ANDEAN COSMOS

(Second Edition)

by

Gary Urton

Revised/Second DRAFT edition (01/01/2022)

-- Reference, cite, or quote as you like –

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For

Julia
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Table of Contents

Pages

List of Figures 4–7

Epigraph 8

Preface and Acknowledgments 9 – 15

Chapter I – An Introduction to the Study of Andean Cosmology, the Ceque

System and “lo andino” 16 – 30

Chapter II – From Astronomy and Cosmology to Khipus – and Back Again 31 - 51

Chapter III - Building the Andean X Cosmological Paradigm 52 - 80

Chapter IV – Mimetic Performances of the Intersecting, Inter-Cardinal

Axes Paradigm 81 – 118

Chapter V – Circular Villages and Radial Centers in the Andes and Amazonia 119 – 145

Chapter VI – The Ayllu and Vertical Archipelago in Andean Cosmology 146 - 166

Chapter VII – Cuzco – the City and Valley and Their Cosmic Coordinates 167 – 187

Chapter VIII – The Radial Line System at the Center of the Universe:
The Ceque System of Cuzco 188 – 212

Chapter IX - A String Theory of the Transmission of Andean and

Inka Cosmology 213 – 227

Chapter X - Dreams of a Central Andean/Inka Cosmogram 228 – 238

Chapter XI – Conclusions 239 – 248

Notes 249 – 251

Bibliography 252 - 276

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Figures

(pg. 19) Figure 1 – Partial, schematic rendering of the Ceque System of Cuzco (after
Abercrombie, 1998:176)
(pg. 32) Figure 2 - Drawing of the full line of the Milky Way as viewed from the southern
hemisphere (Gaposhkin, 1960)
(pg. 37) Figure 3 – A pair of khipus compared to the organization of the ceque system
(pg. 54) Figure 4 – Location of the Central Andes vis à vis the line of the Equator
(pg. 56) Figure 5 – “South-is-Up” hemispheric map
(pg. 59) Figure 6 – The Alternating Axes of the Milky Way from a Fixed Place on Earth
(pg. 61) Figure 7 - The Quarters of the Milky Way (from Urton, 1979:226)
(pg. 63) Figure 8 – The Solstices and the Seasonal Axes of the Milky Way (from Urton, 1981:62)
(pg. 65) Figure 9 – The orientation of the Supe River at Caral and Associated Sites
(González-García et al, 2021:156)
(pg. 66) Figure 10 – The most common orientations of buildings at Caral and the Angle of the
Super River (González-García et al, 2021:163)
(pg. 70) Figure 11 - The Diagonal Axes of the Barasana Milky Way “Zodiac” (Hugh-Jones,
1982:186)
(pg. 72) Figure 12 – The center of the Southern Milky Way
(pg. 73) Figure 13 – The full line of the Galaxy/Milky Way
(pg. 73) Figure 14 – The full line of the Milky Way showing sections seen from the northern vs.
the southern hemisphere
(pg. 74) Figure 15 – The views through the galaxy/Milky Way for a viewer in the southern
hemisphere (upper left) vs. for a viewer in the northern hemisphere (lower right)
(pg. 79) - Fig. 16 - The arc of the southern Milky Way showing the dark spots and streaks
composed of clouds of cosmic dust, which are the prototypes of earthly animals
(pg. 79) Fig.17 - The Quechua/Inka “dark cloud” constellations
(pg. 85) Figure 18 – Reconstruction of the Temple of the Crossed Hands
(pg. 86) Figure 19 – View inside the Kotosh Temple of the Crossed Hands through the Doorway
(pg. 86) Figure 20a & b – Sculpted “crossed arms” below the niches in the Temple of the
Crossed Hands
(pg. 88) Figure 21 – The So-Called “Smiling God” of Chavín Culture (from Rowe, 1962)
(pg. 91) Figure 22 – Allwiy Partners Warping a Textile in Misminay (Urton photo, 1975)
(pg.92) Figure 23 – An Andean Backstrap Loom (a) and the Cross (Sonqo) of the Warp Threads
(b)
(pg. 95) Figure 24 – Guaman Poma de Ayala’s “Mapa Mundi” of Tawantinsuyu with a cross in
the center (1980 [1585-1615]:983-984)
(pg. 97) Fig. 25 - Tawantinsuyu as four suyu/settlements with Cuzco in the center (Murúa, 2004
[1590])
(pg. 100) Figure 26 - A Reconstruction of Garcilaso de la Vega’s “crystalline” Cross in a huaca in
Cuzco (Thanks to Alexei Vranich for this drawing)
(pg. 101) Fig. 27 - The drilled and re-oriented Cuzco Cross for placement in the cathedral
(Thanks to Alexei Vranich for this drawing)
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(pg. 103) Figure 28 – S- and Z- long knots on khipu cords

