The Incas

THE INCA EMPIRE

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The Incas were people of a powerful empire that ruled part of South America in the 1400s and 1500s. They were located in the Andes.

About the year A.D. 1200, the Incas settled in a small village on a high plateau in the Andes. This village, named Cuzco, became the Incas` capital city

and a center of both government and religion. In fact, the word Cuzco means ¨center¨ in the Inca language. The Incas extended their control over nearby land through conquests, or the conquering of other peoples. Over time, many different groups came under their rule. By the 1400s, the lands ruled by the Incas had grown into an empire. At its height, the Incan Empire included as many as 12 million people.

CENTRAL RULE

Pachacuti did not want the people he conquered to have too much power. He began a policy of removing local leaders and replacing them with new officials whom he trusted, He also made the children of conquered leaders travel to Cuzco to learn about Inca government and religion. When the children were grown, they were sent back to govern their villages, where they taught their people about the Incas history, traditions and way of life.

As another way of unifying the empire, the Incas use an official Inca language, Quechua. Although people spoke many other languages all official business had to be done in Quechua. Even today, many people in Peru and the other former Inca lands still speak Quechua.

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SOCIAL DIVISIONS AND GOVERNMENT

The Incan ruler was called Sapa Inca, or ¨the emperor.¨ The people believed that their emperor was related to the sun-god. The emperor, and only he, owned all the land and divided it among those under his rule. Under the Sapa Inca was the noble class. Nobles oversaw government officials, who made sure the empire ran smoothly.

Officials used a census, oran official count of the people, to keep track of everyone`s responsibilities. The census helped to make sure that everyone paid taxes. It recorded which men worked as soldiers or on public projects such as gold mining and road building. Farmers had to give the government part of their crops, while women had to weave cloth. In return, the empire took care of the poor, the sick, and the elderly.

There were no merchants or markets. Instead, government officials would distribute goods collected through the mita, a labor tax system that helped a lot to the Incan economy.

TRADITIONS

Religion

The Inca pantheon had an array of gods that included the creator god Viracocha, sun god Inti, thunder god Illapa and earth-mother goddess Pachamama, among others. There were also regional deities worshipped by people whom the Inca conquered. The Inca gods could be honored in many ways, including

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prayers, fasting and animal sacrifice, but the most powerful form was that of human sacrifice, typically those of children and teenagers.

Inca Flag

The banner of the Incas represented the Inca himself, not the empire.

Banner of the Incas

Current flag of the city of Cusco, wrongly associated with the Inca.

FOOD AND FEASTING

Maize and meat were generally considered the elite food of the Incas and were consumed by the “maiden” and her attendants in the year before they were sacrificed. In addition to these elite food products, other goods

consumed in the Inca diet include sweet potatoes, beans and chili peppers.

In exchange for labor, the Inca government was expected to provide feasts to the people at certain

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times of the year, acting as a form of payment in a society that lacked currency.

The Inca invented terrace farming. They lived in the mountains. Flatlands were rare. So, they simply created flat land by building steps of land for agriculture down the mountainside. This was great for irrigation. Terraced fields both decrease erosion and surface runoff, and may be used to support growing crops that require irrigation, such as rice.

Instead of rainwater running down the mountainside, the Inca channeled it through each step. They also built aqueducts to carry water where it was needed.

MUMMY FEEDING

The mummification of individuals was an important part of Inca funerary rites, even for those who were commoners.

November is known as being the “month of carrying the dead”, a time when people would try to feed the mummies of their ancestors.

“In this month they take their dead out of their storehouses which are called pucullo and they give them food and drink and they dress them in their richest apparel ... and they sing and dance with them … and they walk with them from house to house and through the streets and the plaza.”

ACHIEVEMENTS

Architecture

Architecture was by far the most important of the Inca arts. The main example is the capital city of Cusco. The site of Machu Picchu was constructed by Inca engineers. The stone temples constructed by the Inca used a mortar less construction that fit together so well that a knife could not be fitted through the stonework. The

rocks used in construction were sculpted to fit together exactly by repeatedly lowering a rock onto another and carving away any sections on the lower rock where the dust was compressed. The tight fit and the concavity on the lower rocks made them extraordinarily

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stable. The Incas also built a system of roads to unite their empire. They had no horses and no wheeled carts, so the roads did not have to be very wide.

