Voices from Vilcabamba: Accounts Chronicling the Fall of the Inca Empire

Ruling over western South America for nearly 100 years, the Inca Empire was one of many global cultures that practiced human sacrifice, though few other rituals of human sacrifice are as captivating as the Inca child sacrifice of capacocha. Capacocha children were chosen to be representatives of the Inca people in the afterlife. As such, they were afforded an elevated position in society before their death. Following their selection, children would undergo a year-long pilgrimage terminating at a mountain top shrine where they would be killed. As a result of the low temperature and oxygen levels present at such a high elevation, the bodies of capacocha children were protected against decomposition, creating some of the best-preserved natural mummies in the world. These mummies have been the subject of numerous bioarchaeological analyses to determine their age, sex, geographic origin, pathological conditions, diet, and cause of death. Beyond these, however, the mummies present a unique opportunity to study how the capacocha ritual process — including the sudden ascension in status — manifested itself on the children's bodies. This paper aims to review the bioarchaeological data garnered from the mummies in order to reconstruct the experience of a child chosen for capacocha. Results suggest higher variability between children selected for capacocha than was originally outlined by Spanish chroniclers.

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Anticipating Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the state of nature in the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” by Madame de Graffigny (1747)

Bulletin of the Kostroma state University ◽

10.34216/1998-0817-2021-27-3-155-160 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 155-160

Author(s):

Artem D. Morozov

Keyword(s):

Laws Of Nature ◽

The State ◽

General Interest ◽

The Novel ◽

Main Character ◽

State Of Nature ◽

Inca Empire ◽

Noble Savage ◽

Moral Qualities ◽

Intellectual Influence

The article deals with the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” (Lettres d'une Péruvienne, 1747) by Madame de Graffigny, which anticipates many ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, including the notion of state of nature. The main character, a young Peruvian woman, who was taken away to France, embodies the concept of the ‟noble savage”. Unlike civilised Europeans she has high moral qualities, critically evaluates the institutions and customs of her time, and she aspires to the state of nature, though knowledge about this world did not make her happy. Madame de Graffigny uses the Peruvian theme according to the general interest in the age of Enlightenment in the Inca Empire, which was considered as idyllic society, organised under the laws of nature. She tries, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to display merits of savages and demerits of civilised Europeans. The intellectual influence of Madame de Graffigny and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on each other is confirmed by their personal contacts. As a result, we claim that the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” was influenced by advanced philosophical ideas of the mid-18thcentury – this text stands at the origins of the concept of the ‟state of nature”, which eventually became one of the main terms of Rousseauism.

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Inca Transformations of the Chachapoya Region

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190219352.013.44 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Inge Schjellerup

Keyword(s):

Socioeconomic Impact ◽

Inca Empire ◽

Lines Of Evidence

The goal of this chapter is to reconstruct the socioeconomic impact that Inca rule had on the Chachapoya and the geographic landscape they inhabited. By using different lines of evidence, including archaeology and ethnohistory, supplemented with botanic and bioarchaeological data, this chapter explores the complex relations that the Inca established with the rebellious Chachapoya. Located at the crossroads between the western Andes and the eastern lowlands in northeastern Peru, this region provided unique resources to the Inca Empire. This chapter also offers an overview of the Inca imperial installations, and the importance of the Inca road in integrating this distant territory.

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Cultivating Empire

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190219352.013.22 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Steve Kosiba

Keyword(s):

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Agricultural Intensification ◽

Farming Practices ◽

Traditional Farming ◽

Sustainable Practices ◽

Inca Empire

The Inca Empire extended across myriad Andean environments where indigenous peoples had previously developed diverse, locally sustainable practices of agricultural intensification and land modification. Inca expansion disrupted these indigenous landscapes by introducing new laborers, tribute obligations, and land divisions. Many Inca agricultural facilities, such as state farms and estates, were primarily designed to satisfy the demands of the imperial nobility and military, and introduced social contradictions between state officials and commoners that reshaped Andean landscapes. Some subject populations withstood or even resisted Inca domination by continuing traditional farming practices despite the development and implementation of state agrarian infrastructure.

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Inca Imperial Strategies and Installations in Central Bolivia

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190219352.013.17 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

János Gyarmati ◽

Carola Condarco

Keyword(s):

Fifteenth Century ◽

Large Scale ◽

Raw Material ◽

Mountain Regions ◽

Archaeological Evidence ◽

Radiocarbon Dates ◽

Inca Empire ◽

Agricultural Potential ◽

Scale Population ◽

The Creation

The local ethnohistoric sources and the archaeological evidence, as well as the radiocarbon dates, indicate that the Inca Empire conquered the mighty polities of Central Bolivia around the mid-fifteenth century, and then created a well-structured imperial infrastructure. The rationale behind the creation of this infrastructure can be sought in the region’s agricultural potential and raw material deposits. In order to fully exploit these resources, the Inca performed a large-scale population resettlement, principally of groups from the altiplano and the mountain regions to the eastern valleys. The goods produced in these agricultural and craft centers ensured the defense of the empire’s eastern frontiers, and contributed to the provisioning of its heartland.

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The Coca Leaf in Bolivian History

10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.989 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Susan Brewer-Osorio

Keyword(s):

Social History ◽

The Political ◽

Early 20Th Century ◽

Inca Empire ◽

History Of ◽

Potent Drug ◽

Formed Part ◽

Political Economic ◽

Peasant Farmers ◽

Leaf P

Coca is deeply interwoven into the political, economic, and social history of Bolivia from the Inca Empire to the 21st-century rise of President Evo Morales Ayma. As such, generations of Bolivians, from powerful hacendados to peasant farmers, have resisted efforts to destroy the coca leaf. Coca is a mild herbal stimulant cultivated and consumed by indigenous Andeans for centuries, and the primary material for making the potent drug cocaine. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Spanish colonizers promoted coca production on large haciendas to supply mining towns, giving rise to a powerful class of coca hacendados that formed part of Bolivia’s ruling oligarchy after independence. In the early 20th century, the coca hacendados shielded coca from international drug control. Following the 1952 Revolution, agrarian unions replaced hacendados as guardians of the coca leaf. The unions formed a powerful social movement led by Evo Morales Ayma, an indigenous leader and coca farmer, against US-led efforts to forcibly eradicate coca. During the 1990s, Morales and his allies created a political party called the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). In late 2005, Morales was elected president of Bolivia and his new government deployed state power to protect the coca leaf.

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