Academic literature on the topic 'Incas / Civilization'

On the occasion of Peru’s Independence, the champions of the Creole nation elevated the Inca State Indian to the status of a respectable ancestor, thus eliminating the Amerindian historicity of the population. The archaeological remains provide support to an indigenist ideology that ignores the sociological Indian, considered to be ontologically inferior. Today, these Inca vestiges contribute to the construction of the national narrative: the Inca solar cult is thus reinvented on the site of Sacsayhuaman. To what extent can the work of archaeologists serve to corroborate partisan ideologies? The presidents of the Peruvian and Bolivian Republics were inducted as pre-Hispanic rulers, the first on the Inca site of Machu Picchu, the second at the Tiwanaku Sun gate. To what extent can the vestiges of a civilization be instrumentalized by politics? The Inca sites are now assailed by New Age mystics from the United States and Europe under the leadership of local neo-shamans. They are indeed reputed to carry positive “energy”, one that is exploited by mystical tourism agencies. To what extent can the heritage of the nation, maintained by public services, be the object of private profits, ideologies that may be sectarian and possibly irreparable damages? In the culture of traditional Andean communities, the pre-Hispanic ruins had a classificatory and symbolic function. This function disappears when the setting of a myth is replaced by a historical site. How can we respect the indigenous perception of archaeological remains? These are the ethical questions that this article seeks to raise on the basis of specific and concrete cases of archaeological sites on which the author has carried out excavations.

When the last Inca emperor and the conquistador from Extremadura, Spain, met in Cajamarca, Peru, on Saturday, 16 November 1532, a world separated them, but they had one thing in common: neither knew how to read. In Andean popular culture and historical analysis, Atahualpa and Francisco Pizarro remain the protagonists of that formidable collision of worlds, in which the most powerful man of the Tawantinsuyo, the Inca empire, which stretched from Ecuador to northern Argentina, confronted a Spanish adventurer who was seeking an easy fortune, well aware that this encounter was his last and greatest opportunity. Beyond a mnemonic system of colored knots called quipus, which registered population numbers and other types of numerical accounting, the Incas did not know writing. Pizarro was an illegitimate child from a rich family and apparently had been a swineherd as a boy. It has been repeated that despite his illiteracy, he belonged to the “civilization of the sign” while Atahualpa, despite his power, was condemned for belonging to “the culture of orality.” However, according to legend, during his months of prison, out of curiosity the Inca learned some Spanish words and wrote on the fingernail of his thumb the word Dios (“God”). It is said that he showed it to Pizarro, asking him what it meant, and found that his rival could not read it. From the prison cell of a condemned man and the site of his punishment, Atahualpa engaged in what might have been the first critical reappropriation of the Castilian language (Garcilaso, Historia 98; bk. 1, ch. 33).

This article reviews the legacies of the civilizations of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas. It specifically deals with five administrative problems faced by these civilizations, which include: an unorganized and inefficient bureaucracy, an inadequate and unfair tax collection system, nugatory agricultural practices, a warped judicial order, and a poor educational system. The article further discusses the relevance to contemporary administration of these civilizations' solutions to the aforementioned five administrative problems.

Nature is full of mysteries which compel one to explore the hidden passages. The passionate urge might take a traveller into the deepest corners of forgotten lands which have truths to be unraveled. Each and every space dynamics has its own temporality and ideological framework which shapes the entire course of ones ideas. The paper will talk about the travelling account of Che Guevara captured in his memoir The Motorcycle Diaries. The book traces the early travels of this Marxist revolutionary. The idea behind is to mark the curvature of topological transformation and its impact on the ideological framework of a person. The paper will explore the interconnections and impact of different spaces encountered during a travel and the nature of discourse which develops during such explorations. Ideas have a disposition to travel with the moving discourse where the architectural domain shapes the outline of the traveller’s thought process. Here Che Guevara’s trip through South America will portray the flow of ideas through different spaces formulating the base for his revolutionary ideas. Through the account of Francisco Pizarro during the conquest of Incan civilization and through the impact of this event on the civilization as a collective whole, the paper will attempt to analyze the ethical curvature of two distinct civilizations, namely the Incan and the Christian Imperial West. The conquest of the South American continent and the consequent clash was cataclysmic, as the socio-economic subversion is still embedded almost non- retrievably deep in terms of its collateral. The paper will include “Heights of Machu Picchu” by Pablo Neruda which again is set during his travelling account to Machu Picchu, which is the marker of a lost civilization where the distorted architecture echoes the richness and the loss at the same time.

