Salasaka Tapestries - Llama

LLAMA

The llama was probably domesticated some six thousand years ago in southern Peru. Life in the Andes would have been much more difficult, and probably less developed, had it not benn for the llama. The llama and its relatives had a role in agriculture, for example. Pastoralism and agriculture developed together in the Andes. The cultivation of the potato, a basic native food and the most important high-altitude crop, was dependent on the use of camelid manure. In Inca times, llamas were controlled by the state, and the Incas expanded the range of llama herding widely, north into Ecuador and south into Chile. Llamas were shorn for wool to make clothing and objects such as the sling and the quipu, the Andean counting device made of knotted stings.