The Moche River Valley in northern Peru was an unlikely place to build a city. Though barely 1,000 feet from the Pacific Ocean, the valley received less than a tenth of an inch of rain per year.
It's a lost civilization that existed for 500 years. The language is extinct. Archeologists are still puzzling some things out. There's little or no written records about them.
I mean, its basically Vegas, city built in the desert, no one knows why it exists, enormous social differences, and it had a different architectural style to other areas.
Most importantly, it had a strict code 'what happens in Chan Chan stays in Chan Chan'
Every once in a while, I get to read about what I call the "Invisible countries". These are the countries that are apparently there, but have no weight at the global scale. I don't know anyone from there, don't know what their cities are called, don't hear any news from there. Peru falls squarely in that category. Others are Turkmenistan, Gabon, Monaco, Senegal etc.
It's not about not knowing the name about the capital.
It's about not hearing any news from the country ever and maybe not knowing a single distinguishing thing about it because they never come up in regular life in the western world.
Like Cameroon, Gabon or Suriname. I know they are countries, but couldn't tell you a single fact about them.
> never come up in regular life in the western world
If you watch any kind of global sports like the Olympics or football (not american), you immediately hear about these countries.
And if you live in Europe you also know a lot about Suriname if you're in the Netherlands or about Cameroon if you're in France, and by extension if you interact with people from there. Maybe they don't come up for a regular American.
Okay but my answer was about these countries never coming up in regular life, they do come up! You not researching random countries that come up in life is obviously normal - but they do come up. I've pooped every day of my life, sometimes multiple times, and know almost nothing about pooping or pooping techniques as I never felt like researching it, for example. Frequency of encounters vs facts known are not completely correlated.
There are a fair number of Peruvian restaurants in the Bay Area, due I believe to a fair number of Peruvian immigrants. There are apparently 720,626 Peruvians in the US, and 91,511 in California.
I created a little news site (https://magnetoid.com) specifically to try to get stories from every country in the world. Most countries are directly represented, though there are a few exceptions like Andorra (maybe 20 total?), where there's not a terribly great English news source for me to pull from. Countries not directly represented are still covered by regional sites that I scrape.
It's made with Python, SQLite, OpenResty, and Redis. no ads, tracking, or javascript
Great site! nevertheless, I believe your soilurce of news from Portugal is more of tourism promoting website. Forgive me but i need to make just two suggestions: Publish your list of sources for each country; Check Euronews.com, it has news in English for most European countries.
Hmm, I don't understand this classification at all. Monaco is pretty well known for its population. There are countries with huge populations that I think most US college students know very little about like Indonesia.
If nothing else, you need to go out of your way to get familiar with Peruvian food, which is some of the most interesting in the world. It’s a blend of pre-Incan (relevancy to the article), Incan, Spanish, Japanese, and Cantonese cuisines. You end up with wonderful stuff like ceviche, chifa cuisine, and pisco sours.
Peru has been in the news recently because of the presidential attempt to seize power + protests.
I don't think you're wrong about coverage though. People are downvoting because they they think you're saying this is a good thing, but the fact is that no major media outlet regularly features stories from the non-BRICS developing world.
I think people are downvoting because dismissing huge swathes of the planet as "invisible" because you don't know much about them could be considered an arrogant view. Not only is Cameroon not invisible to the 29 million people who live there, it is not invisible to the many millions more who live in neighbouring countries and who emigrated (or whose parents emigrated) from Cameroon to other parts of the world, etc.
Cameroon is invisible to the vast majority of people who do not have a personal connection with Cameroon.
On the other hand, the United States is invisible to nobody. There is nobody on earth with even a basic education who is not aware of the political entities of the US and China. People with no connection to the US, no relatives, no history, are aware of the US.
The average Norwegian or Vietnamese person knows the internal politics of the US, and may, if lucky, know that Cameroon exists.
This is not the same relationship. I'm not saying the imbalance is good, but it is reality.
I didn't say the downvotes were from people disputing the fact that Cameroon is less widely known than the US. It's the idea that this makes them "invisible" that is probably perceived as a dismissive and arrogant take. They are not invisible - you just haven't seen them. There is a difference, particularly in the age of the internet where you can learn about any country you choose.
I wouldn't call you invisible, and I do not like to think of myself as invisible, even though neither of us are (I presume) household names in every country on earth.
(That said, it genuinely surprised me that there are people on HN who have not heard of Peru, as I would have thought Machu Picchu at least was a very well known thing in the developed world.)
I live in Trujillo, near to Chan Chan, is a very interesting experiment as a city but not near what Incas have done in Cusco with giant stones, the infraestructure still in use today and the way they blend with nature and resists natural fenomena but maintaining a cohesive spatial organization is impressive.
