

Now around that time, we start to see

the emergence of several other cultures.

You have the famous Nazca culture emerge

right over here in southwest Peru.

And they're most famous,
perhaps, for the Nazca Lines,

these huge, I guess you say drawings,

or patterns, that are made in the land.

Some of them are 300 meters,
a third of a kilometer,

and you really can't even
appreciate what they represent

unless you're looking at it
from a significant altitude.

Some people have theorized that
this is some type of message

they're trying to send to the sky gods.

Some people have even thought,
hey, maybe this has something

to do with trying to
communicate with aliens.

This is famously called the Space Man.

Who knows, it's interesting
to theorize about that Nazca

civilization, which started
to emerge around 200 BCE.

Once again, we don't have written record,

so we can just look at their architecture,

these patterns that they created.

Now a little bit later, we
start to see the emergence

of the Moche civilization or
the Moche culture in this area

in light blue over here,
sometimes called Mochica.

And this is one of the
significant structures they built,

Hauca del Sol, known as
the Temple of the Sun,

and it's been damaged a
lot, oftentimes by people

who are trying to loot it or excavate it

in irresponsible ways, but
it was the largest structure

we have found from pre-Colombian America.

When we say pre-Colombian America,

we're saying before Christopher
Columbus got to America.

The Moche are really interesting.

Even though they didn't have writing,

we can learn a lot from their art

and this is some examples of it and

frankly this is some of the
less graphic examples of it.

Now, as we get into the first millennium,

especially the middle part
of the first millennium,

we start to see some other significant

cultures and civilizations emerge.

So, for example, around 500
CE, so roughly 1500 years ago,

you see the Wari civilization emerge,

and that's here in red.

And there's some debates and you'll see

these debates a lot as
we study ancient history.

Was it an empire or was it just

a culture that had a lot of influence?

Some of the arguments for empire are

it seemed like there was
wealth, it seemed like

they were able to build
large infrastructure works,

there was consistency across
different settlements.

Now there's also the Tiwanaku,

and we believe it was truly an empire,

but we can say the Tiwanaku civilization,

right over here in yellow, really centered

at off the coast of Lake Titicaca,

which is right in that
area right over here.

But the big take away here is this is

just a sample of some of the civilizations

that you had in this part of the world.

Now what's really interesting
is, as I mentioned,

a lot of them weren't able
to form formal empires,

people think because of
the valley, the mountains,

the terrain, that were keeping
people from maybe trading or

being able to control each other
a little bit more strongly.

But eventually we do have the emergence

of fairly strong empires,
as we see in the Incas,

which emerges in the 15th
century, around 1438.

And then the Inca empire ends

with the European
colonization of the Americas.

And we also believe that the Tiwanaku

were a significant empire,

despite some of the geographical hurdles.