In 1999 archaeologists in Argentina came across an impressive and shocking finding. At an altitude of 6739m, high on the peaks of the Andes, there lay buried three children, four, six, and 15 years old. They died around 1500, at the high point of the Inca Empire, then the largest empire in the Americas and one of the largest in the world. Due to the extreme altitude, and the cold and dry climate, the children’s bodies were perfectly preserved even after 500 years, making them some of the best-preserved mummies in the world. More than 100 such bizarre burial sites have been found. But… what happened to these children and how did they end up there?
Today, in A Day in History, we explore the ritual of Capacocha, a religious sacrifice that claimed the lives of young boys and girls from all around the Inca Empire: a story of pain and death accompanied by religious fervor and the ruthless need to establish imperial authority over vast territories and populations.
Who were the Incas?
The Inca Empire is best known today because of its rapid decline and extinction after the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. It is associated with gold, civil strife, and the amazing Machu Picchu. The history of the Incas, however, started long before the Europeans set their foot on the newly discovered shores of the Americas. The Incas were the last of a series of pristine civilizations in the Andes that developed independently from other civilizations, even those in Mesoamerica. The first Inca King lived in the 13th century and ruled a kingdom around the capital city of Cusco. This small kingdom grew steadily over the next two centuries and in 1438 King Pachacuti founded the Realm of the Four Parts. He and his successors managed within a few decades to unite the Andean region under one rule.
As its name indicates, the kingdom had a central government in the capital Cusco, and four provincial governments, the Four Parts. Following a long tradition of trade and administrative connections, the Inca state was highly centralized and controlled its territory effectively through laws, military and administrative presence, and a complex extensive road system covering thousands of kilometers that allowed easy communication between the different territories. This was indeed vital, as the empire was vast: almost two million square kilometers covering large areas of what is today Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
Religion played a crucial role in Incan culture and was deeply intertwined with the state. The first Incan King, Manco Capac, was considered the son of the Sun god, Inti. The Incas sought to integrate newly acquired territories through cultural and religious assimilation, promoting the Sun god, Inti, as a superior deity. Alongside Inti, they also revered the Creator god Viracocha, the Thunder god Illapa, and the Moon goddess Mama Killa. As part of this process, which held both religious and civil importance, the Incas built more than a hundred ceremonial sites from 1470 until the Spanish conquest in 1532.
#incas #history #aztecempire #theinca
Sources:
Andrushko, Valerie A.; Buzon, Michele R.; Gibaja, Arminda M.; McEwan, Gordon F.; Simonetti, Antonio; Creaser, Robert A. (February 2011), “Investigating a child sacrifice event from the Inca heartland”, Journal of Archaeological Science. 38 (2): 323–333.
Besom, Thomas (2009), Of Summits and Sacrifice: An Ethnohistoric Study of Inka Religious Practices, University of Texas Press.
Faux, Jennifer (2012), “Hail the Conquering Gods: Ritual Sacrifice of Children in Inca Society”, Journal of Contemporary Anthropology, 3: 15.
Molina, Cristóbal de; Bauer, Brian S.; Smith-Oka, Vania (2011), Account of the Fables and Rites of the Incas (Reprinted ed.). University of Texas Press.
Reinhard, Johan; Ceruti, Constanza (June 2005), “Sacred Mountains, Ceremonial Sites, and Human Sacrifice Among the Incas”, Archaeoastronomy, 19: 1–43
Socha, Dagmara M.; Reinhard, Johan; Chávez Perea, Ruddy (2020-12-11), “Inca Human Sacrifices on Misti Volcano (Peru)”, Latin American Antiquity. 32 (1): 138–153.
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