The Inca Empire covered most of
coastal strip or shelf of western South America, from southern Colombia to
central Chile, a north-south distance of abut 3,200 miles
The Inca are known to have begun around 1400 AD, though they claim through their myths and legends to have entered the Cuzco Valley before that time with the supposed arrival under Manco Capac, from paqarina or the caves in the village of Paqari-tampu, about 15 miles south of Cuzco, just after 1200 AD, who became the first, or Sapa Inca. However, there is no way of knowing they existed in any important manner prior to the 1400s.
In fact, in 1549 and again in the 1570s, systematic efforts were made by the Spanish to investigate the Andean past. Some of the interviewers were excellent ethnographers, such as Cieza de León, Garcilaso de la Vega, and Felipe Guáman Poma de Ayala (Wamán Puma), the latter two born in Peru, who all noted discrepancies between separate oral traditions and contradictions from one set of claims to another. As an example, even as late (or recent) as the fall of the Inca, within two years, two quite different versions of what happened at Cajamarca, where the Inca ruler Atahuallpa was captured and killed, were already in print in Europe—one was the official version by the Pizarro brothers, while the other criticized their actions. At a time when printing was still a rare skill and censorship was severe, such ample coverage of the invasion is notable.
As for the Inca past, initially, they were but a small collection of unimportant ayllus or small groups of families in the southern highlands of Peru, each ayllus headed by a kuraka, or principal governor. Their basic unit of Inca society was the village, or community, in which the residents thought of each other as family or at least distantly related. Marriage was within the neighborhood. Villages, as well as towns with two or more neighborhood units, were grouped into provinces, with one of the Kurakas, or family head, in charge.
These were pastoral people and agriculturalists, plowing with chakitajllas (foot plows), planting and harvesting as well as attending flocks—most specifically the llama and alpaca, which they domesticated from wild vicuña and guanaco herds. They had an advanced knowledge of textiles, spinning alpaca and sheep fibers into yarn using a pushka for weaving, which rivaled that of Europe.
They also knew the science of metallurgy, which was more advanced in Peru than anywhere else in the Americas. In fact, deep mining, as well as smelting to remove metal from raw ore was known and practiced. They combined copper and tin to make bronze far sooner than anywhere else in the Americas, and also cast, soldered and riveted metals.
Pedro de Cieza de León, a young Spanish
conquistador and later chronicler of Peru; his history, the Crónicas del Perú, was
written in four parts, but only the first was published during his lifetime;
the remaining sections were not published until the 19th and 20th centuries
Taking advantage of the roads, buildings, cities and complexes built by preceding generations long before them, the Inca moved swiftly from conquest to conquest before peoples could united to defend against them. In less than a century, during the 1400s, they built one of the largest, most tightly controlled empires the world has ever known.
Later, using the same roads to move their small mounted cavalry forces, the Spanish conquerors captured the Inca emperor in 1532 and began to break up the empire that, at the time, covered 3,200 miles north to south and from the Pacific coast to the jungles east of the Andes. Neither the Inca victories nor the Spanish conquest could have occurred had not the numerous roads through the coastal shelf and Andean ranges existed. The Inca took full advantage of those paved pathways to quickly move their armies into far off places that initiated their early victories—a fact that so intimidated smaller tribes, cultures and states into quick submission.
In the Andes there are two overwhelming geographic realities: the Pacific coastal desert stretching for thousands of miles and the high Andes rising parallel to the coast. These contrasting regions—utter desert on the coast and high, looming mountains to the east (where the bulk of the pre-Columbian population lived above 10,000 feet). It should be noted that these various groups could, and at several times in Andean history did, coalesce into a single political entity. Thus, it is possible to speak of a single Andean civilization, even if at times, early and late, political integration was sometimes lacking.
Since these three main groups, more especially the Maya and pre-Inca civilizations, were so advanced in their engineering accomplishments, as well as establishing advanced metallurgy and textiles beginning in Andean Peru and then eventually advancing northward, were obviously advanced societies from the beginning without the normal stages of development found in European archaeology, it must be understood that these advanced societies came from elsewhere and had long standing development behind them. The problem arises when archaeologists, unaware or disbelieving these groups originated via ships that came from the Middle East into Andean Peru and then migrated northward over time, claim each of these areas, specifically Meso-, Central, and South America have cultural beginnings far back in time, most before Noah’s Flood.
Because diffusion is well accepted by anthropology and archaeology, which claims that every advanced society found or uncovered, had to have had an earlier beginning. So they more-or-less make up that beginning as they believe it would have taken place, which stems from the conceptualized school of thought developed by Leo Frobenius a German ethnologist and archaeologist, who claimed that to understand the nature of culture in terms of the origin of culture traits and their spread from one society to another was through migrationism, culture circles, and hyperdiffusionism (Leo Viktor Frobenius, “The West African Culture Area,” Dr. August Heinrich Petermann’s Geographical Communications, vol.44, 1898, pp193-204, 265-271).
Yellow area: the coastal
desert running the full length of Peru; Brown area: the Andes mountains,
running parallel with the coastal desert; Green area: the Amazon forest and
jungle area
The most commonly understood linear development is found in the overall history of Europe, from primitive man living in caves to the development of building huts or homes, clustering in cities, development of technology (textile, pottery, metallurgy, etc.), commencing trade, ever expanding capabilities and knowledge.
According to Cipolla, the “European Miracle” or the adoption of technological innovation in medieval Europe was the result of this linear development or diffusion (Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial revolution: European Society and Economy 1000–1700, W.W. Norton and Co., New York (1980)
So the question arises, where did the Maya, Aztec and Inca originate? From wench did their first ancestors come? While scientists on the matter discount ship travel in the BC era as a cause of the Western Hemisphere being peopled, we find in the Book of Mormon the history of the Jaredites (2100 BC), the Lehites (600 BC), and the Mulekites (590 BC) all coming to the Western Hemisphere, to a land they called the Land of Promise, by barges or ships. The Jaredites settled in the extreme north of this land, with the Lehites (Nephites and Lamanites) settling in the south and the Mulekites a little north of that.
(See the next post, “Those Who Went North in Hagoth’s Ships – Part IV,” regarding the people who preceded the Maya, Aztec and Inca, and who built that vast advanced cities and pyramids that still stand in Meso-, Central, and South America, and more importantly, how those civilizations began and from wench they came)
No comments:
Post a Comment