Communication & Medicine

The Inca used assemblages of knotted strings, known as Quipu, to record information, the exact nature of which is no longer known. Originally it was thought that Quipu were used only as mnemonic devices or to record numerical data. Quipus are also believed to record history and literature. The Inca made many discoveries in medicine. They performed successful skull surgery, which involved cutting holes in the skull in order to alleviate fluid buildup and inflammation caused by head wounds. Anthropologists have discovered evidence which suggests that most skull surgeries performed by Inca surgeons were successful.

Calendars and Math

Inca calendars were strongly tied to astronomy. Inca astronomers understood equinoxes, solstices, and likely zenith passages, not to mention the Venus cycle. The Inca calendar was essentially lunisolar, as two calendars were maintained in parallel, one solar and one lunar. As twelve lunar months fall 11-days short of a full 365-day solar year. The twelve lunar months were

each marked with specific festivals and rituals. There apparently were no names for days of the week, and it may be the case that there were no subdivisions of time into weeks at all. Similarly, months were not grouped into seasons.

The sophistication of Inca administration, calendars, and engineering necessitated a certain facility with numbers. Numerical information itself was stored in the knots of quipu strings, allowing for large numbers to be stored in a small amount of space. These numbers were stored in base-10 digits, the same base as used by the Quechua language.

Weapons, armor & warfare- Adri

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The Inca army was the most powerful in the area at that time, because they could turn an ordinary villager or farmer into a soldier, ready for battle. This is because every male Inca had to take part in war at least once so as to be prepared for warfare again when needed.

The Incas had no iron or steel, and their weapons were not much better than those of their enemies. They went into battle with the beating of drums and the blowing of trumpets.

The armor used by the Incas included:

Helmets Round or square shields

The Inca weaponry included:

Bronze or bone-tipped spears

Two-handed wooden swords

Clubs with stone and spiked metal heads

Stone or copper headed battle-axes Bolas (stones fastened to lengths of cord)

Ceramics & Textiles

Ceramics were painted using the polychrome technique portraying numerous motifs including animals, birds, waves, felines and geometric patterns. In place without a written language, ceramics portrayed the very basic scenes of everyday life, including the smelting of metals, relationships and scenes of tribal warfare, it is through these preserved ceramics that we know what life was like for the ancient

South Americans.

Almost all of the gold and silver work of the empire was melted down by the conquistadors.

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Textiles worn by the Inca elite consisting of geometric figures enclosed by rectangles or squares. There is evidence that the designs were an ideographic language.

DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE

The power of the Incan Empire peaked in the 1400s. After that, it lasted for less than 100 years. A number of factors contributed to the fall of the empire members of the ruling family began to fight among themselves for control. Also, many workers started to rebel against the strict government, in the 1530s, a Spanish conquistador, or conqueror, named Francisco Pizarro arrived the South America.

Pizarro had heard of the wealthy Incan Empire. He wanted to explore the region and conquer its peoples. The Incan emperor welcomed Pizarro. But when he and his unarmed men met the conquistador, they walked into a trap. Pizarro captured the emperor and killed his men.The Spanish had superior weapons.

They also carried diseases, such as smallpox and measles, to which the Incas had never been exposed. These diseases killed much of the Incan population. The Spanish quickly gained control of the vast Incan Empire. For decades, the Incas tried to regain rule of their land, but they never succeeded.

IMPORTANT CHARACTERS OF THE INCAN HISTORY

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Pachacuti (Died 1471)

Pachacuti became the Inca ruler in about 1438. Under his rule the Inca Empire began a period of great expansion. Pachacuti, whose name means “he who remakes the world”, had the Inca capital at Cuzco rebuilt. He also established and official Inca religion.

Atahualpa (1502-1533)

Atahualpa was the last Inca emperor. He was a popular ruler, but he didn’t rule for long. At his first meeting with Pizarro, he was offered a religious book to convince him to accept Christianity. Atahualpa threw it on the ground. The Spanish considered this an insult and reason to attack.

Francisco Pizarro(1475-1541)

Francisco Pizarro organized expeditions to explore the west coast of South America. His first two trips were mostly uneventful. But on his third trip, Pizarro met the Incas. With only about 180 men, he conquered the Inca Empire, which had been weakened by disease and civil war. In 1535 Pizarro founded Lima, the capital of

modern Peru.

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