(pg. 104) Figure 29 - Pachacamac khipu with directional knotting in X pattern
(pg. 106) Figure 30 - Inka Checkerboard Military Tunic
(pg. 108) Fig. 31 – Paqcha (“waterfall”) – A Vessel Used for Divination
(pg. 110) Figure 32 – Arithmetic calculations recorded on two khipus from Inkawasi
(pg. 112) Figure 33 – The alternating axes of arithmetic calculations of two khipus from Inkawasi
(pg. 114) Figure 34 – Bolivian gendered walking schemata translated into a moebius strip-like
pattern of motion (Cuelenaere, 2009)
(pg. 122) Figure 35 – The Principal Territorial Region of Circular Villages and Radial Center
Settlements (between 50 south of the Equator to 200 South Latitude)
(pg. 124) Figure 36 – Taraco Peninsula and the Site of Chiripa relative to the Tiwanaku
Homeland
(pg. 125) Figure 37 – Chiripa-Site map of sunken temple and surrounding structures at Chiripa,
based on the Sawyer map, Kidder’s notes, and Bennett 1936 (K. Chávez 1988)
(pg. 126) Figure 38 – Pukara – Semi-Circular and Sunken Plaza Settlement of the Qaluyu Culture
(pg. 129) Figure 39 – A Raised “Ray Center” on the Nazca Pampa (Photo by G. Urton)
(pg. 129) Figure 40 – Four Ray Centers on the Nazca Pampa (Aveni, 1990:68)
(pg. 130) Figure 41 – The Locations of the 62 Ray Centers on the Nazca Pampa (Aveni, 1990:
pull-out map at end of volume)
(pg. 134) Figure 42 – Aerial (drone) images of Archaeological Circular and Semi-Circular
settlements in the state of Acre, Brazil (from Saunaluoma et al, 2021)
(pg. 135) Figure 43 – Reconstruction of Kuhikugu village site, Upper Xingu (1500 A.D.;
Heckenberger, 2005)
(pg. 136) Figure 44 – Multiple circular village array – the Ipatse Cluster – connected by straight
roads (Heckenberger, 2008)
(pg. 137) Figure 45 – Schema of a “Galactic Polity” in the Upper Xingu (Heckenberger, 2005:124-
129)
(pg. 140) Figure 46 – Canela village of Escalvado, in 1970 (Crocker and Crocker, 1994:2)
(pg. 141) Figure 47 – Plan of a Bororo village with Moiety, Clan and Household Sites Indicated
(Crocker, 1985:31)
(pg. 149) Figure 48- Subduction of the Nazca Plate Beneath the South American Continental
Plate
(pg. 152) Fig. 49 – The View eastward, up the Nazca River Valley, from the flat coastal desert
toward the Andes (photo by G. Urton)
(pg. 153) Figure 50 – The View from Pachatusan Down into the Yucay Valley and Toward the
East (photo by G. Urton)
(pg. 154) Figure 51 – Descending the Eastern Andes (W. Herzog, Aguirre, the Wrath of God)
(pg. 162) Figure 52 – An Ayllu Central Place and Its Four Vertical Archipelagos
(pg. 170) Fig. 53 – Hypothetical reconstruction of Inka Cuzco showing the four roads leaving the
city (from von Hagen and Morris, 1998:174)
(pg. 171) Figure 54 – Inka Cuzco; note the northwest/southeast orientation of the city
(from D’Altroy, 2015:200)
(pg. 173) Figure 55 – The southeast/northwest orientation of the Vilcanota/Urubamba River
(pg. 174) Figure 56 – The cosmology of Misminay, showing the Vilcanota River as a reflection of
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the northwest/southeast axis of the Milky Way (Urton, 1981:63)

