Download Chapter 9

Chapter 9. South America: The Inca and Their
Predecessors
Outline
Introduction: Pre-Hispanic South America
Site: El Paraiso
Concept: The Maritime Hypothesis
Site: Chavín de Huántar
Concept: The Textiles of Paracas
Site: Moche
Concept: The Nazca Geoglyphs
Site: Sipán
Site: Tiwanaku
Site: Chan Chan
Site: Cuzco and Machu Picchu
Concept: Inca Highways
Site: Huánuco Pampa
Images and Ideas: The Organization of State Society
Objectives
• To review the distinct pathways toward the development of social inequality,
the emergence of states, and the rise of urban settlements for different
regions of Andean South America.
• To compare and contrast early Andean centers, states, and empires, including
differences in their modes of leadership and settlement plans.
• To describe quipus and discuss how they compare and contrast with early
systems of writing in other regions of the world.
• To review the rise and nature of the Inca empire and compare its differences
and similarities with the Aztec empire of Mesoamerica.
Summary
This chapter focuses on the Andean region of South America, including the coast
and highlands, from the beginning of sedentary settlement to the rise of the Inca
empire, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. The first sedentary communities
are found in western South America and date to 3500 BC, much earlier than in
Mesoamerica and 1,000 years before the first Peruvian evidence of pottery. We
begin with El Paraíso, a preceramic coastal village dating to 2000 BC that was
composed of at least eight large masonry compounds. Although there is no
consensus about the kind of sociopolitical organization at El Paraíso, planning
and large quantities of labor would have been necessary to quarry and shape the
stone blocks and to coordinate the construction of the compounds.
Soon thereafter, greater social differentiation and the first positions of leadership
become evident in the archaeological record. Between 900 and 200 BC the
Chavín style, similar to the Olmec Horizon in Mesoamerica, developed and was
shared from the edges of the Amazon to the Pacific Coast. This style is named
for the carvings found on a temple in the uplands of central Peru at Chavín de
Huántar
The end of the last century BC was marked by the rise of major centers that
became the core of states administering regional populations. Here we discuss
Moche on the north coast and refer to the fantastic geoglyphs constructed by the
Nazca in the south. We also discuss the coastal site of Sipán, where spectacular
Moche-era tombs have been excavated. Later, Tiwanaku, a giant economic and
religious center near the southern end of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, began to
incorporate larger areas outside its local region.
As with the Aztecs in the highlands of central Mexico, the end of the pre-Hispanic
era in South America was characterized by a powerful people, the Inca, whose
rulers exacted tribute from a large domain. Yet this much larger South American
empire had clearer imperial predecessors, such as the Tiwanaku polity and the
Chimú kingdom. After AD 1000, the latter, which was centered on the north coast
at Chan Chan, consolidated a large, primarily coastal domain. This political
sphere was engulfed by the expansive Inca between AD 1462 and 1470. We
examine the nature and organization of this New World empire by looking at
Cuzco, the Inca capital, the famous high mountain settlement of Machu Picchu,
and the provincial administrative center of Huánuco Pampa.
The Inca contrast with the Aztec in many ways. There was no traditional writing
system in South America, but by the time of the Inca, the quipu was used to
record and convey information. The Inca empire also was organized very
differently from the Aztec empire in Mexico. Before the arrival of the Spanish, the
Inca eventually incorporated the area from the coast to the eastern slopes of the
Andes and from the north to the south of the Andean region.
As part of this review of ancient South America, specific blocks and site sections
cover the role of nonagricultural resources in early Andean sedentism, the
importance of cloth and textiles, the geoglyphs of Nazca, and the great road
systems of the Inca empire.
The Lecture
Here again, an effective entry point into this material comes from early Spanish
texts that describe their conquest of the Inca, or one might simply describe the
great extent of the Inca domain, and then outline the importance of learning
about its predecessors and historical roots.