Many agricultural production areas worldwide are characterized by high variability of water supply conditions, or simply lack of water, creating a dependence on irrigation since Neolithic times. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the evolution of irrigation of agricultural lands worldwide, based on bibliographical research focusing on ancient water management techniques and ingenious irrigation practices and their associated land management practices. In ancient Egypt, regular flooding by the Nile River meant that early agriculture probably consisted of planting seeds in soils that had been recently covered and fertilized with floodwater and silt deposits. On the other hand, in arid and semi-arid regions farmers made use of perennial springs and seasonal runoff under circumstances altogether different from the river civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and early dynasties in China. We review irrigation practices in all major irrigation regions through the centuries. Emphasis is given to the Bronze Age civilizations (Minoans, Egyptians, and Indus valley), pre-Columbian, civilizations from the historic times (e.g., Chinese, Hellenic, and Roman), late-Columbians (e.g., Aztecs and Incas) and Byzantines, as well as to Ottomans and Arabs. The implications and impacts of irrigation techniques on modern management of water resources, as well as on irrigated agriculture, are also considered and discussed. Finally, some current major agricultural water management challenges are outlined, concluding that ancient practices could be adapted to cope with present challenges in irrigated agriculture for increasing productivity and sustainability.

In the previous issue of CAJ, Heggarty (2007) set out how certain key principles and methods of historical linguistics can be exploited to open up another window on the past, from a perspective quite different and complementary to that offered by the archaeological record. Following this up, we turn here to an ideal case-study for exploring how the various patterns in linguistic (pre-)histories can be matched with their most plausible correlates in the archaeological data. Beyond our initial illustration of the Incas we now look further afield, to set the sequence of major civilizations of the Andes into its linguistic context, tracing the expansion trajectories of the main Andean language families further back in time, stage by stage, ultimately to their most plausible original homelands. The linguistic story emerges starkly at odds with assumptions widely held among archaeologists of the region. Indeed we encounter a paradigm case of how only a radical rethinking can reconcile our two disciplines' findings into a single, coherent, holistic prehistory for a human population — in the Andes, a prize now tantalizingly within our reach.

[For the English abstract and full text of the article please see the attached PDF-File (English version follows Russian version)].ABSTRACT Historical analysis made by the author shows that the emergence of new t ransport communications contributes to creation of new major economic and cultural centers, while traditional centers, which turned away from traffic flows, lose their meaning. Research of transport conditions in pre-Columbian America (absence of wheel, horse-drawn, with the exception for the Central Andean region, and horse transport, a lower level of water communications development in comparison with the Old World) allows us to conclude that the lack of vehicles and the lack of private initiative in transport sector essentially limited the possibilities of social and economic growth in ancient civilizations. Keywords: transport, socio-economic development, communication lines, ancient civilization, economic history, institutions. REFERENCES 1. Mises, L. von. Socialism. 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Abstract This paper addresses one of the first translations of a US anthropological monograph into Romanian. Its author, John V. Murra (1916–2006), born into a Russian-Jewish family in Odessa, grew up in Romania, where he studied and became involved in the Communist movement before his departure for Chicago in 1934. His 1956 PhD thesis in anthropology at University of Chicago on the Inka state was a first step towards turning Murra into an influential figure in the field of Andean anthropology. His sister Ata Iosifescu lived in Romania and translated his PhD thesis into Romanian, published in 1987 as Civilizaţie inca: organizarea economică a statului incaş(Inka Civilization: the Economic Organization of the Inka State). Based on their correspondence kept at the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), I propose to reconstruct this translation’s story: the context, the constraints and the process of translation itself. I am also addressing the question of the book’s reception in Romania.

