Episode 38: Exploring Ancient South American Mummification and a Taste of Peruvian Cuisine
Aug 07, 2023Episode 38
Marty Smarticus
Are you ready to uncork a bottle of history lesser known to most? Prepare to be transported back in time as Phoenix and I pull you through the winding corridors of South American civilization, exposing the ancient art of mummification in all its eerie grandeur. Unveiling the mystic practices of the Inca Empire, the Nazca civilization, and the Mochi civilization, we piece together theories of intentional cranial deformation and unearth influences possibly not of this Earth. Our journey doesn't end there. We breathe life into the 3D-like model discovered near Chanchand, Peru, in a bid to illuminate the beliefs, customs, and rituals of these ancient people.
But we're not just historians, we're also quite the culinary explorers. We whisk up a traditional Peruvian delight, a creamy spiced hot chocolate, perfect for cozy winter nights or an early morning jolt of warmth. With rich cocoa powder, a dash of sugar, and a mosaic of spices like cinnamon, cloves, and star anise, this chocolaty marvel is more than just a drink; it's a taste of Peru's vibrant culture. Stick with us as we simmer history and gastronomy into one delicious podcast episode. Trust us, it's a ride you don't want to miss!
Are you ready to uncork a bottle of history lesser known to most? Prepare to be transported back in time as Phoenix and I pull you through the winding corridors of South American civilization, exposing the ancient art of mummification in all its eerie grandeur. Unveiling the mystic practices of the Inca Empire, the Nazca civilization, and the Mochi civilization, we piece together theories of intentional cranial deformation and unearth influences possibly not of this Earth. Our journey doesn't end there. We breathe life into the 3D-like model discovered near Chanchand, Peru, in a bid to illuminate the beliefs, customs, and rituals of these ancient people.
But we're not just historians, we're also quite the culinary explorers. We whisk up a traditional Peruvian delight, a creamy spiced hot chocolate, perfect for cozy winter nights or an early morning jolt of warmth. With rich cocoa powder, a dash of sugar, and a mosaic of spices like cinnamon, cloves, and star anise, this chocolaty marvel is more than just a drink; it's a taste of Peru's vibrant culture. Stick with us as we simmer history and gastronomy into one delicious podcast episode. Trust us, it's a ride you don't want to miss!
History. Alright, enough with the Echo and Fanfare. You're here for history, right, and not that boring crap you learned in high school. This stuff's actually interesting, like things you've never heard about the Civil War, cleopatra, automobiles, monopoly, the Black Plague and more Fascinating stories, interesting topics and some downright weird facts from the past. It's a new twist on some stories you may know and an interesting look at some things you may have never heard. So grab a beer, kick back and enjoy. Here's your host, smarticus.
Speaker 2:
Welcome back history enthusiasts to another captivating episode of Smarticus Tales History. I am your host, smarticus, joined by my co-host, phoenix.
Speaker 3:
Hello.
Speaker 2:
Today, we delve into a fascinating and lesser known aspect of South American history the ancient art of mummification. For this week's episode, our food item is Peruvian cream and spiced hot chocolate. Peruvian chocolate is some of the best known chocolate in the world, so this is a great choice. The recipe is from eatperucom.
Speaker 3:
And it has pictures for those of you who might want to look into it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I did have to go buy some things, but most people will probably have a lot of things, especially if you bake a lot already in the cabinet or pantry.
Speaker 3:
Exactly. I didn't have any star anise. I never do because I don't really cook with it ever so I went to the store and got any seed and I had to look up how to properly do that about to convert from one star anise pod to the seeds.
Speaker 2:
And I think it said it was have a teaspoon. Teaspoon right, Not tablespoon.
Speaker 3:
Right. No, my God no.
Speaker 2:
That'd be a lot yeah.
Speaker 3:
That'd be intense. I like it. I think it tastes really good. Have you tried it yet?
Speaker 2:
No, so okay, but yeah. So before we started we discussed I didn't put any sugar in mine beforehand because I just didn't. It tells you to at the very end of the recipe to sugar to taste, but I was curious how it tasted beforehand, so Wow.
Speaker 3:
Did it kick you in the face?
Speaker 2:
That is very thick.
Speaker 3:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
And it needs a lot of sugar. Don't yeah, don't yeah. It's not as bad as having the cocoa powder or cacao powder, whatever you want to call it Fresh, but it's almost that bad.
Speaker 3:
It's intense.
Speaker 2:
By itself. I mean yeah.
Speaker 3:
There's a bitterness that not fully masked by the creaminess of the milk and the evaporated milk from the cam. It does not cool away.
Speaker 2:
You're also supposed to use Peruvian cocoa powder.
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
Peruvian bitter cocoa powder. The recipe calls for, but we did this last minute.
