How to Prepare a Shrunken Head and other tales from Chachapoyas

The Chachapoyans were around long before the Inca; they precede South America’s most famous empire by around 900 years. At their height they numbered around half a million, scattered over a few dozen settlements in the cloud forest covered mountains of Peru’s Amazonas region.

The fortress of Kuelep is the most famous of their former citadels, an immense ruin perched atop one of these mountains, with commanding views of the valleys snaking up to it below.

The quarry where they found the bulk of the fortresses limestone is about a week’s walk away. Before the Chachapoyans could even begin building they had to transport hundreds of tons of dirt to extend the mountain top.  

But if I were a Chachapoyan, I’d be pulling out all the stops on defensive dwellings too; their number one enemy was the Jivaroa tribe (aka the Headshrinkers).

Remember putting packets of Twisties and Burger Rings in the oven when you were young to make crispy shrunken keyrings??

Well, that’s pretty much what the Jivaroa did with heads. Since they didn’t have keyrings, they wore the heads on necklaces.

For those who'd like a few more gory details, naturally the internet has the answers:

How to Prepare a Shrunken Head

When the conquistadors rocked up, the Chachapoyan leader Guaman decided to throw his lot in with Francisco Pizarro, having previously been harshly treated by the Inca. Not that it did either of them any good- the Chachapoyan culture was decimated by smallpox (reducing a population of 500,000 to around 10,000) and Francisco Pizarro was eventually assassinated by his fellow conquistadors.

Which just goes to show that as far as the indigenous South Americans were concerned, you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't.