The article deals with the politics of indigenism in modern Latin America. Based on the socio-constructivist approach, the changes that took place during the XX-XXI centuries in the public policy of a number of countries in the region in relation to the indigenous population are analyzed, the positions of intellectuals and elites in the formation of the agenda and various options for the policy of indigenism in the context of the colonial European heritage and political events of the XX century are evaluated. Indigenism in this work is considered as a specific public policy towards the indigenous population and a strategy of nation-building in Latin American countries. Special attention is paid to the countries in which a significant part of the population is made up of Indians - Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. These countries have been united by a common history for centuries: the pre-Hispanic civilizations of America - the Maya, Aztecs, Incas, who inhabited their territories, were distinguished by a high level of development of science and culture. However, for a long time, both in colonial times and after independence, indigenous ethnic groups seemed incapable of independent development, they were purposefully destroyed or assimilated. For integrated Mestizo Indians in some Latin American countries, special terms have been adopted aimed at erasing their Indian origin. European liberalism also contributed to the downgrading of the status of Indians and Indian land, which was constantly under attack. Despite the visible positive changes that took place by the end of the XX century in Latin American legislation concerning Indians, they are still forced to fight for their territory, cultural identity, are in a disenfranchised and distressed situation. The article identifies a number of factors (ideological commitment, the nature of the political regime, etc.) that have had one way or another influence on the change in the rhetoric of Latin American elites in setting the indigenist agenda in different time periods. Conclusions are drawn about the variability of the policy of indigenism in these countries at the present stage, depending on a combination of a number of factors.

Comprendre les présupposés qui fondent les rapports au monde des individus selon leur appartenance civilisationnelle nécessite des outils et une méthode permettant de répondre à trois questions principales. D’abord, comment aborder le rapport que des individus et leurs collectivités entretiennent avec le monde et avec l’Autre selon leur propre système d’interprétations et d’explications de ces réalités? Ensuite, comment penser la diversité des collectivités humaines qui établissent de tels rapports? Finalement, comment aborder les dimensions collectives à travers les discours limités d’individus? Deux outils m’ont permis de prendre du recul face à ma subjectivité et d’accéder à un certain niveau de réalité et de validité quant aux faits rapportés et aux résultats atteints. Dans un premier temps, le réseau notionnel articulant les conceptions du monde (Ikenga-Metuh, 1987) comme phénomènes de civilisations (Mauss, 1929) accessibles par l’analyse des représentations sociales (Jodelet, 1997) permet de définir et d’étudier l’interface entre l’individuel et le collectif. Dans un deuxième temps, l’opérationnalisation de la recherche permet de cerner le XVIe siècle comme moment de rencontre propice à l’étude des civilisations andines et occidentales à travers les représentations du Soi espagnol et de l’Autre inca du chroniqueur Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. Finalement, la méthode d’analyse de discours (Sabourin, 2009) lève le voile sur une grammaire sociale polarisante entre le Soi et l’Autre, laquelle traverse les trois univers de sens (religieux, intellectuel et politique) observés dans le discours de Sarmiento. La mise à jour des positions théologiques, intellectuelles et politiques de l’auteur ouvre à son tour sur les récits et discours collectifs propres aux civilisations occidentales et andines de son époque, et permet un questionnement nouveau : cette polarisation est-elle unique à la localisation sociale de Sarmiento ou constitue-t-elle un phénomène civilisationnel proprement occidental ?
Understanding the assumptions underlying the relationships between individuals and the world according to their civilizational affiliation requires tools and a method to address three main questions. First, how to approach the relationship individuals and their collectivities maintain with the world and with the Other according to their own set of interpretations and meanings of these realities? Second, how to envision the diversity of human collectivities which establish such relations? Finally, how to approach the collective dimensions through limited individual discourse? Two tools enabled me to distance myself from my own subjectiveness and to attain a certain degree of reality and validity as to the stated facts and the achieved results. First, the notional network linking worldviews (Ikenga-Metuh, 1987) as a civilizational phenomenon (Mauss, 1929) accessible through the analysis of social representations (Jodelet, 1997), enables the identification of an interface which can be studied between the individual and the collective. Secondly, research operationalization makes it possible to identify the sixteenth century as a significant crossroad for the study of Western and Andean civilizations through Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa’s representations of the Spanish Self and the Inca Other. Finally, discourse analysis (Sabourin, 2009) unveils a polarizing social grammar between the Self and the Other which involves the three realms of meaning (religious, intellectual and political) observed in Sarmiento’s discourse. The author’s theological, intellectual and political positions thus revealed lead, in turn, to the collective stories and discourses which prevailed in Western and Andean civilizations at the time, and invites a further question: Is this polarization unique to Sarmiento’s social location or does it constitute a truly Western civilizational phenomenon?

