5 Interesting Things You Didn't Know about Peru

My sister is moving to Peru for 6 months. HO-LY Crap! I said, HO-LY CRAP! In honour of her decision, this post will describe 8 little known but very interesting facts about Peru.

1) There's a huge hole in the middle of Peru called Chicxulub Crater. It's from an asteroid strike that threw trillions of tons of dirt, rock and fire into the sky and caused the extinction of the White-fronted Capuchin monkey. The animal is now revered by a local aboriginal tribe called the Kamasins.

2) The Peruvian flag is the exact same flag as the Canadian flag, except with no maple leaf in the middle. In the 1920s a Canadian group sued the Peruvian government for copyright infringement under the 1886 Berne Convention. The action was dismissed by a world-court judge.

3) Peru has a lot of young people. Median age of 28. (Canada's is over 40 yrs. old.) But it's illegal in Peru to have sexual intercourse under the age of 21.

4) The Peruvian language evolved independently from the Spanish originating in northern Spain during the fifteenth century. It is now thought that Peruvian evolved directly from Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), an unattested, common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

5) Cerveza Caral is the most popular beer in Peru; however, the drink is controverisal because it contains over 100 ingredients including Mountain Maple Solid Extract, Nonanoic Acid, 2-Phenyl-2-Butenal, Sucrose octaacetate and Veratraldehyde. Since 2005, when the Peruvian Purist Party came to power under Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Cerveza Caral is available in only government-operated liquor stores.

6) Peru uses a different standard of time called International Atomic Time (TAI), which has nothing to do with the rotations of the earth with respect to the mean sun. As a result, since 1972 they've had to add a leap second approximately every 18 months.

7) Peruvians tend to be formal and conservative, especially those living in the Andes region. The indigenous Amerindians will greet you with a loud, "Buenas tardes, es un placer! Hasta mañana!" which I've translated directly into an online translator as, "Hi, I think it's great to meet you. Tomorrow!"

8) Peru has had 3 wars with the United States - and has won them all! The first and most famous was called the Yamasee War (1715-1717), when Peru successfully defended itself from a military contingent from South Carolina made up of the Cherokee, Chickasaw and Catawba Indian tribes.