Hydraulic culture of embankments , sp. La Cultura Hidráulica de las Lomas , or Llanos de Mojos culture , Spanish. Cultura Llanos de Mojos - pre-Columbian culture that existed from 4000 - 1300 BC. e. on the plains of Llanos-Mokhos in the Beni department in Amazonian Bolivia .
Characteristic of the culture was the construction of dwellings on artificial hills created on heaps of waste, mainly of ceramic origin. The main purpose of the dwellings on the hills was that they should have been inaccessible to periodic floods. Many of these hills were connected to other large earthworks, such as ditches, embankments, canals, and artificial ponds.
About 20,000 artificial hills were discovered, the largest of which reached a height of 8 m and occupied an area of several hectares. Hills connected to each other huge earth embankments with a length of 15 to 30 kilometers, which were used as roads, and along which there were channels along which canoes could be floated.
One of the first to describe the mounds, canals, and embankments was the Jesuit Francisco J. Elder, who in 1772 compiled “A Brief Description of the Conquests of the Society of Jesus in the Province of Peru, Known as Mojos” ( Breve Descripción de las Reducciones de la Compañía de Jesus de la Provincia del Perú Conocida como de Mojos ), where it mentions “ancient structures”, namely mounds, canals and embankments.
Around 1964 , geographer William Denevan became interested in the remains of barrows that could be seen from airplanes and which were clearly visible in aerial photographs.
In 1960 and 1990, Kenneth Lee described and studied in detail these structures, conducted a comparative analysis of them with other similar structures in South America.
Thanks to the construction of a large number of canals and embankments, this culture was able to manage a large number of rivers, conduct intensive agriculture and fishing, and also survive periods of floods.
If we multiply 20 hectares by 20,000 barrows, we get 400,000 hectares of cultivated land, so it’s logical to say that (the department) of Beni at that time was a water culture, one of the most important in the world. Ancient Egypt existed due to the only river Nile and its floods, but here we are talking about many rivers . Osvaldo Rivera [1]
The ethnicity of the creators of culture is unknown. Native speakers of the isolated Yurakare language currently live in the area, but they may also be later aliens.
Notes
- ↑ “Una cultura hidráulica dominó las antiguas tierras de Moxos”, a report in the Bolivian newspaper “ La Razón ” Archived copy of September 27, 2007 on the Wayback Machine .