The Andes,Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range are the longest continental mountain range in the world,forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is 8,900 km (5,530 mi) long and 200 to 700 km wide and has an average height of about 4,000 m (13,123 ft). The Andes extend from South to North through seven South American countries.:Argentina,Chile,Bolivia,Peru,Ecuador,Colombia and western Venezuela.
Quipu are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America.
The Viceroyalty of Peru,officially known as the Kingdom of Peru,was a Spanish imperial provincial administrative district,created in 1542,that originally contained modern-day Peru and most of the Spanish Empire in South America,governed from the capital of Lima. Along with the Viceroyalty of New Spain,Peru was one of two Spanish viceroyalties in the Americas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui,also called Pachacútec,was the ninth Sapa Inca of the Chiefdom of Cusco,which he transformed into the Inca Empire. Most archaeologists now believe that the famous Inca site of Machu Picchu was built as an estate for Pachacuti.
Atahualpa,also Atawallpa (Quechua),Atabalica,Atahuallpa,Atabalipa,was the last effective Inca emperor before his capture and execution during the Spanish conquest.
Quechua people or Quichua people may refer to any of the indigenous peoples of South America who speak the Quechua languages,which originated among the Indigenous people of Peru. Although most Quechua speakers are native to Peru,there are some significant populations in Ecuador,Bolivia,Chile,Colombia,and Argentina.
Gary Urton is an American anthropologist. He was the Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian Studies at Harvard University and the chair of its anthropology department between 2012 and 2019. Urton retired from Harvard in 2020,after multiple former students accused him of sexual harassment. Despite much controversy and opposition,he was given an emeritus title after retirement. Following internal investigation,Urton was stripped of his emeritus status by Harvard in June 2021.
The term Peruvian literature not only refers to literature produced in the independent Republic of Peru,but also to literature produced in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the country's colonial period,and to oral artistic forms created by diverse ethnic groups that existed in the area during the prehispanic period,such as the Quechua,the Aymara and the Chanka South American native groups.
Johan Reinhard is an American anthropologist and archaeologist. Currently,he is a Research Professor at Future Generations University. formerly Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. He is also a senior research fellow at The Mountain Institute,a visiting professor at Catholic University,Salta,Argentina,an honorary professor of Catholic University,Arequipa,Peru.
Blas Valera (1544-1597) was a Roman Catholic priest of the Jesuit Order in Peru,a historian,and a linguist. The son of a Spaniard and an indigenous woman,he was one of the first mestizo priests in Peru. He wrote a history of Peru titled Historia Occidentalis which is mostly lost,although the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega quoted some of it in his General History of Peru. In 1583 Valera was jailed by the Jesuits. The Jesuits claimed they were punishing Valera for sexual misconduct but more likely the reason was heresy. Valera's writings claimed the Incas were the legitimate rulers of Peru,the Inca's language,Quechua,was equal to Latin as the language of religion,and the Inca religion had prepared the Andean peoples for Christianity. In 1596,still under house arrest,he traveled to Spain. He died there in 1597.
The Comentarios Reales de los Incas is a book written by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,the first published mestizo writer of colonial Andean South America. The Comentarios Reales de los Incas is considered by most to be the unquestioned masterpiece of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,born of the first generation after the Spanish conquest.
The Chanka people are a Quechua people ethnic group living in the regions of Apurímac,Ayacucho and Lamas of Peru. They were enemies of the Incas,and they were centered primarily in Andahuaylas,located in the modern-day region of Apurímac. The Chankas were divided into three groups:the Hanan Chankas,or the Upper Chankas,the Urin Chankas,or the Lower Chankas,and the Villca,or Hancohuallos. The Hanan Chankas had their center in Andahuaylas,the Urin Chankas in Uranmarca,and the Villca in Vilcas Huaman,Ayacucho.
