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Culture Documents
Inca Civilization
In 1438 the Inca set out from their base in Cuzco on a career of
conquest that, during the next 50 years, brought under their
control the area of present-day Peru, Bolivia, northern Argentina,
Chile, and Ecuador. Within this area, the Inca established a
totalitarian state that enabled the tribal ruler and a small
minority of nobles to dominate the population.
Cusco was the center of the Inca Empire, with its advanced
hydraulic engineering, agricultural techniques, marvelous
architecture, textiles, ceramics and ironworks.
Cuzco, the capital of the Incan empire, was built out of stone and
adorned with gold. The Coricancha is a fine example of how the
fusion of Inca style and Colonial styles of architecture evolved
into the Cusco of today.
The Temple of the Sun was once the most important temple of
the Incas. When the Spanish conquered the Inca Empire, they
used the fine Inca stonework to form the base of the Church of
Santo Domingo. Inside the church area are some of the buildings
built by the Incas that were used by the conquerors for their
private quarters.
When the Spaniards conquered Cuzco, the Inca capital, they set
about stripping the gold from the temples and melting them
down. Legend has it that it took three months to cart all of the
gold from the Sun Temple.
Sacsayhuaman
Roads
The Incas paved their highland roads with flat stones and built
stone walls to prevent travelers from falling off cliffs.
The Incas did not discover the wheel, so all travel was done on
foot. To help travelers on their way, rest houses were built every
few kilometers. In these rest houses, they could spend a night,
cook a meal and feed their llamas.
Their bridges were the only way to cross rivers on foot. If only
one of their hundreds of bridges was damaged, a major road
could not fully function; every time one broke, the locals would
repair it as quickly as possible.
Population
At its peak, Incan society had more than six million people.
Language - Religion
The Incan language was based on nature. All of the elements of
which they depended, and even some they didn't were given a
divine character. The King Incan was seen as Sapa Intiq Churin,
or the Only Son of the Sun.
The Inca were a deeply religious people. They feared that evil
would befall at any time. Sorcerers held high positions in society
as protectors from the spirits.
They also believed in reincarnation, saving their nail clippings,
hair cuttings and teeth in case the returning spirit needed them.
Economy
Everyone worked except for the very young and the very old.
Children worked by scaring away animals from the crops and
helping in the home.
The Incas are famous for their gold. They mined extensive
deposits of gold and silver, but this wealth ultimately brought
disaster in the 16th century, when Spanish soldiers came
seeking riches for themselves and their king.
Gold, to the Incas, was the 'sweat of the sun' and Silver the
'tears of the moon.'
Money existed in the form of work. Each subject of the empire
paid taxes by laboring on the myriad roads, crop terraces,
irrigation canals, temples, or fortresses. In return, rulers paid
their laborers in clothing and food. Silver and gold were
abundant, but only used for aesthetics.
Crime
Because everyone had everything they needed, people rarely
stole things. As a result, there were no prisons. The worst crimes
in the Inca Empire were murder, insulting the Sapa Inca and
saying bad things about gods. The punishment, being thrown off
of a cliff, was enough to keep most people from committing these
crimes. Adultery with a Sun Virgin wasn't worth it. The couple
was tied up by their hands and feet to a wall and left to starve to
death. If one made love to one of the Inca's wives, they would be
hung on a wall naked and left to starve. Smaller crimes were
punished by the chopping off of the hands and feet or the
gouging of the eyes.
Communication
The main form of communication between cities was the
chasqui. The chasqui were young men who relayed messages.
Fall of the Inca Civilization
With the arrival from Spain in 1532 of Francisco Pizarro and his
entourage of mercenaries or conquistadors, the Inca Empire was
seriously threatened for the first time. Duped into meeting with
the conquistadors in a peaceful gathering, an Inca emperor,
Atahualpa, was kidnapped and held for ransom. After paying over
$50 million in gold by today's standards, Atahualpa, who was
promised to be set free, was strangled to death by the Spaniards
who then marched straight for Cuzco and its riches.
Ciezo de Leon, a conquistador himself, wrote of the astonishing
surprise the Spaniards experienced upon reaching Cuzco. As
eyewitnesses to the extravagant and meticulously constructed
city of Cuzco, the conquistadors were dumbfounded to find such
a testimony of superior metallurgy and finely tuned architecture.
Temples, edifices, paved roads, and elaborate gardens all
shimmered with gold.
