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Kuelap: Kuelap Fortress Ruins Chachapoyas, Peru

The fortress of Kuelap , associated with the Chachapoyas culture, consists of massive exterior stone walls containing more than four hundred buildings inside. Kuelap is precariously perched on a mountain ridge at about 3000m, the structure overlooks the Utcubamba Valley in northern Peru, is roughly 600 meters in length and 110 meters in width.The 20m high fortress walls are impressive with an entrance that is trapezoidal and narrows rapidly (as a defense). Inside there are the remains of many small round houses, some with a zigzag or diamond pattern in their basements.

The site is partially cleared but is still overgrown with trees. This added to the appeal of the ruins, creating a natural indigenous atmosphere. Exotic flora bromeliads or epiphytes, which are a widespread in Peruvian cloud forests. They are also known as air plants because they survive on what little nutrients they can extract from the air and rain, so they don't parasitise the trees on which they settle. Archaeological evidence shows that the structure was built around 800 AD, maybe they still doing the construction in the inca period  and occupied until the Early Colonial period (1532-1570).

The premier exponent of the Chachapoyan architecture, Kuelap, remained ignored by the outside world until 1843, when Juan Crisóstomo Nieto, a Chachapoyas judge, made a survey of the area and took note of Kuelap's great size, guided by villagers who knew the site for generations. Subsequently, Kuelap earned the attention of explorers, historians and archaeologists. Notable observers included Frenchman Louis Langlois, who wrote a description of Kuelap in the thirties, as well as Adolf Bandelier.

The ruins of Kuelap are located in the summit of a hill that rises on the left margin of the Utcubamba. By a steep footpath that departs from El Tingo, town near the bank of Utcubamba and placed in 2 000 m height approximately , a person can gain access to Kuelap. During a short walking journey of 8 km approximately, a brief stretch, the walker is forced to climb, in only 3 hours, 1 000 m approximately. However nowadays, the access is also possible by a horse by-path that winds next to the left margin of Tingo river. After crossing it, it allows people, at 4 hours trip approximately, reach Marcapampa, a small plain located in the proximities of the monument.
The ruins of Kuelap are constituted by a big platform faced from south to north, which settles on the top of a calcareous rock and which construction should have demanded physical efforts of big proportions. The platform spreads along almost 600 m and its walls rise up to 19 m.

Because of its extension, these flat elevations support about 400 constructions, most of them cylindrical. From them, only its bases remain. In some cases, there are some decorated walls with friezes of symbolic content that, in general, seem to evoke eyes and birds that take the form of a letterV in chain. Between many of the constructions that are in Kuelap, three are the structures that emphasize the most: El Tintero, it is placed in the south end of the biggest anden and it is characterized for being a circular turret in the shape of an inverted cone, a real challenge to the laws of gravity. La Atalaya, it is also shaped by a turret, and it is located in the north end of Kuelap. El Castillo, it is a construction that is located in the most conspicuous sector of Kuelap and it stands out on the top anden.

The ascension to the first platform was exercised by two portals, both located in the west or principal frontage; the third one placed towards the side of a cliff that gives to the west, more than an entry, it must have been an "exit" to the abyss and for that reason, act as access to a sacrifices place.

The best preserved portal and probably the principal one, is located in the south side of the frontispiece that gives on the west. It reaches, in its base, 3 m wide and its jambs narrow when they rise for approximately 10 m. For the ascension to the platform, this portal necessarily draws into the "anden", cutting it like a piece of a cake had moved back; perhaps it symbolizes an immense vulva. At the time of going inside, the entry shows a passage that is climbing on a shape of a ramp flanked by walls that award the aspect of an "alley". This one goes narrowing up to allow, in its final stretch, the pass of one person by something like a narrow tunnel, to which a person arrived after a trip of 20 m. In here the ramp reaches the floor of the first platform. Although in the entry sector the jambs end almost touching each other in their top end, the walls that flank the passage turn this sector into a species of "alley" without roof, inclining towards the interior as they go rising.

Considering its monumental character, it is undoubted that in the past of the Chachapoyas culture, Kuelap should have redeemed a leading role. It is clear that it is a monument previous to the Inca Empire. In effect, the architecture of Kuelap is, in general terms, the same one that dominated and characterizes the cultural area of the Chachapoyas. What has not been possible to specifie untill now is in what moment of the long process of development of the Chachapoyas culture, whose beginnings might go back to the VIIIth century A.C., the monument of Kuelap was raised. The time that its flowering lasted and when and for what reason was left is also unknown.
There are other aspects that could not have been elucidated: the exploit that demanded a colossal construction like Kuelap and the skill of the engineers who could provide it with a sophisticated system of rains water drainage. At present, because its pipelines are obstructed, the monument has been swelling up. After the big platform is being dilated this way, the wall stones that re-dress it are becoming detached. It has not also been clarified how the water supply was carried out; perhaps some of the enclosures that lacked of access, have served as places where water was reserved. The others enclosures, most of them, should have been food storehouses like the tambos of the Incas, shaping a considerable conglomerate of granaries.
Regarding the function that Kuelap had, there is not also a completely satisfactory response. Popularly it is qualified as "fortress", because of its place and high walls that support its principal platform. Adolf Bandelier and especially Louis Langlois tried to demonstrate that Kuelap, was more than a fortress, it might have been a fortified place destined to serve as refuge to the population in emergency cases. They attributed to it, probably by analogy, the same destination as the European medieval boroughs.

The high walls that veneered the platform and the tightness of the access to the citadel in its final stretch, suggest in effect, that the monument of Kuelap could be constructed for offering a defensive character, or at least, it should have been a place that was protected against intruders. But this possibility does not necessarily annul the others, perhaps of major transcendency.
This way, taking into consideration the function redeemed by the monumental architecture in the Peruvian archaeological past in general, the same one that was related to the socioeconomic needs, it can be concluded that Kuelap could be basically a pre-inca sanctuary. A powerful aristocracy lived in it, whose primary mission was to administer food production, taking control of it and doing some magic practices, in order to have the collaboration of the supernatural power that governed the atmospheric phenomena and that made to rain in excess or flogged with droughts making the existence be in danger.

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