(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists from Europe and the United States have deciphered the composition of the black ink used by the craftsmen of the South American Huari empire to paint ceramics, which indicates a central orientation of the state structure.
“Inhabitants of some regions of the Andes studied by us, especially in the north of Peru, used black paints based on iron and calcium before the arrival of Huari.
After the establishment of the Huari regime, they switched to manganese-based inks standardized throughout the empire.
This indicates that the empire Huari controlled the process of ceramics production and, possibly, supplied the “right” ink to all the masters,” said Luis Muro, a researcher at the Los Angeles Museum of Art (USA), quoted by the press service of the Field Museum of Chicago.
Before the birth of the Inca Empire, dozens of other states arose and disintegrated on the territory of Peru, some of which disappeared without a trace, while others became part of the culture of subsequent political entities.
For example, the Inca Empire, in a certain respect, can be called the heir to an older state, the Huari Empire, which arose on the territory of Peru at the end of antiquity.
Historians have long been interested in how these Indian states were interconnected, as well as how the Huari empire arose, how it was organized and how far its cultural and administrative boundaries extended.
Recently, paleogeneticists confirmed the high continuity between the Inca and Huari empires during a large-scale analysis of the DNA of the ancient Indians who lived in the Andes 0.5-9 thousand years ago.
As Muro and his colleagues note, the study of the Huari culture is complicated by the fact that this ancient civilization did not leave behind written sources, which does not allow scientists to directly find out how this empire was arranged.
American archaeologists and chemists from Europe have studied the chemical composition of the ink that the ancient masters of Huari and the Andean regions they conquered used to paint ceramic vessels.
It turned out that everywhere they used a similar composition of black ink containing manganese salts.
This was typical both for ceramics made in the Huari style and for vessels with elements of local decor, which in the past were part of the culture of the conquered Huari peoples.
At the same time, scientists discovered that before the advent of the Huari, many of the peoples they conquered used other forms of black paint, built on the basis of iron and calcium compounds.
According to Muro and his colleagues, the widespread transition of the masters of these peoples to manganese paint suggests that the Huari directly controlled the production of ceramics or paints throughout the country. This indicates a high level of centralization of the Huari empire, the scientists concluded.
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