Huari-Wari

The Wari people flourished in the Andes in what is now Southern Peru. They survived for about 400 years from 600 to 1000 AD. It is thought that they were the first to use military force to conquer civilizations around it. The ancient city of Wari is thought to cover close to ten square kilometers on a hill in South Peru. The buildings were formed with stone bricks and mud and sometimes just stone blocks. The city is also thought to have 100,000 people once in it. Below the city there are many tunnels that crisscross through the whole city. The best preserved remnants of the civilization were from the Wari ruins which are though to be in almost the same condition as during the time of the civilization. The Wari ruins are near the town of Quinua. There is another set of ruins a little south-east of Cuzco called the Wari ruins of Pikillaqta. The height of the Wari expansion is thought to be during 700-1000 A.D. The Wari left no written records and little is known about the government and people of the time. However, people have believed that the Wari terraced fields technology was adopted by the Incas when the Incas rose to power years after the fall of the Wari. The Wari people are thought to have spoken a form of Aymara, however currently people in that area have been speaking Quecha. The civilization was very successful and it is thought this could be because of the minerals, fish, cotton, and many other resources present in that area. The Wari civilization is not well known but some studies show it lasted almost 4 times longer than the Inca empire and may have been the cause of the Inca's success. The art style of the Wari people is close to the Tiwanaku people on lake Titicaca. Their art style is thought to have stayed around for many years after the demise of the civilization around. (info from Wari Culture Wiki, mnsu, and britannica)

(Eric A.)

Lizzy also - So before the Incas there was the Huari(Wari). The Huari were a group of people living in the Andes Mountains in modern day Peru. They inhabited the same area as the Incas and many of the Incan trade marks such as their agriculture and road system was based off the Huari. Although the Incas are more famous than the Huari, this group lasted 4x as long as the Incas(600AD-1000AD).

The Huari's downfall supposedly was caused by the Cloud People from Kuelap. They are named "Cloud" because they lived the the Cloud Forest( a tropical high-altitude forest at 3000 to 8000 feet above sea level, almost constantly covered by cloud. [|www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/Cloud%20Forest]). Not much is known about the group and no one knows where they came from. A really cool fact about the Cloud people is that they were fair skinned and haired people. The story goes that the Huari were expansionist and they attacked Kuelap. Kuelap is a great fortress built on top of a mountain. It contains more than 400 buildings and the massive exterior wall. http://descubriramerica.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/muro-de-piedra-en-kuelap-pre-inca.jpg http://descubriramerica.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/kuelap.jpg This place is built as well if not better than the buildings at Manchu Picchu(where you cannot slip a piece of paper between the stones). The fortress is not visited by many because of the poor transportation routes to the site. The first road was built only about 35 years ago. One of the more interesting parts of the building is that they were being constructed over 250 years before the Huari attacked them; the fortress was finished just in time for the attack. Just to get an idea of how big the fortress is here is the longitude and latitudes to get a picture from GoogleEarth of the site:26º24'26 //LS and 77º54'16// LOG - Even from the the arial view you can see the little outlines of the circular houses. The fortress was so strong and the Cloud people must have been vicious because they defeated the strong Huari. Some even say that if the Incas had used the fortress for when the conquistadors came they would have had a fighting chance against the guns and other artillery(John Hemming). If you are still interested in the Cloud people there is another archilogical site called Gran Pajáten near San Martin, Peru.