I find the efforts of the archeologists not to apply cultural norms particularly interesting:
In other circumstances, a caste system might be seen in a less favourable light:
> I like the egg myth because it suggests that the Chimú understood that social and political inequality is ‘baked in’ to humanity from the beginning,” says anthropologist Robyn Cutright of Centre College.
Similarly the discussion of preferring other people's children for child sacrifices. This is ascribed to their support desire for cultural diversity and laying new cultural roots.
> “The Chimú had the ability to draw on a large terrain, and I think they were reaching out to diverse regions to find children for the sacrifices”
> By sacrificing the children and burying them, they were, in a way, planting new ancestors.”
I hope the original archeologists have not been quoted out of context or that I have not misinterpreted them.
Either way it is quite amusing. I do not think I would regard child sacrifices in entirely the same positive light or even neutrally ...
I visited Chan Chan and other excavations of the area two months ago. Quite impressive the size, culture, and technology for a culture way more ancient that the inca and Machu Pichu. There was not many people and totally recommended
"I like the egg myth because it suggests that the Chimú understood that social and political inequality is ‘baked in’ to humanity from the beginning,"
A strange statement and I'm not sure I understand the meaning.
Such a myth serves the same purpose pretty much everywhere since a long time ago: to try to convince people of lower status that there is no hope for them to become high status. Perhaps it also shows some self-deception among the high status people.
It shows no profound understanding of anything; it's just a manipulative tactic.
And I'm not even sure what the speaker is trying to say. If it's that humanity is collectively unequal, well, duh, it always has been. If it's that an individual's status is predetermined at birth, then that's simply false.
29 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 75.5 ms ] threadIt's a lost civilization that existed for 500 years. The language is extinct. Archeologists are still puzzling some things out. There's little or no written records about them.
Most importantly, it had a strict code 'what happens in Chan Chan stays in Chan Chan'
It's about not hearing any news from the country ever and maybe not knowing a single distinguishing thing about it because they never come up in regular life in the western world.
Like Cameroon, Gabon or Suriname. I know they are countries, but couldn't tell you a single fact about them.
If you watch any kind of global sports like the Olympics or football (not american), you immediately hear about these countries.
And if you live in Europe you also know a lot about Suriname if you're in the Netherlands or about Cameroon if you're in France, and by extension if you interact with people from there. Maybe they don't come up for a regular American.
But still, I couldn't name you a single fact about any of those countries past the fact that they have a name and they are a country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruvian_Americans
It's made with Python, SQLite, OpenResty, and Redis. no ads, tracking, or javascript
Great job, really! It's bookmarked.
I don't think you're wrong about coverage though. People are downvoting because they they think you're saying this is a good thing, but the fact is that no major media outlet regularly features stories from the non-BRICS developing world.
On the other hand, the United States is invisible to nobody. There is nobody on earth with even a basic education who is not aware of the political entities of the US and China. People with no connection to the US, no relatives, no history, are aware of the US.
The average Norwegian or Vietnamese person knows the internal politics of the US, and may, if lucky, know that Cameroon exists.
This is not the same relationship. I'm not saying the imbalance is good, but it is reality.
I wouldn't call you invisible, and I do not like to think of myself as invisible, even though neither of us are (I presume) household names in every country on earth.
(That said, it genuinely surprised me that there are people on HN who have not heard of Peru, as I would have thought Machu Picchu at least was a very well known thing in the developed world.)
In other circumstances, a caste system might be seen in a less favourable light:
> I like the egg myth because it suggests that the Chimú understood that social and political inequality is ‘baked in’ to humanity from the beginning,” says anthropologist Robyn Cutright of Centre College.
Similarly the discussion of preferring other people's children for child sacrifices. This is ascribed to their support desire for cultural diversity and laying new cultural roots. > “The Chimú had the ability to draw on a large terrain, and I think they were reaching out to diverse regions to find children for the sacrifices” > By sacrificing the children and burying them, they were, in a way, planting new ancestors.”
I hope the original archeologists have not been quoted out of context or that I have not misinterpreted them.
Either way it is quite amusing. I do not think I would regard child sacrifices in entirely the same positive light or even neutrally ...
A strange statement and I'm not sure I understand the meaning.
Such a myth serves the same purpose pretty much everywhere since a long time ago: to try to convince people of lower status that there is no hope for them to become high status. Perhaps it also shows some self-deception among the high status people.
It shows no profound understanding of anything; it's just a manipulative tactic.
And I'm not even sure what the speaker is trying to say. If it's that humanity is collectively unequal, well, duh, it always has been. If it's that an individual's status is predetermined at birth, then that's simply false.