The Great Inka Road
The Great Inka Road

Author: Ramiro Matos Mendieta

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Published: 2015-07-21

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1588344959

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This compelling collection of essays explores the Qhapaq nan (or Great Inca Road), an extensive network of trails reaching modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. These roads and the accompanying agricultural terraces and structures that have survived for more than six centuries are a testament to the advanced engineering and construction skills of the Inca people. The Qhapaq nan also spurred an important process of ecological and community integration across the Andean region. This book, the companion volume to a National Museum of the American Indian exhibition of the same name, features essays on six main themes: the ancestors of the Inca, Cusco as the center of the empire, road engineering, road transportation and integration, the road in the Colonial era, and the road today. Beautifully designed and featuring more than 225 full-color illustrations, The Great Inka Road is a fascinating look at this enduring symbol of the Andean peoples' strength and adaptability.

The Great Inka Road
The Great Inka Road

Author: Ramiro Matos

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Published: 2015-09-08

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1588345459

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This compelling collection of essays explores the Qhapaq nan (or Great Inca Road), an extensive network of trails reaching modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. These roads and the accompanying agricultural terraces and structures that have survived for more than six centuries are a testament to the advanced engineering and construction skills of the Inca people. The Qhapaq nan also spurred an important process of ecological and community integration across the Andean region. This book, the companion volume to a National Museum of the American Indian exhibition of the same name, features essays on six main themes: the ancestors of the Inca, Cusco as the center of the empire, road engineering, road transportation and integration, the road in the Colonial era, and the road today. Beautifully designed and featuring more than 225 full-color illustrations, The Great Inka Road is a fascinating look at this enduring symbol of the Andean peoples' strength and adaptability.

Along the Inca Road
Along the Inca Road

Author: Karin Muller

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780792277279

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Muller shares her seven-month adventure along the treacherous, starkly beautiful expanse of this ancient route. Along the way, she tries her hand at bull-fighting, paddles a reed boat, and accompanies the Ecuadorian military on a de-mining patrol. Photos.

The Incas
The Incas

Author: Terence N. D'Altroy

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-05-27

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 1444331159

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The Incas is a captivating exploration of one of the greatest civilizations ever seen. Seamlessly drawing on history, archaeology, and ethnography, this thoroughly updated new edition integrates advances made in hundreds of new studies conducted over the last decade. • Written by one of the world’s leading experts on Inca civilization • Covers Inca history, politics, economy, ideology, society, and military organization • Explores advances in research that include pre-imperial Inca society; the royal capital of Cuzco; the sacred landscape; royal estates; Machu Picchu; provincial relations; the khipu information-recording technology; languages, time frames, gender relations, effects on human biology, and daily life • Explicitly examines how the Inca world view and philosophy affected the character of the empire • Illustrated with over 90 maps, figures, and photographs

Run, Little Chaski!
Run, Little Chaski!

Author: Mariana Llanos

Publisher: Barefoot Books

Published: 2021-05-01

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 1646862538

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In this tale set in the ancient Inka (sometimes spelled Inca) empire, Little Chaski has a big job: he is the Inka King’s newest royal messenger. On his first day delivering messages he stops to help several creatures in need along the way, causing him to nearly miss his sunset deadline. But the kindness he bestowed on these animals winds up helping him in surprising ways. Descriptive language and bold illustrations give readers insight into Little Chaski’s nervousness and excitement as he runs the Inka Trail, working earnestly to fulfill the responsibilities of his new role.

Inka History in Knots
Inka History in Knots

Author: Gary Urton

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2017-04-04

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1477312641

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Inka khipus--spun and plied cords that record information through intricate patterns of knots and colors--constitute the only available primary sources on the Inka empire not mediated by the hands, minds, and motives of the conquering Europeans. As such, they offer direct insight into the worldview of the Inka--a view that differs from European thought as much as khipus differ from alphabetic writing, which the Inka did not possess. Scholars have spent decades attempting to decipher the Inka khipus, and Gary Urton has become the world's leading authority on these artifacts. In Inka History in Knots, Urton marshals a lifetime of study to offer a grand overview of the types of quantative information recorded in khipus and to show how these records can be used as primary sources for an Inka history of the empire that focuses on statistics, demography, and the "longue durée" social processes that characterize a civilization continuously adapting to and exploiting its environment. Whether the Inka khipu keepers were registering census data, recording tribute, or performing many other administrative tasks, Urton asserts that they were key players in the organization and control of subject populations throughout the empire and that khipu record-keeping vitally contributed to the emergence of political complexity in the Andes. This new view of the importance of khipus promises to fundamentally reorient our understanding of the development of the Inka state and the possibilities for writing its history.

Inka Settlement Planning
Inka Settlement Planning

Author: John Hyslop

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2014-02-19

Total Pages: 623

ISBN-13: 029276264X

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Before the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century A.D., the Inka Empire stretched along the Pacific side of South America, all the way from Ecuador to northwest Argentina. Though today many Inka researchers focus on the imperial capital of Cuzco, Peru, and surrounding areas, ruins of Inka settlements abound throughout the vast territory of the former empire and offer many clues about how the empire was organized, managed, and defended. These outlying settlements, as well as those in the Cuzco area, form the basis for John Hyslop's detailed study Inka Settlement Planning. Using extensive aerial photography and detailed site maps, Hyslop studies the design of several dozen settlements spread throughout the empire. In addition to describing their architecture and physical infrastructure, he gives special emphasis to the symbolic aspects of each site's design. Hyslop speculates that the settlement plans incorporate much iconography expressive of Inka ideas about the state, the cosmos, and relationships to non-Inka peoples—iconography perhaps only partially related to the activities that took place within the sites. And he argues that Inka planning concepts applied not only to buildings but also to natural features (stone outcrops, water sources, and horizons) and specialized landscaping (terracing). Of interest to a wide readership in archaeology, architecture, urbanization, empire building, and Andean travel, Inka Settlement Planning charts one of Native America's greatest achievements.

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.

The Inka Empire
The Inka Empire

Author: Izumi Shimada

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2015-06-01

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0292760795

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Massive yet elegantly executed masonry architecture and andenes (agricultural terraces) set against majestic and seemingly boundless Andean landscapes, roads built in defiance of rugged terrains, and fine textiles with orderly geometric designs—all were created within the largest political system in the ancient New World, a system headed, paradoxically, by a single, small minority group without wheeled vehicles, markets, or a writing system, the Inka. For some 130 years (ca. A.D. 1400 to 1533), the Inka ruled over at least eighty-six ethnic groups in an empire that encompassed about 2 million square kilometers, from the northernmost region of the Ecuador–Colombia border to northwest Argentina. The Inka Empire brings together leading international scholars from many complementary disciplines, including human genetics, linguistics, textile and architectural studies, ethnohistory, and archaeology, to present a state-of-the-art, holistic, and in-depth vision of the Inkas. The contributors provide the latest data and understandings of the political, demographic, and linguistic evolution of the Inkas, from the formative era prior to their political ascendancy to their post-conquest transformation. The scholars also offer an updated vision of the unity, diversity, and essence of the material, organizational, and symbolic-ideological features of the Inka Empire. As a whole, The Inka Empire demonstrates the necessity and value of a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates the insights of fields beyond archaeology and ethnohistory. And with essays by scholars from seven countries, it reflects the cosmopolitanism that has characterized Inka studies ever since its beginnings in the nineteenth century.