Speaker 3:
Yes, sorry folks.
Speaker 2:
And I have, what kind did you get?
Speaker 3:
I got the 85% dark chocolate. From who, though, I can't remember?
Speaker 2:
No lint.
Speaker 3:
It's from lint, that's who it is Like the lint door people, but it's lint. Okay, what did you do?
Speaker 2:
I bought a bag like a $2 bag or $3 bag I don't remember how much the Hershey's 100% cocoa powder. That's what I bought.
Speaker 1:
That's brave.
Speaker 2:
And I don't know if you just saw it or not, but I just added those two other things of sugar in there because it was not enough sugar. So that is.
Speaker 3:
I thought this would wake you up in the morning, though.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that is now five total packets of sugar in my cup of hot chocolate, because it was not, it was still pretty bitter.
Speaker 3:
I was going to beat you up. Yeah, I mean I feel like it's going to be really nice for holidays, or really just a morning drink instead of having coffee. You have this, although it has instant coffee in it, but not much.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so okay, yeah, so that was the other thing. So I'm not really a hot cocoa person myself. Really it's good. Yeah, it's good. I think it needs more flavor. Mine doesn't seem to have much flavor. I think the cocoa powder tastes more than overpowers it. I think Because you put a lot of cocoa powder in it, you put three tablespoons in the overall mixture.
Speaker 3:
I actually, yeah, I added a bit more of the because I had the chocolate bar and I just melted that down into it. But I added quite a bit more chocolate than it suggested because I just, if I'm gonna have hot chocolate, I want it to be chocolate chocolate right, so, okay.
Speaker 2:
So, and your chocolate should have already had sugar in it. Um, it's, um, you had no sugar in it. No, okay, okay. Well, I don't know where I was gonna go with that.
Speaker 3:
Um.
Speaker 2:
But I use the powder, and I use three tablespoons of powder because that's what the recipe called for, right, um? So I was gonna read the read through the ingredients real quick. Um, so it says one cinnamon stick Uh, two cloves. One orange peel ride, one star anise or anise, however you must say it One pinch nutmeg. So I didn't know what classified as a pinch. I just took my fingers and I just, yeah, I mean I pinched it, but like, how much do you put in that pinch? Like you can vary a pinch, yeah. So, um, I put like two tiny pinches in, so I didn't know, like exactly. And then, um, okay, so it's got one pinch nutmeg, half a cup of water, uh, two cups prepared whole milk, half a cup of evaporated milk, and so I had to go get the evaporated milk. Didn't have that, um, I had to get, oh, yeah, I substituted the star anise, um, with fennel seeds, um, because that's that's what google told me to use.
Speaker 2:
They said substitute star anise with fennel seeds. So I said okay, um, and then I did actually have. I saw I'd okay. So I didn't have a cinnamon stick. I had sin ground cinnamon, so I used I did that instead of the cinnamon stick, and I didn't have cloves, but I did have ground cloves.
Speaker 1:
Oh my so I used ground cloves, so you didn't take any of that out.
Speaker 2:
So I didn't take any of the cloves itself out. That could be why mine tastes so bitter.
Speaker 1:
That's exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker 2:
Oh my it only it was only like a little bit.
Speaker 3:
Right Well and the cinnamon will definitely add more sweetness to it, but at the same time, if you've got it sitting in that In your drink, it'll be intense.
Speaker 2:
Right and, and I will admit, google did say Sometimes you do want the cloves and not the ground cloves.
Speaker 1:
Exactly.
Speaker 2:
And I'm assuming that this is probably one of the reasons, because throughout the recipe, as you're reading it, you're supposed to strain the anise and the cloves.
Speaker 2:
And the cinnamon stick and the because and the picture. Okay, so it doesn't tell you In the instructions either. We just talked about this. It does not tell you to put the orange peel in there, but the picture clearly shows the orange peel in there. I did not, for whatever reason, did not look at the picture and I just I just read the instructions and did not put the orange in there.
Speaker 3:
So yeah, honestly, I think, I think it could definitely be improved a bit if you were to put some Of the orange zest In. I also.
Speaker 2:
I almost just did that. Really, I almost did the zest. Yeah, instead of putting the peel in there, I almost just put the zest in there. Um and uh, but I didn't. So I didn't. I have no orange in mind, and I was also just thinking um, I wonder how, how would it taste if I put uh like vanilla extract in it?
Speaker 3:
Um, that would have been nice.
Speaker 2:
And uh, yeah, to go with the cinnamon and the and the chocolate, yeah, um, but so that was, that was our recipe, and so it's Peruvian Creamy and this, the recipe on the page says peruvian creamy and spicy hot chocolate and easy to make, flavorful, natural, sweet hot drink with a hint of spice. Um, prep time was five minutes. That's a lie. It took me like 10 minutes to prep it.
