Encyclopedia of the Incas

A carved rock surrounded by a curved wall at the Torreón temple, Machu Picchu, Peru. The structure may have ...

calendar. The calendar regulated ritual activities in the city and around the empire, and it was als ...

known to us as the Pleiades a “storehouse” (collca), “pile” (qotu), or a sign of “sickness” (onqoy). T ...

AVILA, FRANCISCO DE Although reputedly born in Cuzco to unknown parents, Avila claimed to be of noble Sp ...

document relates the origin myths of the region’s various ethnic groups and ayllus, as well as the epic stru ...

The term was used as a general classifier, or label, for groups of people formed in any number of ways. In t ...

hierarchical manner, with certain ayllus and their curacas being superior to others. Members of an ...

Colonial accounts of the ceque system, that a few of the “royal ayllus” (that is, the panacas) were actu ...

As with Quechua, the Aymara language does not have a name of its own. The Spaniards coined the term ...

principal language of the conquering Inca and his forebears in what became the Inca Empire. The birthplace ...

B BATTLES, RITUAL While all-out warfare seems to have been a fact of life in pre-Inca and Inca times ...

A man prepares to hurl his sling during a ritual battle in the province of Canas, Cuzco, Peru. Daniel H ...

Platt, Tristan. “Mirrors and Maize: The Concept of yanantin among the Macha of Bolivia.” In ...

manuscript of this great Aymara dictionary is divided into two parts: 474 pages of Spanish-Aymara, ...

In 1551 the Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza commissioned Betanzos to write Suma y Narración de los Incas, or “N ...

Atahualpa’s earlier exploits and later imprisonment by the Spaniards in Cajamarca—no doubt the voic ...

Bingham achieved fame as a result of his publications in Harper’s and National Geographic, and he use ...

in the department of Cuzco, as well as cantilevered bridges of stone such as the one still in use in the ...

renown in Thornton Wilder’s novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (later made into a movie), for the ...

C CAJAMARCA In 1532, Cajamarca, a major ceremonial center in the northern Andes, was chosen by Atahualpa ...