(pg. 176) Fig. 57 – The two plazas at the center of Cuzco, showing the Sunturwasi, with its
conical roof, in the plaza of Aucaypata (i.e., the plaza labeled #1; Gasparini and
Margolies, 1980).
(pg. 169) Figure 58 - The trajectories of Viracocha (center) and his two sons in the act of the
creation of humanity from Lake Titicaca toward the northwest
(pg. 180) Figure 59 - The path of the priests (dashed line) from Cuzco to Lake Titicaca and
Tiwanaku in their annual pilgrimage to the place of origin (from Zuidema, 1982a)
(pg. 183) Figure 60 - The Inner and Outer Heartlands around Cuzco
(pg. 184) Figure 61 - Cuzco and the Four Tambos as the Mandala of a Galactic Polity
(pg. 190) Fig. 62 - Manuel Chávez Ballón, at his home, in 1999, pointing to his map of the ceque
system of Cuzco (photo courtesy of Carl A. Hyatt)
(pg. 191) Figure 63 - Chávez Ballón’s map of the ceque system of Cuzco (photo courtesy of Carl
A. Hyatt)
(pg. 192) Figure 64 - R. Tom Zuidema, sitting on a carved Inka throne on the mountain
Saqsawaman
(pg. 194) Figure 65 - Zuidema’s map of the ceque system of Cuzco (drawn ca. 1975; see
Zuidema, 1977)
(pg. 197) Fig. 66 – The idealized ceque system with panaca and ayllu assignments to ceques
(Zuidema, 1964:9)
(pg. 198) Fig. 67 - The ceque system composed of 41 ceques (the upper left quadrant,
Cuntisuyu, has an expanded number of ceques from that shown in Fig. 53; from
Zuidema, 1964:2)
(pg. 205) Figure 68 - Irrigation Canals and Districts in the Region to the East of Cuzco
(From Sherbondy, 1979:52)
(pg. 206) Figure 69 - The relation between ceques and irrigation districts in Cuzco
(From Sherbondy, 1979: 55)
(pg. 207) Figure 70 - The Chhiutas of Punayarqa (major irrigation canal) in Pacariqtambo and
their assignment to ayllus of the two moieties (from Urton, 1984:34)
(pg. 208) Figure 71 - Strips of agricultural fields assigned to different ethnic groups in the Inka
state farm in Cochabamba (From Wachtel, 1982)
(pg. 215) Figure 72 - Inka khipu (Herrett Museum, Southern Idaho University)
(pg. 216) Figure 73 – Inka khipu from Laguna de los Cóndores, Chachapoyas, Amazonas, Peru
(Centro Mallqui, Leymebamba, Peru; INC-LDC-108 (LC1-497); UR01)
(pg. 217) Figure 74 – The Structural Components of Khipus
(pg. 219) Figure 75 – The Hierarchical, Decimal Arrangement of Knots on a khipu (Ethnologische
Museum, Berlin, # VA47083. Illustration by J.L. Meyerson)
(pg. 220) Figure 76 – (Upper) An Array of Lines each Linking Multiple Wak’as in the Cuzco ceque
system, and (Lower) Khipu Cords Composed of an Array of Knotted Strings
(pg. 223) Figure 77 – Khipu in the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino (#780), Santiago de
Chile
(pg. 224) Figure 78 – Detail of Khipu in Fig. 65 with multiple, hierarchical subsidiary cords on
each pendant cord(MCAP #780, Santiago de Chile, [UR35]; photo by Gary Urton)
(pg. 225) Figure 79 – The branching, hierarchical arrangement of subsidiary cords on one
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pendant cord of khipu MCAP #780 (photo by Gary Urton)

