Uros
The Uros is the name of a group of pre-Incan people who live on 42 self-fashioned floating man-made islets located in Lake Titicaca off Puno, Peru. The Uros use the totora plant to make boats (balsas mats) of bundled dried reeds as well as to make the islands themselves.
Around 3,000 descendants of the Uros are alive today, although only a few hundred still live on and maintain the islands; most have moved to the mainland. The Uros also bury their dead on the mainland in special cemeteries.
The Uros traded with the Aymara tribe on the mainland, interbreeding with them and eventually abandoning the Uro language for that of the Aymara. About 500 years ago they lost their original language. When this pre-Incan civilization was conquered by the Incans, they had to pay taxes to them, and often were made slaves.
Related websites
The Uros People at GlobalAmity.net
Video presentation by a tour guide
Read the full article about Uros
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Uros
