Inca Creation Myths

Inca Creation Myths

The Incan account of creation is known based on what was recorded by priests. According to these accounts, in the most ancient of times the earth was covered in darkness.

Then, out of a Lake Titicaca, the god Con Tiqui Viracocha emerged, bringing some human beings with him. Then Con Tiqui created the sun (Inti), the moon and the stars to light the world. It is from Inti that the Sapa Inca is descended. Out of great rocks Con Tiqui fashioned more human beings, including women who were already pregnant.

This legend also incorporates the golden staff, which is thought to have been given to Manco Capac by his father. Accounts vary, but according to some versions of the legend, the young Manco jealously betrayed his older brothers, killed them, and became the sole ruler of Cuzco.

Inca Civilization

Inca can be spelled Inka and was known as Tiwantinsuya.

As ancient civilizations sprang up across the planet thousands of years ago, so too the Inca civilization evolved. As with all ancient civilizations, its exact origins are unknown. Their historic record, as with all other tribes evolving on the planet at that time, would be recorded through oral tradition, stone, pottery, gold and silver jewelry, and woven in the tapestry of the people.

The Inca of Peru have long held a mystical fascination for people of the western world. Four hundred years ago the fabulous wealth in gold and silver possessed by these people was discovered, then systematically pillaged and plundered by Spanish conquistadors. The booty they carried home altered the whole European economic system. And in their wake, they left a highly developed civilization in tatters. That a single government could control many diverse tribes, many of which were secreted in the most obscure of mountain hideaways, was simply remarkable.

The Inca Empire was quite short-lived. It lasted just shy of 100 years, from ca.1438 AD, when the Inca ruler Pachacuti and his army began conquering lands surrounding the Inca heartland of Cuzco, until the coming of the Spaniards in 1532.

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.The Temple of the Sun - Coricancha

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

Sacsayhuaman (satisfied falcon) - (pronounced like sexy woman) - is an Incan sacred and strategic site above the city, serves as the head of the puma. On the peak of a hill overlooking the city of Cusco lies the ancient fortress of Sacsayhuaman. Once the domain of Inca warriors, nobles and engineers it now stands in ruins but many visitors explore its maze of intricately constructed walls, stairways and structures. The carved stone walls fit so perfectly that no blade of grass or steel can slide between them. There is no mortar. They often join in complex and irregular surfaces that would appear to be a nightmare for the stonemason.

Near Sacsayhuaman is Qenko (Zigzag), a carved limestone formation that served as a sacrificial site or temple.

A huge mysterious door-like structure has been discovered in the Hayu Marca mountain region of Southern Peru. Hayu Marca, 35 kilometers from the city of Puno has long been revered by local Indians as the City of the Gods. It has never been fully explored because of the rugged mountain terrain.

A gateway to the lands of the gods - In that legend it was said that in times long past, great heroes had gone to join their gods and passed through the gate for a glorious new life of immortality, and on rare occasions those men returned for a short time with their gods to inspect all the lands in the kingdom through the gate.

GeographyThe Incans gave their empire the name, 'Land of the Four Quarters'.

It stretched north to south some 2,500 miles along the high mountainous Andean range from Colombia to Chile and reached west to east from the dry coastal desert called Atacama to the steamy Amazonian rain forest.

The Incas ruled the Andean Cordillera, second in height and harshness to the Himalayas. Daily life was spent at altitudes up to 15,000 feet and ritual life extended up to 22,057 feet to Llullaillaco in Chile, the highest Inca sacrificial site known today. Mountain roads and sacrificial platforms were built, which means a great amount of time was spent hauling loads of soil, rocks, and grass up to these inhospitable heights. Even with our advanced mountaineering clothing and equipment of today, it is hard for us to acclimatize and cope with the cold and dehydration experienced at the high altitudes frequented by the Inca. This ability of the sandal-clad Inca to thrive at extremely high elevations continues to perplex scientists today.

At the height of its existence the Inca Empire was the largest nation on Earth and remains the largest native state to have existed in the western hemisphere. The wealth and sophistication of the legendary Inca people lured many anthropologists and archaeologists to the Andean nations in a quest to understand the Inca's advanced ways and what led to their ultimate demise.

Roads

The Incas had an incredible system of roads. One road ran almost the entire length of the South American Pacific coast! Since the Incas lived in the Andes Mountains, the roads took great engineering and architectural skill to build. On the coast, the roads were not surfaced and were marked only by tree trunks 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.

PopulationAt its peak, Incan society had more than six million people.

Language - ReligionThe 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.

In the Andean mythology it was considered that Incas were descendants of the Sun, therefore, they had to worship it annually with a sumptuous celebration. More over, the festivity was carried out by the end of the potato and maize harvest in order to thank the Sun for the abundant crops or otherwise in order to ask for better crops during the next season.

