Inca-Victoria

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Inca Research

Paper

By: Victoria Rodriguez

Liberty High School

2011

During around 1200 AD, there was a culture that flourished around Cusco, Peru. The mountains were filled with a civilization full of love and worship for their 11 gods. The culture of the Inca civilization is not only fascinating it shows the simplicity of a culture before the

Spanish invaded the land. The Inca’s population was about 6 to 9 million people however, the culture had died down due to the Spanish invasion for their gold. There are rumors that the Inca civilization never existed because of the fact that they didn’t have a written records and the only written records are the ones that the Spanish conquistadors. Even though they didn’t have a written history they told the history verbally- Inca’s passed it down from generations to generations allowing everyone who was an Inca to know the ancestry of their culture.

The government that the Inca’s had was a monarchy. The Inca’s use the word

“Capac” or

“ Capa” or “ Sapa Inca”

for the ruler of their civilization. They say that they all come from the legendary Ayar siblings- Four boys and Four girls. The first Capac was the Ayar sibling, Manco

Capac who married one of his sisters and Manco had founded Cusco. The High Ranking for woman were called, Coya.

The ranking for this society was based on how well you succeed in your life due to who your father and mother were. In some cases this lead to sibling marriage because the strongest connection you can have to be the descendents of Manco Capac. Some people believe that this monarchy may have had two kings- one person would rule have of the land and the other person would rule the other half.

The rankings in this culture would look like this:

In the Incas culture there life was not a walk in the park. In this culture if you broke the law you could honestly lose you’re life. The government had power of the Inca civilization- they distributed to food as well as things you need to live a long and healthy life. So I suggest that no one angered the government.

The men of the Inca civilization were normally farmers/soldiers. The Inca’s arouse from their sleep at 6:00 AM so they can start tending to their farms. They had two meals a day and no sense of money- they took what they needed and nothing more or less. Since the mountains have a higher elevation things take longer to burn so the women’s life must have been harder. The most primary meal was something called, Aka and they also used to eat llamas. They used the llamas dung for a heating source.

Although the women normally had more of a pain with cooking and tending to their children they were able to move up higher in the socially. Women were normally weavers and if a woman could weave beautifully she could be sent to the capital. The clothes that the Inca’s wore were only worn once and then burned. So woman were needed to make clothes very commonly and blankets because its very chilly up in the mountains.

When a woman and man are in love, they produce something very special-A child. The baby is washed in the nearest stream and on the fourth day of the baby’s life it is placed in a cradle for the very first time. For the first two years of the babies life it is called, wawa . After the first two years the baby is given a temporary name. Than when the child hits puberty it is given its real name so the name is able to reflect the child as a person The Inca’s thought very highly of names and that’s why they wait so long to give the child its name.

Not only is teenage life stressful but, imagine if you just hit puberty and you have to quit school? A man stops his education at the age of 14 and a woman stops her education at her first menstruation. A woman typically gets her menstruation of the ages 9-16 depending on the body.

So they have to learn the official language- Quechua.

Since the Inca’s didn’t have a writing system they used, Quipu.

This system is the kind of math they used, they used cords of different colors and its all attached to a main knot. This system allowed them to figure out how much goods they had and the census of the civilization. Even till this day we still don’t know how to use the Quipu

. The Inca’s must have been so smart they were the only ones who could understand it.

Speaking about smart, the Inca’s agriculture was very smart indeed. They used green science and if we used their methods it could help our culture a lot because of the fact that they didn’t

destroy the land in that process. The farm lands were very rich and perminate as well. The Inca culture had three different methods and various techniques. Some techniques are:

The Inca government stored dried food - this could feed the Inca civilization for years if necessary.

The Andenes- An artificial terrace with 30 to 40 degree inclination that had water channels to bring the water which helped grow the food.

Waru Waru- Flat terrains that had water surrounding the crops.

Quchakuna- An artificial lagoon that would fill up on rain water.

The Architecture in this civilization is amazing- even today we still don’t know how they did this. They used any stone they could get and they moved it sometimes from 20 miles. Yet again its still a mystery of how they moved the stone. They somehow made the stones precise and able to fit in each other and even today the building are still strong and standing.

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