Abstract In 1822 the South American patriot José de San Martín sent an “Inca mummy” from Lima to the British Museum, initiating a century of the international collection of the “ancient Peruvian” and Andean dead. This chapter shows how these collections began with Peruvian independence and the relaxation of laws surrounding huaqueo (tomb-raiding). Peruvian grave-openers and scholars built museums around Andean mummies as scientific symbols of embalming and recovered sovereignty. They collaborated with foreign collectors in the excavation and export of the Andean dead, whose bodies and artifacts became mobile laboratories for the dissection of precolonial Peruvian history, anatomy, civilization, and the desiccating natural resources that preserved them. Debate centered on whether Peruvian mummification was “artificial” or “natural,” implying different levels of civilization. These efforts helped empty Andean cemeteries along the coast, but revealed surviving Andean understandings of the dead as spiritually powerful. Some highland communities paraded the dead once again.

Abstract This chapter shows how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century grave-openers in the viceroyalty of Peru turned Inca and Andean ancestors into objects of global scientific study, despite failed attempts to transfer them to Europe. Inspired by the Inca chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega Inca, the Jesuit José de Acosta, and other Andean texts, foreign scholars recast the “embalmed” Inca yllapas as “mummies” like those of ancient Egypt. Everyday Andean grave-openers, however, interpreted preserved pre-Hispanic remains as “beautiful grandparents” or even Incas who had committed suicide to protest Spanish rule. Finally, Spanish and Spanish-American scholars submitted “ancient Peruvian” bodies and tombs to more “scientific” explanations, using them to defend Spanish colonialism, estimate the heights and depth of Indigenous American civilization and for the first time, measure their racialized skulls. By 1800, elites claimed to have redeemed “Inca mummies” and “ancient Peruvian” tombs as symbols of Peruvian science and sovereignty.

Abstract In the late 1830s Philadelphia surgeon Samuel George Morton decapitated a mummified “Inca” woman to measure her skull and study her “race.” A “founding father” of both scientific racism and American anthropology, Morton collected more “Ancient Peruvian” skulls than any other group; his Crania Americana drew from centuries of Peruvian scholarship, and the active culture of grave-robbing and collecting that since independence had disinterred Andean mummies and skulls from a preserving environment. But after arguing the Incas proved that the “American race” was capable of complex “civilization,” Morton abandoned this supposed contradiction of racial laws to instead claim that they promised the extinction of all Indigenous peoples. To debate his theories, early anthropologists likewise collected more “Ancient Peruvian” skulls than any other Indigenous group—an Andean core in museums like the Smithsonian and Harvard’s Peabody Museum. These Peruvian ancestors of American anthropology shaped the accumulation of Indigenous remains in general.

For Spaniards civilization was only possible in a república, a self-governing town that was both urbs, the built environment, and, more importantly, civitas, the people and their social bonds. Theologians taught that God had granted sovereignty collectively to the people, who in turn loaned it to the king. But if he proved to be a tyrant, the people could revoke their sovereignty and overthrow the king. This political ideology underwrote both the 1521 Comunero Revolution in Spain and provided justification for overthrow of the Incas: if a people were so oppressed by a tyrant that they could not act, another power could intervene and overthrow the tyrant. Understood this way, Spaniards rescued Andeans from Inca tyrants. In order to civilize Andeans and convert them to Christianity, Viceroy Toledo began a process of undercutting encomenderos’ control of Andean labor and resettled Andeans into planned towns, modeled on the Spanish república.