Five hundred years before the Incan empire reached its height in South America, a different civilization reigned: the Wari. One of the Wari’s claims to fame is that they were early brewers of a drink called chicha. The fermented beverage was made by the Inca after them and can still found in Peru today. Many variations of the drink have been common across Central and South America for centuries.
New evidence, recently published in the journal Sustainability, suggests this beer relative may have played a role in keeping Wari civilization together. Not only that, but researchers started to figure out their ancient beer recipe — and they’ve re-created it for us to taste.
Lesser Known Ancients
You’ve probably heard about past civilizations like the Maya, the Inca, and the Aztecs. But the ancient Wari are starting to make their way into public knowledge, too. They reigned for 500 years in an area almost the size of a U.S. coast — from San Diego to Portland or New York City to Jacksonville — in what is now Peru.
Part of the reason they’ve been relatively unknown is because their society was already a thing of the past when the Spanish arrived in the 1500s and met the thriving Inca. The first hints of Wari civilization weren’t uncovered until the turn of the 20th century, and serious excavations only started in the past few decades. Since no written records from the Wari themselves have been found, nearly everything known about them today is from archaeological finds.
