CWA 114 Letters

Capturing and joining ancestors Re: ‘Origins of the Incas’/‘Peru: a journey through time’, CWA 110  I very much enjoyed the feature on the Andes as an Andeanist. Many wonderful points!    I would add that one of t​he least explored but most fundamental developments in the creation of the Inca empire is that they aggressively sought to incorporate territories by absorbing the ancestors of those they conquered.    Spanish chroniclers note that the Inca captured the wak’as or ancestors of the communities they conquered, embodied as objects, figures, etc, and held them in shrines at Cuzco. Though the Inca did impose the worship of their primary f