Incas E-Book

Captivating History

• Herausgeber: Captivating History
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 108

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Explore the Captivating History of the Incas   One of the most notable ancient cultures of South America is undoubtedly the Inca Civilization. They once ruled over the largest empire in South America. Not only that - their empire was also the largest in the world at the time.   There are many mysteries surrounding the Incas. Where did the Incas originate? And how did they come to rule over their vast empire that incorporated mountaintops, tropical jungles, and coastal lands? What were the most notable achievements of their great kings? What did their temples and monuments look like, especially the capital city of Cusco and their breathtaking mountaintop settlement at Machu Picchu in modern-day Peru?   Some of the topics and questions covered in this book include: -  How the Incas Recorded Their History  -  The Inca Creation Myth  -  The Founding of the Great City of Cuzco  -  The First Dynasty of Inca Rulers and Their Greatest Deeds  -  The Second Dynasty of Inca Rulers and Their Greatest Deeds  -  The Rise of the Inca Empire: A Cosmological Event?  -  Social Order in the Inca Society  -  The Different Roles of Women in the Inca Society  -  Inca Religious Order and Ideology  -  Tour of the Greatest Inca Sights  -  From Pachacuti to the Arrival of the Spanish  -  The Spanish Conquest  -  The Aftermath and the Inca Legacy  -  And a Great Deal More that You don't Want to Miss out on!   Scroll to the top and download the book now for instant access!

Leseprobe

Incas

A Captivating Guide to the History of the Inca Empire and Civilization

© Copyright 2017 

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​​Introduction

One of the most notable ancient cultures of South America is undoubtedly the Inca Civilization. They once ruled over the largest empire in South America. Not only that - their empire was also the largest in the world at the time.

However, it didn’t last long - within about a hundred years, the empire that stretched all the way from modern-day Quito, Ecuador in the north to modern Santiago, Chile in the south, lay in ruin. The Inca Empire that ruled over 10 million subjects was conquered by a few hundred Spanish conquistadors in the mid-16th century.

Despite its grand appearances, the Inca empire turned out to be weak and quickly disintegrated when the Spanish conquistadors arrived on their shores, with a measly force of 168 men, their leader Francisco Pizarro among them. How was this possible?

But there are many more mysteries surrounding the Incas. Where did the Incas originate? And how did they come to rule over their vast empire that incorporated mountaintops, tropical jungles, and coastal lands? What were the most notable achievements of their great kings? What did their temples and monuments look like, especially the capital city of Cusco and their breath-taking mountaintop settlement at Machu Picchu in modern-day Peru?

In this book, we’ll discover what the Incas had for lunch, how their society was structured and their ideas about Cosmology and the origins of our world.

But before we embark on this journey of discovery, it’s important to understand that the history of the Inca empire is not straightforward. The Incas did not have a linear concept of time. They were great orators though, and used stories to pass down oral history to their descendents. Therefore, most of their historical accounts come from Spanish sources or locals who learned Spanish and told the history of the Incas after the conquest.

Each chronicler had their motives and reasons for writing their story - some were seeking to get published, others wanted to justify the Spanish conquest, while others tried to portray the Inca empire as ‘the golden age’. The Inca empire could be anything - a brutal totalitarian state that exploited its subjects, an organised system of rigid social structures, or a beautiful utopia.

We’ll look at some accredited sources, specifically the work of one of the world's leading experts on Inca civilization Terence N. D'Altroy, Loubat Professor of American Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology and founding Director of the Center for Archaeology at Columbia University in the City of New York.

​​Chapter 1 – How the Incas Recorded Their History

For the Incas, the stories of their origins are so entangled with their myths and fables that it is difficult to discern fact from fiction. What’s more, the Incas revered cosmology and the celestial bodies. Thus, many of their myths are better explained in relation to the movement of the planets, rather than the movement of people.

How the Incas recorded their history

Although they were one of the most sophisticated and advanced civilizations the Spanish Conquistadors encountered, they never developed writing.

Oral storytelling

The Incas had a particular class of individuals whose only duty was to memorise important events from the Inca history, recount them orally at courts or special events, and pass them onto the next generation. There were several issues with this. For example, the storyteller could omit or deliberately include specific events that happened to the previous Inca emperors, depending on whom he happened to be speaking to. What’s more, these accounts usually detailed events from the lives of royalty, not the common folk.

Another problem for creating a chronological record of the history of the Incas, including the very beginnings of their civilization, was the Incas did not have a linear view of time. The chronicler and Jesuit missionary Padre Bernabé Cobo recorded the problems that arose when trying to construct a chronological history of the Incas in his book on the history of the Inca Empire.

When they are asked about things of the past, if something happened more than four to six years ago, what they usually answer is that the incident occurred ñaupapacha which means ‘a long time ago’; and they give the same answer for events of 20 years back, as for events of 100 or 1000 years back, except that when the thing is very ancient, they express this by a certain accent and ponderation of their words.

It is therefore difficult to ascertain any linear narrative from the oral history.

