The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts, was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The Inca civilization rose from the Peruvian highlands sometime in the early 13th century. The Spanish began the conquest of the Inca Empire in 1532 and by 1572, the last Inca state was fully conquered.
The Aymara or Aimara, people are an indigenous people in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America. Approximately 2.3 million Aymara live in northwest Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. The ancestors of the Aymara lived in the region for many centuries before becoming a subject people of the Inca Empire in the late 15th or early 16th century, and later of the Spanish in the 16th century. With the Spanish American wars of independence (1810–1825), the Aymaras became subjects of the new nations of Bolivia and Peru. After the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), Chile annexed territory with the Aymara population.
Quipu are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the central Andes Mountains of South America.
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.
The Wari were a Middle Horizon civilization that flourished in the south-central Andes and coastal area of modern-day Peru, from about 500 to 1000 AD.
Chimor was the political grouping of the Chimú culture. The culture arose about 900 CE, succeeding the Moche culture, and was later conquered by the Inca emperor Topa Inca Yupanqui around 1470, fifty years before the arrival of the Spanish in the region. Chimor was the largest kingdom in the Late Intermediate Period, encompassing 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) of coastline.
The Inca society was the society of the Inca civilization in Peru. The Inca Empire, which lasted from 1438 to 1533 A.D., represented the height of this civilization. The Inca state was known as the Kingdom of Cusco before 1438. Over the course of the empire, the rulers used conquest and peaceful assimilation to incorporate a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andes mountain ranges. The empire proved relatively short-lived however: by 1533, Atahualpa, the last Sapa Inca (emperor) of the Inca Empire, was killed on the orders of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, marking the beginning of Spanish rule. The last Inca stronghold, the Neo-Inca State in Vilcabamba, was conquered by the Spanish in 1572.
Inca agriculture was the culmination of thousands of years of farming and herding in the high-elevation Andes mountains of South America, the coastal deserts, and the rainforests of the Amazon basin. These three radically different environments were all part of the Inca Empire and required different technologies for agriculture. Inca agriculture was also characterized by the variety of crops grown, the lack of a market system and money, and the unique mechanisms by which the Incas organized their society. Andean civilization was "pristine"—one of six civilizations worldwide which were indigenous and not derivative from other civilizations. Most Andean crops and domestic animals were likewise pristine—not known to other civilizations. Potatoes and quinoa were among the many unique crops; Camelids and guinea pigs were the unique domesticated animals.
The Andean textile tradition once spanned from the Pre-Columbian to the Colonial era throughout the western coast of South America, but was mainly concentrated in what is now Peru. The arid desert conditions along the coast of Peru have allowed for the preservation of these dyed textiles, which can date to 6000 years old. Many of the surviving textile samples were from funerary bundles, however, these textiles also encompassed a variety of functions. These functions included the use of woven textiles for ceremonial clothing or cloth armor as well as knotted fibers for record-keeping. The textile arts were instrumental in political negotiations, and were used as diplomatic tools that were exchanged between groups. Textiles were also used to communicate wealth, social status, and regional affiliation with others. The cultural emphasis on the textile arts was often based on the believed spiritual and metaphysical qualities of the origins of materials used, as well as cosmological and symbolic messages within the visual appearance of the textiles. Traditionally, the thread used for textiles was spun from indigenous cotton plants, as well as alpaca and llama wool.
Metallurgy in pre-Columbian America is the extraction, purification and alloying of metals and metal crafting by Indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European contact in the late 15th century. Indigenous Americans had been using native metals from ancient times, with recent finds of gold artifacts in the Andean region dated to 2155–1936 BC, and North American copper finds being dated to approximately 5000 BC. The metal would have been found in nature without the need for smelting, and shaped into the desired form using hot and cold hammering without chemical alteration or alloying. As of 1999, "no one has found evidence that points to the use of melting, smelting and casting in prehistoric eastern North America."
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 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 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 civilizations are one of at least five civilizations in the world deemed by scholars to be "pristine." The concept of a "pristine" civilization refers to a civilization that has developed independently of external influences and is not a derivative of other civilizations.
The Tawantinsuyu or Inca Empire was a centralized bureaucracy. It drew upon the administrative forms and practices of previous Andean civilizations such as the Wari Empire and Tiwanaku, and had in common certain practices with its contemporary rivals, notably the Chimor. These institutions and practices were understood, articulated, and elaborated through Andean cosmology and thought. Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, certain aspects of these institutions and practices were continued.
A lliklla is a rectangular, handwoven shoulder cloth. It is worn by Quechua women of the Andes region in Bolivia and Peru. Traditionally it is fastened at the front using a decorated pin called tupu.
The Saraguro is a people of the Kichwa nation most of whom live in Saraguro Canton in the Loja Province of Ecuador. Although most now speak Spanish, Runashimi or Kichwa, a Quechua dialect, is also spoken and language revitalization efforts are being implemented. Likewise, the Saraguro have retained much of their land, customs and traditional dress. According to the INEC's 2010 population census, the total population of Saraguro canton is 30,183, but that total includes both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous people living in Saraguro.
Sabine Hyland is an American anthropologist and ethnohistorian working in the Andes. She is currently Professor of World Christianity at the University of St Andrews. She is best known for her work studying khipus and hybrid khipu-alphabetic texts in the Central Andes and is credited with the first potential phonetic decipherment of an element of a khipu. She has also written extensively about the interaction between Spanish missionaries and the Inca in colonial Peru, focusing on language, religion and missionary culture, as well as the history of the Chanka people.
On the Cerro Baúl mesa, in the central highlands of Peru, elite women from the Wari Empire made a drink called chicha in the years before 600 AD.
The economy of the Inca Empire, which lasted from 1438 to 1532, was based on local traditions of "solidarity" and "mutualism", transported to an imperial scale, and established an economic structure that allowed for substantial agricultural production as well as the exchange of products between communities. It was based on the institution of reciprocity, considered the socioeconomic and political system of the Pre-Columbian Andes.
Anaku was a skirt-type garment of indigenous women in the Inca Empire. It was a long drape dress straight in shape, falling to ankle length.
Ñusta, which roughly translates to "princess" in the Quechua language, is a term for a highly noble or upper-class woman of Inca or Andean birth. Inca noblewomen were essentially part of the Inca Empire also called "Tawantinsuyu" where they spoke the traditional Inca spoken language "Quechua." Ñustas were not full descendants of Inca royalty. Therefore, the Quechua term was used to denote the regional origin of the ñusta's non-royal parent. A ñusta could range from being the daughter or half-sister of the Sapa Inca himself, one of his lesser wives, or a wife or daughter of another high-ranking male noble, such as the heads of the local municipalities, Kurakas. The Spaniards recognized ñustas as noblewomen and added the Spanish term “Doña” to their Christian and Andean names.