(pg. 229) Fig. 80 – The Inka Cosmos According to Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua (2019 [ca.
1615?]:276-7)
(pg. 232) Figure 81 – Inka Cosmology (National Geographic….)
(pg. 234) Figure 82 – “Tawantinsuyu” [with Cuzco and the ceque system at the center]
(by R. Bielefeldt, ca. 1982; permission to use granted by Maria Gaida)
(pg. 250) Fig. 83 – Zuidema’s field crew in Cuzco, in 1973 (left-to-right): Catherine Allen,
Louisette Zuidema, Tom Zuidema, Annegien Zuidema, Helaine Silverman, Paquita
Zuidema; not shown: Lucho Zuidema, and the author)
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Epigraph:

“In my view, what we anthropologists tend to call ‘cosmologies’ are de facto

regularities in the establishment of a number of shared assumptions, very rarely

expressed in the form of an explicit argument, and always related to specific

practices, systems of relationships, and genre of discourses, either ritual or

mythological…In this sense, indigenous cosmologies…are philosophies without

an ontology…”

Carlo Severi (2013:195 [emphases in original])

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Preface

South America has been referred to as “the least known continent” (Lyon, 1973), and

from what I have experienced after some 45 years of researching, writing, speaking and

teaching about that magnificent land mass straddling the equator south of Mexico and Central

America, I would have to agree with that characterization. Indeed, I have found that not many

Euro-North Americans know much about South America. If anything, a great many people know

about Machu Picchu and many millions have even visited that site, high in the Peruvian Andes.

But even in that experience, one is usually whisked from the airport in Lima, Peru, to an

awaiting jet and then flown an hour to the city of Cuzco, high in the Andes. The next day is a

whirlwind train trip from Cuzco to Machu Picchu and back, after which one returns home with

an iPhone full of images of a remarkable archaeological site sitting on a mountain top high

above one of the most distant headwaters of the Amazon River – all without usually ever

having made contact with anyone other than travel agents or hotel staff.

The question is: Is there really anything else to know, or any reason to engage more

deeply with the peoples and cultures of this great continent, than what can be had by such a

brief excursion as that described above? I would say yes, emphatically, and in answering, I

would point to extraordinary scenery from the Orinoco River in the north to Tierra del Fuego in

the south, to rich and exotic food, music, drink, rhythms of life, literature, art and a host of

other marvels and enticing adventures to be experienced across the length and breadth of

South America.

Unfortunately, I cannot even pretend to serve as a guide to most of these remarkable

culinary, acoustic, or other forms of pleasures of the continent. For I am an anthropologist, one
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whose experiences have been more in the way of such activities as: ingesting (or seeking to

avoid) odd bits of cuy (guinea pig) served in a meal; working in agricultural fields along steep

mountain slopes; and drinking decidedly unhealthy amounts of corn beer (chicha) and semi-

diluted grain alcohol (trago; see Meyerson, 1990) in multi-day festivals in Andean villages. On

the other hand, what I have done that will serve my purpose well in this book is to have spent a

considerable amount of time out-of-doors with people in Quechua-speaking villages in the high

mountains of the Peruvian Andes, talking about the stars and planets and other phenomena in

the skies of the southern hemisphere. These experiences, and the knowledge of life on the

ground and looking up at the skies from Andean villages, provide the bases for this study.

The aspect of South American knowledge and traditions that I will introduce the reader

to in this work is a cosmological tradition of Andean societies, past and present, that will likely

be unknown to many, if not to most, readers. The cosmological tradition I explore is one that

was shared, innovated on and continuously remade by a succession of societies and cultures of

the west-central part of the continent, in the Andes mountains and along the Pacific coast, over

a very long period of time. I will focus especially on the last of the great civilizations of this

region, the Inka Empire, although I will make occasional references to aspects of the

cosmologies of peoples from the time of the first human settlement of this region down to the

present day.

