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 the 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 figure, Viracocha, on the others, they did not destroy them – a point to extend from the article’s wonderful reference to the power of ancestors. This mentality arguably pervaded the empire.
