In Andean South American Indigenous cultures, a basic social and kinship unit of community that shares land and resources collectively.
From Quechua 'ayllu' or 'aillo', a fundamental term in pre-Columbian Andean societies referring to kinship groups organized around shared territory and mutual obligation.
The ayllu system predates capitalism by thousands of years and represents one of history's most sophisticated communal organization models—members weren't just neighbors, they were reciprocal-obligation family units that still exist in parts of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador today.
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