Inca mythology is the universe of legends and collective memory of the Inca civilization,which took place in the current territories of Colombia,Ecuador,Peru,Bolivia,Chile,and Argentina,incorporating in the first instance,systematically,the territories of the central highlands of Peru to the north.
Pachamama is a goddess revered by the indigenous peoples of the Andes. In Inca mythology she is an "Earth Mother" type goddess,and a fertility goddess who presides over planting and harvesting,embodies the mountains,and causes earthquakes. She is also an ever-present and independent deity who has her own creative power to sustain life on this earth. Her shrines are hallowed rocks,or the boles of legendary trees,and her artists envision her as an adult female bearing harvests of potatoes or coca leaves. The four cosmological Quechua principles –Water,Earth,Sun,and Moon –claim Pachamama as their prime origin. Priests sacrifice offerings of llamas,cuy,and elaborate,miniature,burned garments to her. Pachamama is the mother of Inti the sun god,and Mama Killa the moon goddess. Mama Killa is said to be the wife of Inti.
The Andean civilizations were South American complex societies of many indigenous people. They stretched down the spine of the Andes for 4,000 km (2,500 mi) from southern Colombia,to Ecuador and Peru,including the deserts of coastal Peru,to north Chile and northwest Argentina. Archaeologists believe that Andean civilizations first developed on the narrow coastal plain of the Pacific Ocean. The Caral or Norte Chico civilization of coastal Peru is the oldest known civilization in the Americas,dating back to 3500 BCE. Andean civilization is one of the six "pristine" civilizations of the world,created independently and without influence by other civilizations.
Philip Ainsworth Means was an American anthropologist,historian,and author. He was best known for his study of South America,specifically of the Inca Empire. Means made five extended trips to Peru where he studied the Incas of the Cuzco area and supervised excavations. He was the director of the National Museum of Archeology in Lima,Peru,and was associated with the Smithsonian Institution and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Means published many books,including Ancient Civilization of the Andes (1931),which became the standard textbook on Incan history and culture.
María Constanza Ceruti is an Argentine anthropologist and mountaineer,who has done more than 80 field surveys,most of them as part of National Geographic teams in Andean regions of Argentina,Chile,Bolivia,Ecuador and Peru. Her most important finding are the Children of Llullaillaco,considered the best preserved mummies in the world by the Guinness World Records. She is also the first woman worldwide to specialize in high-altitude archaeology,studying Inca ceremonial centers on the summits of Andean peaks above 6000 meters. She is a pioneer in the anthropological study of sacred mountains around the world,and in the emerging field of glacial archaeology.
Coya Asarpay or Azarpay,was a princess and queen consort of the Inca Empire by marriage to her brother,the Sapa Inca Atahualpa.
Richard Lewis Burger,Ph.D.,is an archaeologist and anthropologist from the United States. He is currently a professor at Yale University and holds the positions of Charles J. MacCurdy Professor in the Anthropology Department,Chair of the Council on Archaeological Studies,and Curator in the Division of Anthropology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. He has carried out archaeological excavations in the Peruvian Andes since 1975,publishing several books and many articles on Chavin culture,a pre-Hispanic civilization that developed in the northern Andean highlands of Peru from 1000 BC to 400 BC. Burger is married to Lucy Salazar,a Peruvian archaeologist and long time collaborator on many research projects. His former doctoral student Sabine Hyland has become well-known as an Andean anthropologist.
The mathematics of the Incas was the set of numerical and geometric knowledge and instruments developed and used in the nation of the Incas before the arrival of the Spaniards. It can be mainly characterized by its usefulness in the economic field. The quipus and yupanas are proof of the importance of arithmetic in Inca state administration. This was embodied in a simple but effective arithmetic,for accounting purposes,based on the decimal numeral system;they too had a concept of zero,and mastered addition,subtraction,multiplication,and division. The mathematics of the Incas had an eminently applicative character to tasks of management,statistics,and measurement that was far from the Euclidean outline of mathematics as a deductive corpus,since it was suitable and useful for the needs of a centralized administration.