Speaker 3:
Yeah Well because, you know you're making that. That was the they called it, the infusion with the water and spices.
Speaker 2:
That takes a bit of time to get heat up and they told you to like it tells you 10 minutes, 10 minutes, yeah. Yeah and that says cook time, so I had to put. I had to have to put more water in mine.
Speaker 3:
Oh, really, because it steamed it out, didn't you?
Speaker 2:
because, yeah, because I, well, for one, I frat, I frat to half cover it because it told you to half cover it. But well, the time I was done straining it like it was like there was almost nothing there, so it's gonna be intense.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so I put more water in there to thin it back out. That's funny and it says okay, yeah, it says a cook time of 15 minutes. That's probably relatively close. It took me, I mean overall from start to finish and you make three cups roughly Mm-hmm, because you put two cups of hot milk. Not hot milk well, I guess it is hot milk. After you heat it up, you put two cups of poured milk in there.
Speaker 2:
A whole milk I mean and then half a cup of the evaporated milk and then half a cup of the water, so it should be roughly three cups worth. And yeah, it took me from start to finish. Maybe 30 minutes, 35 maybe at the most.
Speaker 3:
Next time it'll be faster.
Speaker 2:
Next time it'll be faster, yeah.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And the longest part for me, I think, besides the cooking it in the pot for the 10 minutes in the pot was just gathering the ingredients. I had to make sure I had everything, and blah, blah, blah. So, but yeah, so we chose this recipe because it's based in Peru and our episode for today is and it's not specifically just in Peru, it's also in Chile, mm-hmm, and I think those are actually the only two places that it mentioned, wouldn't it? I think so, yeah, but in South America. So it's probably several places, but in Chile and Peru were the two that the episode called out.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so when we think of mummies, our minds often conjure images of ancient Egypt. However, the practice of mummification was not exclusive to the sands of the Nile. South Americans also practiced this complex, mysterious art, creating mummies of their own, long before the arrival of the Europeans.
Speaker 2:
In this episode, we will explore the origins and methods of South American mummification, shedding light on the cultures and beliefs that led to the preservation of their deceased. Join us as we journey back in time to uncover the secrets of these ancient civilizations. Mummification was a sacred and revered ritual in several South American cultures with roots dating back thousands of years. Unlike the dry deserts of Egypt, south American mummies were preserved in a variety of climates and landscapes, ranging from the high altitude Indian mountains to the lush forests of the Amazon basin.
Speaker 3:
Our journey starts with a chinchero culture, an ancient civilization that lived along the coasts of present day Chile and Peru around 1500 BCE. They were pioneers in the art of mummification, predating the Egyptian mummies by thousands of years. The chinchero people mummified their dead using a complex process that involved removing internal organs, drying the body and meticulously reconstructing it with sticks and clay, before covering it with a layer of clay and painting it with a red pigment. To these ancient South American societies, mummification was not merely a method of preserving the deceased. It was deeply intertwined with their religious and spiritual beliefs. The rituals surrounding mummification varied across cultures, but were consistently guided by a belief in the afterlife.
Speaker 2:
So not only did they predate the Egyptians by thousands of years as part of the mummification process, they also did it vastly different.
Speaker 1:
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:
Because, they would have to because they didn't have the same kind of setup.
Speaker 2:
It was and, like they said, it was a different environment too, whereas I guess, well, like in the Egyptian mummies, I guess they didn't have access to a lot of clay and stuff, but they did have the access to Well, that's not true, because they made all kinds of pottery and stuff. So I wonder why they didn't use, I guess, just different areas, just I don't know, because they wrapped it in linen instead of yeah.
Speaker 3:
And they waited for him to decompose to a certain extent.
Speaker 2:
And yeah, and I was just going to say that here, the control of people, they, they dried the body, whereas the mummies, they drained it of fluids.
Speaker 3:
I don't know, is it just and sanguineate?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think that's the right word. Yeah, and then now they might. The control of people. They may have done that too. It doesn't say just as they dried the body. To me, drying the body, well, you would have to drain it of fluids, so, but it's, it's funny that they also removed the internal, internal organs.
Speaker 3:
Well, you know, they've found evidence to suggest that.
Speaker 2:
Aliens, I know.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I know, aliens, I have to be careful too, aliens.
Speaker 2:
I mean, that's why we have pyramids everywhere. It's because aliens, little guy aliens taught them the mumfication process.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, Right, yes, so I mean obviously they would teach them you need to remove the organs because they're just, you don't need them no more.
Speaker 2:
Right, yeah, you're going to be dead. You don't need to breathe.
Speaker 3:
That's right.
Speaker 2:
There's no air in the underworld Right, but I just thought that was fascinating that they they're similar processes but also vastly different.