During this most important religious ceremony in Incan times, the High Priest had to perform the llama sacrifice offering a completely black or white llama. With a sharp ceremonial golden knife called "Tumi" he had to open the animal's chest and with his hands pulled out its throbbing heart, lungs and viscera, so that observing those elements he could foretell the future. Later, the animal and its parts were completely incinerated.

EconomyEveryone worked except for the very young and the very old. Children worked by scaring away animals from the crops and helping in the home.

About 2/3 of a farmer's goods would be shared by a tax system, and the rest were for keeps. Some of the goods would be distributed to others, goods would be received in return, and the rest was stored in government storehouses or sacrificed to the gods.

The inhabitants of the Andean region developed more than half the agricultural products that the world eats today. Among these are more than 20 varieties of corn; 240 varieties of potato.

Gold - Money

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.

CrimeBecause 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.

CommunicationThe main form of communication between cities was the chasqui. The chasqui were young men who relayed messages.

Fall of the Inca Civilization

The demise of the Incan civilization, at the hands of the Spanish Conquistadors, occurred in the 1500's, after years of fighting left the already disarticulate anthology in more disarray.

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, very large and made of gold, very ingeniously worked, and enriched with many precious stones. They had also a garden, the clods of which were made of pieces of fine gold; and it was artificially sown with golden maize, the stalks, as well as the leaves and cobs, being of that metal.

Besides all this, they had more than twenty golden (llamas) with their lambs, and the shepherds with their slings and crooks to watch them, all made of the same metal. There was a great quantity of jars of gold and silver, set with emeralds; vases, pots, and all sorts of utensils, all of fine gold - it seems to me that I have said enough to show what a grand place it was; so I shall not treat further of the silver work of the beads, of the plumes of gold and other things, which, if I wrote down, I should not be believed."

Much of the conquest was accomplished without battles or warfare as the initial contact Europeans made in the New World resulted in rampant disease. Old World infectious disease left its devastating mark on New World Indian cultures. In particular, smallpox spread quickly through Panama, eradicating entire populations. Once the disease crossed into the Andes its southward spread caused the single most devastating loss of life in the Americas. Lacking immunity, the New World peoples, including the Inca, were reduced by two-thirds.

Those myths that did survive may have been distorted or diluted by those Incans who chose to adapt their stories for the Spanish Christian ears. No conclusion can be made about this mysterious myth other than that is an intriguing and complicated culture, whose form of communication, albeit surreptitious, is innately beautiful.

With the aid of disease and the success of his initial deceit of Atahualpa, Pizarro acquired vast amounts of Inca gold which brought him great fortune in Spain. Reinforcements for his troops came quickly and his conquest of a people soon moved into consolidation of an empire and its wealth. Spanish culture, 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.

Manco Capac was supposedly crowned (1534) emperor by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro but was tolerated only as a puppet. He escaped, and in 1536 laid siege to Cuzco, the Inca capital. The defense was commanded by Hernando Pizarro. Although the Incans had by now learned some European tactics of war they were outclassed by technical advantages. Manco Capac could not prevent dismemberment of his army at harvest time. The heroic siege, which virtually destroyed the city, was abandoned after ten months, but during the ensuing eight years the Inca's name became a terror throughout Peru. Manco Capac fought a bloody guerrilla war against soldiers and settlers. He was treacherously murdered in 1544, after giving refuge to the defeated supporters of Diego de Almagro, who had rebelled against Pizarro.

Nazca Lines and Cahuachi Culture

Stretching across the Nazca plains like a giant map or blueprint left by ancient astronauts, lie the famous Nazca Lines of Peru.

The Nazca Lines are an engima. No one has proof who built them or why. Since their discovery, the Nazca Lines have inspired fantastic explanations from ancient gods, a landing strip for returning aliens, a celestial calendar created by the ancient Nazca civilization -- putting the creation of the lines between 200 BC and 600 AD, used for rituals probably related to astronomy, to confirm the clans who made up the population and to determine through ritual their economic functions held up by reciprocity and redistribution, or a map of underground water supplies.

Nazca PlainThe 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.

Nazca Lines - Enigmatic DesignsThere appear to be various designs consisting of figures of animals, flowers and plants, objects, and anthropomorphic figures of colossal proportions made with well-defined lines. An example of this is the drawing of a weird being with two enormous hands, one normal and the other with only four fingers.

The anthropomorphic figures are relatively few and are situated on the slopes. The most well-known being is The Astronaut at 32m length discovered by Eduardo Herran in 1982.

Ancient Astronaut?

Spiral

Trapezoid

The Monkey (Biogenetic Experiments)

Dog? Four-legged Animals

Wing (Ascension of Consciousness)

Whale

Spider

Flower

Maps

The Ica Stones of Peru

The Ica Stones are a collection of andesine stones alleged to contain ancient depictions of dinosaurs and advanced technology. They were reportedly discovered in a cave near Ica, Peru not far from the Nazca Lines.

