Relevant information about the Inca Culture in South America

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The Incas

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THE INCA EMPIRE
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

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gods could be honored in many ways, including 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

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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 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

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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 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.

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Weapons, armor & warfare- Adri
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.

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

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IMPORTANT CHARACTERS OF THE INCAN HISTORY
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.