Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

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In 2013 archaeologists in Peru sensationally unearthed a Wari royal tomb with treasures and mummified women from about 1,200 years ago.The archaeologists spent months secretly digging through the burial chambers amid fears that grave robbers would find out and loot the site. Many mummified bodies were found sitting upright - indicating royalty.

 

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More than 60 skeletons were inside the tomb, including three Wari queens buried with gold and silver jewellery...

 

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...-and brilliantly-painted ceramics.

 

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Six of the skeletons are believed to be human sacrifices.

 

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Between Caral and the Inca lay perhaps 4500 years of more or less continuous civilization.

 

Excavations in Marcavalle, 4 km south of Cuzco, show that the Cuzco valley had been inhabited uninterruptedly by an agricultural and pastoral society since 1400 BC.According to the standard history of the Incas, as put forward, for example, by Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of a conquistador and an Inca princess, the Inca people arrived in the Cuzco area in the 12th century AD, and had been ruled over by 13 Incas up to and including Atahualpa. But this version may refer only to last dynasty of rulers. According to Blas Valera, the son of a conquistador and a female native, who drew on information from Peruvian priests and the descendants of the amautas (sages), there had been 101 rulers, which would take us back to around 1220 BC.

 

 

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As population among the hundred or so clans that inhabited the valleys of the Andes grew, wars were fought over firewood. Deforestation was widespread. All the valleys were at war and had been since the time of the Wari 800 years before.

 

The Inca empire sprang fully formed out of anarchy. Surrounded by enemies, they surged out from the valley of Cusco in 1438 and within 90 years had united disparate peoples in an empire of 7 million people - larger than the Roman Empire at it's height.

 

The Incas used a variety of methods, from conquest to peaceful assimilation, to incorporate a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges, including large parts of modern Ecuador, Peru, western and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, north and north-central Chile, and southern Colombia into a state comparable to the historical empires of the Old World.

 

The Inca did not call themselves the Inca; instead, they were the Tawantin Suyu, which means: “the four united regions.”

 

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Yet the driving force behind this military conquest was not the annexation of land or the exploitation of physical resources but Astronomy.

 

They believed that the end of all things was foretold by the cycles of the heavens. The signs were inescapable to any who could read them, for they were determined by the precession of the Sun. When the dawn sun no longer rose where the milky way crosses the horizon its rays could no longer throw a visible bridge down to the earth, so the bridge was broken.Which meant the connection to the ancestors would be destroyed. The last time this had happened was in 650 AD and that had coincided with 800 years of civil war.

 

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In order to change the predestined future, they would have to alter the heavens. And the Earth was a mirror to Heaven. To them the logic was irrefutable.

 

Wall mural, Cusco, Andes Mts. Cusco was the capital city of the Inca Empire, and was known to them as Tahuantinsuyo, the place where the four corners of the world joined together.

 

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The Inca Empire was the last sovereign political entity that emerged from the Andean civilizations before conquest by the Spaniards. In 1532 a Spanish expeditionary force of 175 hardened adventurers, under the command of Francisco Pizarro, ascended the Andean massif in search of a fabled Empire of Gold. Unknown to them as they approached two great Inca armies were engaged in the climactic battle of a great civil war of succession. When, on November 15, the Spanish force reached the ridgeline overlooking the valley of Cajamarca the victorious Inca king Atahuallpa was completing the third day of a fast of thanksgiving for his victory. What the Spanish saw was an encamped army of 40,000 men. That night the Spanish made out their wills and said confession. Yet on the morrow, given the advantage of surprise and horses, they would engage this army, capture the Inca and kill or wound 10,000 men.

 

Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru. John Everett Millais (1846)

 

The Victoria & Albert Museum has a note about the above painting: "The unusual subject of this painting is the capture of the Inca emperor Atahualpa by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in 1532. As a model for Pizarro, Millais used an actor who had recently appeared in a play of the same name. Millais was only 16 when he painted this work. It belonged to his half-brother."

 

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Perhaps the most evocative and famous Inca site is Machu Picchu.

 

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Machu Picchu was built to honor a sacred landscape. It was built atop a mountain that is almost completely encircled by the Urubamba River, which the Inca named the Vilcamayo, or Sacred River. When seen from certain locations within Machu Picchu the rising and setting of the sun, which is an Incan God,aligns neatly with religiously significant mountains during solstices and equinoxes.

 

 

Classic view of Machu Picchu from Intipunku, the sun gate.

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Often mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", most archaeologists now believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472).

 

View of Machu Picchu looking towards the sun gate. Note the stone quarry in the foreground.

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The Incas built the estate around 1450, but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham.

 

The Sun Temple at Machu Picchu shows the ability of the Incas to construct massive buildings using huge stones fit together with amazing precision.

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The sacred Intihuatana, the 'hitching post of the sun" at Machu Picchu. The Incas worshipped above all Viracocha, the omnipresent primal god, symbolized by the sun, who had to be tied to this post in order to insure his return to the sky each morning, after his absence during the night.

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Stretching from the town of Pisac in the east though to Machu Picchu in the far west, the Sacred Valley of the Incas is over 100 kilometers (63 Miles) long with with surrounding peaks at over 5000 meters (16,400 ft).

 

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The Incas saw the Sacred Valley, which is separated from Cusco by the high rolling farmland and llama pastures of the Chinchero massif, as the reflection of the Milky Way which at certain times of the year arcs high above the valley.

 

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The Valley was literally heaven on Earth.

 

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Each high or Sapa Inca ruler chose for himself an animal deity which acted to guide him throughout his life and reign, for example a llama, toad, fox or snake. Each one of these had a celestial counterpart in the heavens in the form of black cloud constellations in the Milky Way.

 

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Thus, the Inca replicated what existed in the sky, radiating out from the Milky Way, a mirror in the Sacred Valley, with the Vilcanota River being the axis. This is how they chose the location of sacred sites, called huacas.

 

The architecture was meant not only to satisfy practical requirements, but also to embody the magical nature of the animal symbols represented.

 

In order to achieve this, they took advantage of the natural formations already present, and embellished them with terraces, ceremonial platforms, astronomical observatories, canals, and fountains. The design of these sacred spaces were not meant to be seen at first glance and from all places, but were meant to be seen from pre-determined angles.

 

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At Pisac, for example, the entire mountainside facing the Vilcanota River, is a system of terraces that form the shape of a condor, over 2000 ft high and a mile wide at the base. Condors eat only carrion and so were associated with death. They carried the souls of the dead to the hereafter. Atop the mountain is a sacred temple. At the base is a necropolis.

 

The condor is only visible from vantage points established by the Inca on the opposite side of the valley, from which it's creation was presumably directed.