The Ica stones were popularized by Javier Cabrera, a Peruvian doctor who received an engraved stone as a birthday gift in 1961. Cabrera identified the engraving on the stone as a stylized depiction of an "extinct fish" that lived millions of years before.

Over 15,000 engraved stones

Description of the StonesThe stones come in all sizes. There are small ones that can fit in the palm of you hand while others are more massive. All of the stones have images that have been carved with continuous lines etched into the rock surface. The etching reveals a lighter color than the original dark varnish of age, yet the etched grooves also bear traces of this varnish, indicating that the carving was done in ancient times.

DepictionsThe stones depict a wide variety of scenes: dinosaurs attacking or helping humans, advanced technology, advanced medical operations, maps, and sexual depictions.

Ancient Astronomers and Astronauts

Cabrera attempted to resolve the many scenes into a narrative, and from there to decipher a history of the civilization he believed made the stones. He believed that the ancient technology belonged to what he called Gliptolithic Man, an extraterrestrial race which supposedly arrived sufficiently long ago to coexist with the dinosaurs and then genetically engineered modern man.

The Coiling Snake (DNA) and the Tree of Life

Cup, vessel, womb, or Holy Grail that receives

The sperm (seeds) for creation Stones depicting the continents of ancient Earthpointing to the existence of unknown continents

that today remain a part of our collective mythologies.

Dinosaurs and Other Animals

Riding a horse long before they were

brought to the American Continent

Medical Procedures

Cesarean Section

Heart Surgery: Blood vessels are shown being reconnected

via re-absorption tubes utilizing the natural regeneration of cells.

Surgery

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu (Quechua: Machu Picchu, "Old mountain") is a pre-Columbian 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.

HistoryMachu 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

Another theory maintains that Machu Picchu was Inca "llacta": a settlement built to control the economy of the conquered regions. It may also have been built as a prison for a select few who had committed heinous crimes against Inca society. Research conducted by scholars, such as John Rowe and Richard Burger, has convinced most archaeologists that rather than a defensive retreat, Machu Picchu was an estate of the Inca emperor, Pachacuti.

Although the citadel is located only about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Cusco, the Inca capital, it was never found and consequently not plundered and destroyed by the Spanish, as was the case with many other Inca sites. Over the centuries, the surrounding jungle grew over the site, and few knew of its existence.

The city sits in a saddle between two mountains, with a commanding view down two valleys and a nearly impassable mountain at its back. It has a water supply from springs that cannot easily be blocked, and enough land to grow food for about four times as many people as actually lived there. The hillsides leading to it have been terraced, not only to provide more farmland to grow crops, but to steepen the slopes which invaders would have to ascend. There are two high-altitude routes from Machu Picchu across the mountains back to Cuzco, one through the sun gate, and the other across the Inca Bridge. Both could easily be blocked if invaders should approach along them. Regardless of its ultimate purpose, it is in a highly defendable position.

Architecture

Most of the construction in Machu Picchu uses the classic Inca architectural style of polished dry-stone walls of regular shape. The Incas were masters of this technique, called ashlar, in which blocks of stone are cut to fit together tightly without mortar. The Incas were among the best stone masons the world has seen, and many junctions in the central city are so perfect that not even a knife fits between the stones.

Temple of the Sun

Located in the first zone are the primary archaeological treasures: the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun and the Room of the Three Windows. These were dedicated to Inti, their sun god and greatest deity

Intihuatana Stone

Shamanic legends say that if you're a sensitive person and you rub your forehead against the stone you will see the spirit world. The Intihuatana stone is one of the many ritual stones in South America. They are arranged so they point directly at the sun during the winter solstice.

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 new chieftain rose to power, his rule began with a ceremony at Lake Guatavita. Accounts of the ceremony vary, but they consistently say the new ruler was covered with gold dust, and that gold and precious jewels were thrown into the lake to appease a god that lived underwater.

The Spaniards started calling this golden chief El Dorado, "the gilded one." The ceremony of the gilded man supposedly ended in the late 15th century when El Dorado and his subjects were conquered by another tribe. But the Spaniards and other Europeans had found so much gold among the natives along the continent's northern coast that they believed there had to be a place of great wealth somewhere in the interior. The Spaniards didn't find El Dorado, but they did find Lake Guatavita and tried to drain it in 1545. They lowered its level enough to find hundreds of pieces of gold along the lake's edge. But the presumed fabulous treasure in the deeper water was beyond their reach.

Raleigh's QuestEnglish courtier Sir Walter Raleigh made two trips to Guiana to search for El Dorado. During his second trip in 1617, he sent his son, Watt Raleigh, with an expedition up the Orinoco River. But Walter Raleigh, then an old man, stayed behind at a base camp on the island of Trinidad. The expedition was a disaster, and Watt Raleigh was killed in a battle with Spaniards.