Narrative of the Incas

Narrative of the Incas

Author: Juan de Betanzos

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9780292755598

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"A chronicle that has been judged the 'single most authentic document of its kind.' Based on testimonies from descendants of Inca kings, who in the 1540s-50s still remembered the oral history and traditions of their ancestors. Beginning in 1551, Betanzost


Handbook of Inca Mythology

Handbook of Inca Mythology

Author: Paul Richard Steele

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2004-12-08

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1851096213

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The first introduction to the Incas and their myths aimed at students and general readers, bringing together a wealth of information into one convenient resource. Full of hard to find information, Handbook of Inca Mythology provides an accessible introduction to the rites, beliefs, and spiritual tales of the Incas. It provides a concise overview of Incan civilization and mythology, a chronology of mythic and historical events, and an A–Z inventory of central themes (sacrifice, fertility, competition, reversaldualism, colors, constellations, giants, and miniatures), personages (Viracocha, Manco Capac, Pachackuti Inca), locations (Lake Titicaca, Corickancha), rituals, and icons. The last Native American culture to develop free of European influence, the Incas, who had no written language, are known only from Spanish accounts written after the conquest and archaeological finds. From these fragments, a vanished world has been reborn and reintroduced into modern Andean life. There is no better way into that world and its mind-bending mythology than this unique handbook.


Reading Inca History

Reading Inca History

Author: Catherine Julien

Publisher: University of Iowa Press

Published: 2009-05

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1587294117

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At the heart of this book is the controversy over whether Inca history can and should be read as history. Did the Incas narrate a true reflection of their past, and did the Spaniards capture these narratives in a way that can be meaningfully reconstructed? In Reading Inca History,Catherine Julien finds that the Incas did indeed create detectable life histories. The two historical genres that contributed most to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish narratives about the Incas were an official account of Inca dynastic genealogy and a series of life histories of Inca rulers. Rather than take for granted that there was an Inca historical consciousness, Julien begins by establishing an Inca purpose for keeping this dynastic genealogy. She then compares Spanish narratives of the Inca past to identify the structure of underlying Inca genres and establish the dependency on oral sources. Once the genealogical genre can be identified, the life histories can also be detected. By carefully studying the composition of Spanish narratives and their underlying sources, Julien provides an informed and convincing reading of these complex texts. By disentangling the sources of their meaning, she reaches across time, language, and cultural barriers to achieve a rewarding understanding of the dynamics of Inca and colonial political history.


The Incas

The Incas

Author: Franklin Pease

Publisher: Fondo Editorial de la PUCP

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 6123171100

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Essential to understand Inca culture in all its aspects: origin, economy, social organization, religion and art. This is an introduction to life in the Tawantinsuyo, which is opposite to the versions provided by Spanish historians, whom imposed their occidental interpretation to a very Franklin Pease, well-known Peruvian historian, dedicated his entire life to study Inca civilization. In The Incas, Peruvian historian Franklin Pease explores all aspects of life in the Tawantinsuyu, the great Inca empire that stretched for thousands of miles along the Andes of modernday Bolivia, Chile, Ecuadro and Peru. Pease does so by reexamining the sources of most of our knowledge of this complex society, the "chronocles" written during and after the Spanish conquest by a disparate group of soldiers, priests, colonial administrators ands the descendants of this protagonists, often themselves of mixed Andean-Spanish blood. This account opens a window into the Inca universe, vividly explaining everything from the Inca polity and economic structures to its agriculture, transportation infrastructure, creation myths and religious beliefs. It also takes great care to avoid the common historioraphical error of projecting onto the Incas, arguably the last great civilization to have existed without contac with the "Old World" western ways of seeing and imagining the universe. The Incas is one of our best sellers and has already been translated to different reality.


History of the Inca Realm

History of the Inca Realm

Author: Maria Rostworowski de Diez Canseco

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9780521637596

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History of the Inca Realm, by Maria Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, is a classic work of ethnohistorical research which has been both influential and provocative in the field of Andean prehistory. Rostworowski uses a great variety of published and unpublished documents and secondary works by Latin American, North American, and European scholars in fields including history, ethnology, archaeology, and ecology, to examine topics such as the mythical origins of the Incas, the expansion of the Inca state, the organization of Inca society, including the political role of women, the vast trading networks of the coastal merchants, and the causes of the disintegration of the Inca state in the face of a small force of Spaniards. At each step, Dr Rostworowski presents her own views, clearly and forcefully, along with those of other scholars, providing her readers with varied evidence from which to draw their own conclusions.


The Incas

The Incas

Author: Gordon F Mcewan

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2008-08-26

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780393333015

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The Incas: New Perspectives offers a revealing portrait of the ancient Andean empire from the earliest stages of its development to its final capitulation to Pizzarro in the mid-16th century. In recent years researchers have employed new tools to get to the heart of the mysterious Inca culture. Drawing on recent work in archaeology, anthropology, ethnohistory, and other sources, The Incas provides the most up-to-date interpretations of Inca culture, religion, politics, economics, and daily life available. Readers will discover how the Incas discovered medicines still in use and kept records using knotted cords; how Inca builders created masterful highways and stone bridges; and how the inhabitants of seemingly unfarmable lands came to give the world potatoes, beans, corn, squashes, tomatoes, avocados, peanuts, and peppers. --Publisher.


Lost City of the Incas

Lost City of the Incas

Author: Hiram Bingham

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2010-12-16

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 0297865331

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First published in the 1950s, this is a classic account of the discovery in 1911 of the lost city of Machu Picchu. In 1911 Hiram Bingham, a pre-historian with a love of exotic destinations, set out to Peru in search of the legendary city of Vilcabamba, capital city of the last Inca ruler, Manco Inca. With a combination of doggedness and good fortune he stumbled on the perfectly preserved ruins of Machu Picchu perched on a cloud-capped ledge 2000 feet above the torrent of the Urubamba River. The buildings were of white granite, exquisitely carved blocks each higher than a man. Bingham had not, as it turned out, found Vilcabamba, but he had nevertheless made an astonishing and memorable discovery, which he describes in his bestselling book LOST CITY OF THE INCAS.