Ancient Peruvian Ceramics - The Nathan Cummings Collection (Art torrent

Sawyer, Alan R., "Ancient Peruvian Ceramics: The Nathan Cummings Collection"
Metropolitan / NY Graphic Society | 1966 | English | PDF | 144 pages | 25.9 Mb

Peru occupies the central portion of the mighty Andean mountain chain that closely parallels the western edge of South America. Here the blue Pacific pounds a narrow ribbon of surf against a 1,300-mile-long coast of jagged rocks and empty beaches. The narrow coastal plain is an ashen desert crowded by parched mountain spurs, which rise in awesome crescendo to lofty snow-capped peaks. The highest, Mt. Huascaran, over 22,200 feet in altitude and only sixty miles from the sea, forms part of the continental watershed. Cool winds from offshore are heated by the sun-scorched desert and, taking rather than giving moisture, rise upward as they move inland, until at last the altitude wrings them dry. Most of the precipitation flows rapidly into tributaries of the Amazon, which reach like tentacles into the heart of the mountains, drawing off moisture to be lavished on steaming jungle and swamp. Only a fraction of the water drains toward the Pacific, through about forty steep-walled valleys, many of which are dry much of the year. The fact that this arid mountain-crowded zone between jungle and sea gave rise to some of the most splendid of ancient American civilizations is a tribute to man's extraordinary ability to cooperate with his kind to overcome the most hostile of environments