ABSTRACT

THE FOUR ‘NATURAL’ HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE. Cultural development in the Central Andes cannot be interpreted without correlating the cultural record with geological and climatic change. This region is subject to many of the natural catastrophes that assail other areas of the world, but nowhere else do they occur in such profusion. The disasters range from localized avalanches, or huaycos (floods of liquid mud, usually transporting large boulders), to volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and El Niño rainfall and drought events that bring severe devastation to vast areas of the Central Andes.