Vital principles of organization in Andinoamerica

Bering Strait
The territories of South America that have been crossed by the Andes • 40 000 -50 000 years B. C.

are known by the name of Andean America; those that correspond to

Ecuador are identified with equatorial Andean America.

Life in the first llaktas (villages) began to respond to Organization:

greater organization and complexity with the • Plan

discovery of agriculture. • System

• A group of people

• Share tasks

• Put in order

• To organize

Among the activities that the villagers carried out, food began to be prepared and cooked
in an increasingly refined way, while pottery became a fundamental activity within the
group.

The distribution of space, privileges and tasks reflect an incipient (brief) differentiation of social classes.
The inhabitants of these first villages carried out specific tasks, some engaged in agricultural work and
others engaged in commerce, some engaged in shepherding and others in the development of basketry
weaving and pottery .

In other words, they depended on the collective society of the land.

Reciprocity was a solidarity practice where members of a

community helped each other. So, for example, it was usual for
the members of an ayllu to collaborate with each other to plant
and harvest the subsistence plots or to build the houses that
were required. Kinship ties were important to ensure the
existence and continuity of reciprocity. Family units responded
to the extended family model, they included the elderly, children
and their partners, grandchildren and, often, other relatives.

What is an ayllu?
Ayllu is a word in both the Quechua and Aymara
languages referring to a network of families in a given
area, often with a putative or fictive common
ancestor. The male head of an ayllu is called a mallku
which means, literally, “condor”, but is a title which
can be more freely translated as “prince”.

• Language: They shared the same language.

• Religion: They worshipped the same gods and celebrated the same celebrations. (polytheist)
• Economy: They worked in teams to get common goods for everybody.

Redistribution was a function performed by the

chief of the llakta, curaca or Inca. A part of the
production was collected and distributed later,
either because it was saved for times of famine or
because it was given to people who carried out
other trades.
Minga
Collective work

Agricultural production
Agriculture emerged in America independently of
other parts of the world such as the Middle East
and China in Mesoamerica (south of Mexico)
agriculture developed for the first time on the
Continent.

In the course of several millennia a significant

transformation took place with agriculture in
Andean America. The villagers learned to
domesticate animals and plants and to use
products from the different ecological Zones.

Cassava (yucca), corn and later potatoes were among others that began to be cultivated systematically:
of these products, corn was constituted on the basis of the support of entire communities.

Ecuador has contributed to feeding the world with two basic foods, potatoes and corn. With the advance
of agriculture, the peoples developed a religiosity based on the cult of mother earth and on agricultural
cycles such as sowing and harvesting that went through religious rituals.
 Mining
production
The first settlers of equatorial Andean America,
nomadic hunters, depended on a volcanic rock
to survive: obsidian.

With the help of the obsidian hunt and they

collected fruits for food, they also made scrapers
that were used to clean the remains of meat on
the skins that they used as clothing.

Later, when agricultural societies developed and

after the first ceramic instruments appeared, a
rudimentary use of metals began to be made. In
this type of work, the La Tolita culture stood out,
which even went platinum.

Manufacturing production
The Valdivia culture flourished from 3500
BC on the coast. Settled on the Santa
Elena Peninsula, this culture has become
famous for the quality of its pottery.

Among its figurines, the Venus of Valdivia is famous. This culture reached a specialization in
ceramics, in addition to the fact that its inhabitants dedicated themselves to fishing and
agriculture. Archaeological evidence speaks of an active trade through the exchange of
products.