It is informative to compare and contrast the long-term history and sites of
ancient South America with those of Mesoamerica. Although there is a rich
scholarly literature to draw on that contrasts the organizations and economies of
the Inca and Aztec, one need not be limited to that axis of contrast. Certainly, for
example, given our current evidence the early preceramic constructions on the
Andean coast are markedly different than anything we have found for the
Mesoamerican coasts during a comparable time. Likewise, the roles of
information technologies and writing yield a basis for discussion and comparison.
The quipu is a fascinating tool for recording information, and much of the system
has recently been decoded. In his book, Signs of the Inka Khipu, Gary Urton
suggests there are 1,536 possible knotted characters representing words and
concepts. Quipus used three-dimensional notation, in contrast to twodimensional text. Inca mathematics can be seen in quipu notation, which uses a
binary system involving decimal positional notation and zero. Instead of a tangle
of knots and strings, the quipus actually involve numbers, geometrical
configurations, and logic. You might want to make a quipu to show the class
and/or pass out twine in class and have students try to record information on the
course or their own collections of CDs, clothing, and the like using the string
system. Recent references on quipus include:
Ascher, Marcia and Robert Ascher. 1997. Mathematics of the Incas : Code of the
Quipu. Dover Publications.
Quilter, Jeffrey and Gary Urton (eds). 2002. Narrative Threads : Accounting and
Recounting in Andean Khipu. University of Texas Press.
Urton, Gary. 2003. Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean
Knotted-String Records. University of Texas Press.
Marginal Thought Questions
• How might you understand the monumentality of early sites on the Pacific
Coast of northwestern South America in the context of apparently limited
reliance on domesticated resources?
•What role did cloth play in Andean society?
• In the Andean region, like many other areas of the world, preindustrial states
and empires tended to be relatively short-lived. Can you explain their fragility?
• What social and economic factors integrated the Aztec and Inca empires?
Compare and contrast.
• How does the sequence of transition to agriculture, sedentary life, and pottery
compare between Middle America and the Andean region?
• What behaviors might lie behind the phenomenon that archaeologists term the
“Chavín Horizon”? Compare to the Olmec Horizon in Mesoamerica.
• The looting of archaeological sites is a major problem in many areas of the
world. What do we lose in addition to the objects themselves?
• How did the built environment at Chan Chan compare with that of earlier
Moche? What might these differences mean in terms of past behaviors?
• What contrasts can you draw between the political structures of the Aztec and
the Inca?
• What role did alcohol consumption play in Inca social organization?
Videos
Discovering the Moche. 1976. 25 min. University of California, Extension Media
Center, Berkeley. Study of the ancient Moche of Peru from settlements, monuments,
tombs, and pots.
Inca: Secrets of The Ancestors. 1995. 51 min. An overview of various aspects
of Andean civilizations including the Nazca geoglyphs, the erotic art and
exquisite gold artifacts of the Moche, the Paracas textiles, and Machu Picchu,
mummies, and the Inca roads.
Lords of the Labyrinth. 1985. 54 min. Films, Inc. A good film on the ruins at
the site of Chan Chan on the coast of Peru and the Chimú civilization that
produced them.
Peru’s City of Ghosts. 1999. 51 min. The Nasca geoglyphs and the remains of
the civilization that produced them.
The Incas. 1980. 59 min. PBS Video. The Inca empire stretched over 2,000
miles from Ecuador to central Chile, covering more than 350,000 square miles of
the most rugged terrain of South America. Several archaeologists evaluate their
accomplishments.
The Incas Remembered. 1986. 54 min. A visit to the major sites and
accomplishments of the Incas in the Andes Mountains of South America.
Machu Picchu: Secrets of the Incan Empire. 1999. 52 min. Adventurer Hiram
Bingham travels through the mountains of Peru in search of a lost city of the
Incas.
Taypi Kala: Six Visions of Tiwanaku. 1994. 55 min. This documentary follows
five distinct groups — tourists, U.S. archaeologists, urban Bolivian university
students, a local Aymara family, and indigenous Aymara priests — who visit the
monumental site of the ancient city of Tiwanaku, Bolivia.