Quipus

Quipus were sets of knotted strings that helped the Incas communicate information and deal with numbers with remarkable precision and accuracy. What’s more, this device was highly portable so that accurate records could be carried from place to place. The Incas used a variety of colours, strings and different types of knots tied at various ways and lengths to record and communicate important dates, accounts, and statistics. It was even used to record important episodes from folk tales, mythology, and poetry.

How did quipus record time and history?

The largest quipus ever found have as many as 1,500 strings of different colours, containing a number of knots that each held its specific meaning. As the method developed, a group of quipu masters or quipucamayos emerged. Their task was to memorise and keep an oral account that explained a particular quipu. This job was passed down from generation to generation. It wasn’t an easy task; errors resulted in severe punishments.

Despite the sophistication, the materials used were simple - one needed to get some cotton or wool string and sometimes a wooden bar, from which the strings would hang. The strings had different colours. Each knot was thoughtfully placed in a designated spot. It was the combination of knots, colours and the length of each string that carried a particular meaning.

The method was based on a decimal positional system, counting as far as 10,000. Remarkably, this decimal system closely resembles that which we use in mathematics today. A knot could indicate a number if you counted the turns of the string within it. A knot tied in a figure-of-eight could indicate a fixed value, whereas a string that was missing a knot signified zero. There was also a way to suggest ‘secondary strings’ that meant this string was an exception or less important than the others.

You could tell what units were used on each quipu by looking at the strings placed furthest away from the primary string - this was the key to breaking the code of that particular quipu.

So, the Inca creation myth was perpetuated using oral storytelling and quipus.

The Spanish chroniclers

Later the history of the Inca and their myths were recorded by the Spanish chroniclers, each of whom had their own agenda, representing the stories in a different light. Many believed the Inca myths and beliefs to be a form of heresy for the Christian faith, and the judgement that the Spaniards imparted when presenting the native accounts resulted in historical inaccuracies.

Some years after the conquest, the Spanish chroniclers started to interview the local Andean people to get a better picture of their past. However, by this time much of their history was skewed towards a biased 'golden era' representation of the Inca rule. This is because the conditions that the locals endure under the Spanish rule were so catastrophic, compared to the treatment they’d received from the Inca rulers.

The first fifty to one hundred years of the Spanish rule are remembered as a ‘black time’ for the native people of the Andes. The Spanish continued to rage war against the last surviving Inca rulers, as well as fighting each other in a quest for more wealth and power. This left the locals in a difficult position, always torn between the military attacks of the surviving Incas and the Spanish conquistadors with no support from a united, consistent government. Even after the last indigenous Inca ruler Túpac Amaru was decapitated in 1572, the internal conflicts among the Spanish continued, shunned by the King of Spain. Within forty years of the initial Spanish appearance, the local population of the Inca empire had fallen by 50%, with the coastal population suffering the most. A combination of civil wars, forced labour and pestilence that raged for almost one hundred years, made the locals crave for a ‘golden age’ of the Inca rule and idealise it.

Here are some of the most notable Spanish chroniclers where much of our knowledge of the Incas today comes from:

●  Juan de Betanzos's Narrative of the Incas (written in the 1550s).

●  Bernabé Cobo's History of the Inca Empire (1653).

●  Garcilaso de la Vega's El Inca, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, and General History of Peru (1609).

●  Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (written around 1615).

​​Chapter 2 - The Inca Creation Myth

Similar to other cultures that existed in South America, there was a creator god who created several tribes. The Incas called him Viracocha Pachayachachi, which means ‘The Creator of all things.' The Incas believed Viracocha emerged from the waters at Lake Titicaca, creating the earth and the sky before he returned to the waters.

While the age of darkness still ruled over the Earth, he fashioned his first creation - giants made from stone and rocks and gave them special orders that had to be revered.

The Great Flood

But things didn’t go as smoothly as Viracocha had planned. The people he’d created kept his orders for a while. After some time though, vice and pride crept among the hearts of the men he’d created, and they stopped following the creator god’s orders, preferring to do as they pleased.

As a result, Viracocha cursed them - he turned some of them into stone and other things, and ordered the earth and the sea to swallow the others. Similar to many other creation stories, a great flood swallowed up the earth, known as uñu pachacuti or ‘water that overturns the land.’

According to some versions, it rained for 60 days and 60 nights, drowning all creation. Some of the giants that were turned back to stone could be seen at sites like Tiahuanaco (or Tiwanaku) and Pukará. Some of the nations are said to have survived, saved from the flood to create the next generation of men.

The second attempt of creation

Viracocha then made a second attempt at creation of man. Still, in the age of darkness, he created people, fashioning them out of clay. He gave them language, agriculture, the arts, and clothes, after which he created all kinds of animals. He told these first people (known as Vari Viracocharuna) to populate all corners of the world, but he left them to live inside the Earth.

Viracocha also decided to create the celestial bodies, such as the Sun, the Moon and the stars to bring the world out of the age of darkness and bestow light upon men and all living beings. He used the islands in Lake Titicaca to fashion these heavenly bodies.

Viracocha decided to create another group of men, called viracochas. He made these people memorise all the different characteristics of the races and cultures of people that would later populate the world. He sent all the viracochas