Captivating History - Incas: A Captivating Guide to the History of the Inca Empire and Civilization

Incas

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

Copyright 2017

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Table of Contents

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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 didnt 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, well 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, its 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.

Well 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.

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. Whats 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. Whats 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 Bernab 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 aupapacha 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. Whats 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 wasnt an easy task; errors resulted in severe punishments.