By Ciezo de Leon's own observation the extreme riches and
expert stone work of the Inca were beyond belief: "In one of (the)
houses, which was the richest, there was the figure of the sun,
religion, and language rapidly replaced Inca life and only a few
traces of Inca ways remain in the native culture as it exists
today.
What remains of the Inca legacy is limited, as the conquistadors
plundered what they could of Inca treasures and in so doing,
dismantled the many structures painstakingly built by Inca
craftsmen to house the precious metals. Remarkably, a last
bastion of the Inca Empire remained unknown to the Spanish
conquerors and was not found until explorer Hiram Bingham
discovered it in 1911.
He had found Machu Picchu a citadel atop a mountainous jungle
along the Urubamba River in Peru. Grand steps and terraces with
fountains, lodgings, and shrines flank the jungle-clad pinnacle
peaks surrounding the site. It was a place of worship to the sun
god, the greatest deity in the Inca pantheon.
The Nazca plain is virtually unique for its ability to preserve the
markings upon it, due to the combination of the climate (one of
the driest on Earth, with only twenty minutes of rainfall per year)
and the flat, stony ground which minimizes the effect of the wind
at ground level. With no dust or sand to cover the plain and little
rain or wind to erode it, lines drawn here tend to stay drawn.
These factors, combined with the existence of lighter-colored
subsoil beneath the desert crust, provide a vast writing pad that
is ideally suited to the artist who wants to leave his mark for
eternity.
The pebbles which cover the surface of the desert contain
ferrous oxide. The exposure of centuries has given them a dark
patina. When the gravel is removed, they contrast with the color
underneath. In this way the lines were drawn as furrows of a
lighter color, even though in some cases they became prints. In
other cases, the stones defining the lines and drawings form
small lateral humps of different sizes. Some drawings, especially
the early ones, were made by removing the stones and gravel
from their contours and in this way the figures stood out in high
relief.
The concentration and juxtaposition of the lines and drawings
leave no doubt that they required intensive long-term labor as is
demonstrated by the stylistic continuity of the designs, which
clearly correspond to the different stages of cultural changes.
Ancient Astronaut?
Spiral
Trapezoid
Whale
Spider
Flower
Maps
Depictions
The stones depict a wide variety of scenes: dinosaurs attacking
or helping humans, advanced technology, advanced medical
operations, maps, and sexual depictions.
Medical Procedures
Cesarean Section
Surgery
Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu (Quechua: Machu Picchu, "Old mountain") is a preColumbian Inca site located 2,400 meters (7,875 ft) above sea
level. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba
Valley in Peru, which is 80 km (50 mi) northwest of Cusco. Often
referred to as "The Lost City of the Incas", Machu Picchu is
probably the most familiar symbol of the Inca Empire.
The Incas started building the estate around AD 1400 but it was
abandoned as an official site for the Inca rulers a century later at
the time of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Although
known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being
brought to international attention in 1911 by the American
historian Hiram Bingham. Since then, Machu Picchu has become
an important tourist attraction.
History
Machu Picchu was constructed around 1460, at the height of the
Inca Empire. It was abandoned less than 100 years later. It is
likely that most of its inhabitants were wiped out by smallpox
before the Spanish conquistadores arrived. Hiram Bingham, the
credited discoverer of the site, along with several others,
originally hypothesized that the citadel was the traditional
birthplace of the Inca people or the spiritual center of the
"Virgins of the Suns".
The Citadel
Architecture
Intihuatana Stone
El Dorado Legend
The lust for gold spans all eras, races, and nationalities. To
possess any amount of gold seems to ignite an insatiable desire
to obtain more.
Through the centuries, this passion gave rise to the enduring tale
of a city of gold. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans
believed that somewhere in the New World there was a place of
immense wealth known as El Dorado. Their searches for this
treasure wasted countless lives, drove at least one man to
suicide, and put another man under the executioner's ax.
"El Dorado shifted geographical locations until finally it simply
meant a source of untold riches somewhere in the Americas,"
says Jim Griffith, a folklorist in Tucson, Arizona.
But this place of immeasurable riches hasn't been found.
The origins of El Dorado lie deep in South America. And like all
enduring legends, the tale of El Dorado contains some scraps of
truth. When Spanish explorers reached South America in the
early 16th century, they heard stories about a tribe of natives
high in the Andes Mountains in what is now Colombia. When a