Speaker 3:
Right.
Speaker 2:
And I mean I guess that's the difference between. I mean you know however many miles apart that you know the two continents are Well back then. I don't know if they're, probably they were closer, but still you know it's not. You know Pangea at the time.
Speaker 3:
No.
Speaker 2:
Right, it's. You know they're still, you know, large oceans, you know whatever separating them. So they reconstructed them with sticks too. I don't understand why they would reconstruct them with sticks To fill the body out. I guess that would have to be why, yeah, instead of because they dried the body out and then they would reconstruct them with sticks and clay, yeah, to make it more look like a body. I guess, when they Right.
Speaker 2:
Covered in clay, I guess with a or. I guess it's a different layer of clay. I wonder if it's like a different type of clay that they would use for, like the outer layer.
Speaker 3:
Don't know.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't say it's just things that make you go. Hmm, all right. In the Andean civilization, particularly the Inca Empire, mummies were revered as a living dead. The Incas believed that the mummies played a vital role in ensuring the well-being and prosperity of the living. The bodies of the Inca rulers, known as the Malquise, were embalmed and placed in sacred shrines where they were attended to by priestesses and priests. The Nazca civilization, famous for its enigmatic geoglyphs, also practiced mummification. However, their approach to this ancient art differed significantly from their contemporaries. The Nazca people created trophy heads where they decapitated their enemies and skillfully preserved their heads as a symbol of victory and power. I don't like. It reminds of those shrunken. The shrunken heads, I guess. Who did that? It was, wasn't it like people? Was that also South Americans that did the shrunken heads, or is that? I want to say it was Africans that did that? I want to say it was Africans too. I don't remember. I think it was South Africans that did that. I think it was the African.
Speaker 3:
I think it was the African. I think it was the African. I think it was the African.
Speaker 2:
I think it was the Africans that did that. I can't remember. Of course, all now I can think of were the shrunken heads on the night bus from Harry Potter with the Jamaican accent.
Speaker 3:
Sit down, man.
Speaker 2:
Yes, sit down, man.
Speaker 3:
Additionally, in recent times, the discovery of elongated skulls in Paracas, peru, has sparked intense debates among historians and archaeologists. Some believe that these elongated skulls could be a result of intentional cranial deformation, while others suggest a connection to an extraterrestrial influence. I knew it.
Speaker 2:
Aliens.
Speaker 3:
I knew it. The Mochi civilization, a pre-Incan society that thrived in northern Peru between the first and eighth centuries AD, left behind a wealth of knowledge about their mummification practices through their elaborate funerary rituals.
Speaker 2:
Over the years, the Mochi tombs have revealed stunning artifacts, including pottery, textiles and precious metals, giving us insight into the beliefs and customs of these ancient people. The one artifact that gave the most knowledge, however, was a palace 3D-like model depicting one of these funerary rituals. It was discovered in 1995 by Peruvian archaeologists around roughly eight miles near Chanchand, Peru. The team that made the discovery also claimed that the site appeared to have been ransacked by looters probably a few centuries before.
Speaker 3:
Probably conquistadors.
Speaker 2:
The item itself showed a chanchand courtyard with figures sewn into the cloth base. The model contained musicians, courtiers and hunchbacks. Two large females shown in the back of the model with one larger male nearby, were carved in wood and a shell mosaic. The mummies depicted were wrapped in some kind of tan cloth and gold-faced paintings, possibly indicating a gold funerary mask of some sort. Unfortunately, the Mochi left no written records and much of their civilization is still unknown, though we are learning a lot thanks to radiocarbon dating and other advancements in technology.
Speaker 3:
Another unfortunate event was the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, who were familiar with the Mochi and many South American cultures' uses of gold. They diverted the Rio Mochi River in an effort to break down the Wacadal Sol, one of the pyramids built by the Mochi, so that they could loot the Mochi tombs within. With their arrival on the continent, many ancient traditions, such as mummification, were suppressed and replaced by foreign religious practices. Despite this upheaval, pockets of mummification persisted, particularly among remote indigenous communities that maintained their ancestral customs and beliefs.
Speaker 2:
And there you have it, dear listeners, the captivating tale of South American mummification. These ancient civilizations left behind a legacy of fascinating rituals, intricate beliefs and extraordinary artistry. The practice of mummification in South America reveals a profound connection these cultures had with the mysteries of life, death and the afterlife. Join us in the next episode as we embark on another thrilling adventure through the annals of history. Until then, keep exploring and never stop seeking knowledge. This is Smarticus Tells History, and we are signing off Goodbye.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to Smarticus Tells History. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to rate and review, and make sure to subscribe and be sure to follow the show at facebookcom slash Smarticus Tells History or just click the link in the show description. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.