Continuing from the
previous posts regarding the so-called secret written language of the early
Peruvians.
As stated in the last
post, this brings us to the second point of there being a written language, and
finding that written language in Peru. And that is why there is such a
resistance to thinking that somewhere in the Andean past there was a written
language in Peru since all the visual evidence of the accomplishments of an
early civilization accomplished so many things that rival our world’s
accomplishments of today.
It also might be
asked why the Inca, whose known existence (not their own claims of history),
was just under 100 years (beginning in 1438 to 1533, according to the Spanish
chronicles based on Quechua oral traditions), were the builders of construction
techniques unrivaled even today, roads that rivaled those of ancient Rome, irrigation canals and
terraced planting systems beyond most things in Europe, textiles and metallurgy
that were as good as Europe’s, while at the same time conquering all of Peru,
large portions of modern Ecuador, western and south central Bolivia, northwest
Argentina, north and central Chile, and a small part of southern Colombia, a territory
of 300,000 square miles, comparable to the historical empires of Eurasia, with
a central government that controlled some 12-million people and more than 100
ethnic groups, reaching its peak between 1493 and 1527 (a period of 55 to 89
years), and stretching along the continental coast for 2485 miles.
It might also be
considered how long it took to march entire armies some thousand to two
thousand miles on foot from one point of the empire to another, to move the
resettlement of conquered peoples, to carry supplies from one conquered area to
another in support of the military juggernaut, to put down possible revolts, and continually be overseeing hundreds of conquered cultures.
Since they were at
war their entire expansionist period, leaving manned military garrisons in all
lands and areas conquered and forcing the resettlement of many conquered
peoples, at the same time governing their conquered states and people from
Cuzco, one might wonder in those 55+years, how and when they could find the
time to build hundreds of unparalleled fortresses, temples, and huge cities along
with some 24,000 miles (about 3 times the diameter of the Earth) of mostly
paved roads, a hundred rope bridges spanning deep chasms (which had to be
rebuilt every two years), cutting numerous tunnels through sheer mountain rock
and steps up sheer stone mountains.
It might also be
wondered how this once tiny pastoral tribe in Cuzco that formed the small
city-state Kingdom of Cuzco (Qusqu’ or Qosqo), which was little more than a
tiny community of connected family members that were not even considered important
by their neighbors until they defeated the Chanca (Apurìmac) in 1438, and whose
domain did not extend many miles around their capital city, Cuzco, were able to
build the likes of Sacsahuaman, Ollantaytambo, Macchu Picchu, Tiahuanaku,
Llactapata, Pisac, Kuelap, etc., some of the most beautiful and technically
amazing structures on the planet.
According to Anthropologist
and Andean scholar Gordon McEwan of Wagner College on Staten Island, the “Inca
cities were as large as those of Europe, but more orderly and by all accounts
much cleaner and more pleasant places in which to live” (The Incas: New Perspectives, Norton, 2008). McEwan, has spent
twenty-six years working with archeologists in the Cuzco Valley studying the
Pikillacta and Chokepukio, who built their civilization on the cultural foundations
of the Wari, Tiwanaku, and Pukara civilizations of the Lake Titicaca regon,
covering more than a 2000 year history, dating back to 200 B.C. (about the date
Mosiah left the city of Nephi)
In attempting to push
their empire further north, east and south, the Inca were pushed back by stronger
tribes, including the Shuar, an indigenous people of Ecuador and Peru and
members of the Jivaroan, called the jívaros or jíbaros (meaning
“savage”) by the Spanish. These peoples were Amazonian tribes living at the
headwaters of the Marañò River—an area between the Andes Occidental Cordillera
and the tropical rainforest and savannas. It was the Muraiya Shuar that put up a strong resistance to the Inca (who they
called inkis) penetration along the
eastern foothills, aided by the Achu
Shuar from the lowlands. Later, these Shuar, who became famous for their
elaborate shrinking of heads of defeated foes, drove the Spanish out of
their lands in 1599.
Upon ascending to the
throne in 1471, Topa Inca Yupanqui pushed the southern border of the empire to
the Maule River in modern-day Chile, defeating the Diaguitas and Promaucae
(Picunches) and to the Quillota in Aconcagua Valley to Mapuche territory and
instituted a tribute system in which each province provided women to serve as
temple maidens or brides for celebrated soldiers. His successor, Huayna Capac,
embarked on successful northern campaigns that carried to the Ancasmayo River,
the current boundary between Ecuador and Colombia. However, both in the north
and the south, as the had in the east, the Inca juggernaut met extremely strong
resistance that stopped their expansion in its tracks.
While the Inca would
not have had time during these few, short years to accomplish the military
expansion they did plus build all that is foolishly credited to them,
it is obvious that someone before them actually built the buildings and the roads and developed the Andean culture whose ruins we see everywhere today. And reason alone tells us that they
certainly would have had some type of written language to have designed and
built the magnificent edifices they did that rival the ability in many ways of the construction experts of today.
Every modern engineer and builder who has weighed
in on the subject agrees with this single point—a written language would have
been absolutely necessary to have built Sacsahuaman, Cuzco, and other such
edifices. While the Quipu is a marvelous recording instrument the Inca used to
keep track of their vast empire, supplies, taxes, tributes, populations, etc.,
it was not a design tool, which, as any engineer will tell you, would have been
an absolute necessity to have designed and built the walls we seen in and
Cuzco, and all the Peruvian constructions throughout the land, since they were so well planned and thought out before
being constructed.
As an example,
according to one engineer “At Machu Picchu, the whole system is a marvel—not just the water system or the
most beautiful wall—but how everything fits together, ranging from the
foundations, which would be geo-technical engineering, to site layout, which would
be city planning, to trails that deliver people from one location to another
without interfering with someone's privacy, to the huge plaza which provided
the space for celebrations. When you look at Machu Picchu as a whole, complete with the
temples and the solar observatories, you realize that it is a site that's well
designed, well balanced, and somewhat of an engineering marvel” (Ken Write, a
hydrologist and civil engineer has studied the waterworks and other engineering
achievements of Machu Picchu since 1994, on National Graphic Television via
NOVA on line, 2009).
Still the quipus were
quite versatile, using over one hundred individual strings of different colors,
which were held together by one main string. Where the knots were found, told
the reader who was called a quipucamayoc (whose job was no easy task) what was
being said. The knotted system was very sophisticated, and it involved the
reading of hundreds of colors. Eyewitnesses claim that some of the knots stood
for words, and that some quipus actually contained poetry. Unfortunately, but
typical of the Spanish Inquisition invaders and their religious prejudices and
superstitions who viewed the quipo as dangerous heresy, most of teh stringed marvels were
destroyed by the Catholic clergy who believed that they were the product of the
devil.
Today, there are only about 300 original quipus remaining out of many
thousands.
And, today, no one
even has the remotest idea what the tocapu means, nor what happened to the
written script writing of the early Peruvian, though Montesinos left us his record of it.
(See the next post in
this series, “Quellqa: Ancient Written Language of Peru – Part VI,” on the
demise and disappearance of the Peruvian and Inca script writing)
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