I would note here that I take seriously the characterization in the epigraph by Carlo

Severi of the way anthropologists tend to create “cosmologies” out what should more sensibly

be understood as shared assumptions, or understandings of the world, worked out among

communities of people sharing a common cultural tradition. What we could term

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“understandings of the world” maintained by any particular group of people going about their

day-to-day lives are probably only rarely subjected to deep and rigorous probing in pursuit of a

coherent and unified cosmology. This is not to suggest that it ought not to be the task of history

and anthropology to try to understand the principles and practices upon which such beliefs and

ethno-theories of the universe are grounded. Rather, it is to assume, and to attempt to

formulate from all evidence available to us, the core, ideas, beliefs and principles on the basis

of which such “informal cosmologies” are grounded and to understand how they have informed

the lives of a particular group of people. Through investigations grounded in such assumptions I

believe we can arrive at an appreciation if not of formal cosmologies, at least – as I attempt

herein – a clearer grasp of the common assumptions about the status and qualities of nature,

humanity and the world held by a certain group of people. In this case, the people we will be

concerned with are the generations and millennia of inhabitants of the central Andes from the

distant past to the present.

I emphasize from the beginning that the cosmology we will explore was not one that

was fixed, stable and/or static; rather, Andean cosmology was a continuously created

undertaking involving recalibrations and recalculations of social, environmental and

philosophical considerations. (I could term the latter “ethno-philosophical considerations,” but I

see no purpose in thus diminishing, or marginalizing, Andean peoples reflections on their

universe.) The seeming stability that we will note in viewing representations of this cosmology

over time are partially the result of each generation viewing and trying to make sense of the

physical and social universe from their particular, shared perspectives, as well as the passing on

from one generation to the next of ideological stances, values, beliefs and desires in the form of
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myths, fabricated constructions (e.g., artistic and craft imagery in a variety of media), and

collective performances (e.g., dances, sayings, traditional ways of doing things, etc.) and other

such cultural forms intended to be expressive of those views.

I will argue that the latter were commonly grounded in acts, and the practice, of

mimesis – a form of comparison, copying, or modeling otherwise (or in earlier times) referred

to as “representation.” By this, I mean the kinds of intentions and practices by which people

formulate, or instantiate, material productions of what they consider to be precious; things that

have qualities which they consider to be central to their lives. I call such productions here

“cosmological models” (with apologies to Carlo Severi). They are objects or performances, in

material media, language, and other forms of codification and “world-making,” through which

people make for themselves images that have certain qualities that they value highly. Such

practices, which are a part of the habitus of people living their lives and making meaning for

themselves, are carried on by actors in societies and cultures at all times and in all places and

are some of the ways they make sense of their world – give their world meaning and value

(Auerbach, 1953, Gebauer and Wulf, 1992). I will return to this topic in the next chapter.

One of the central observations that drives this study is that the Pre-Columbian societies

of west-central South America occupied an unusual global position – in both terrestrial and

celestial terms – from which to view the cosmos compared to most other societies of ancient

and modern times. That is, the Inkas and their ancestors (and descendants) in this region lived:

a) within a highly unstable environment characterized by notable geological instability, and b)

within the southern hemisphere, a location shared only by continental peoples in southern
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Africa and Australia as well as by peoples occupying scattered, primarily island locations around

the globe south of the equator.

The early chapters of this work will be concerned primarily with the latter of the two

unique characteristics of the world occupied by central Andean peoples – that is, the celestial

sphere as viewed and experienced by occupants of the southern hemisphere. We will turn later

(Chapter VI) to consider the unique characteristics of life within the highly unstable terrestrial

sphere of the central Andes, perched as it is on the edge of one of the most active zones of

plate tectonic motions of any place on earth.

As I will discuss early in this work, from their location within the southern hemisphere,

the Inkas and other peoples of the central Andes were afforded a view of the cosmos that was

significantly different from that of the other major civilizations of the ancient world located in

the northern hemisphere (e.g., the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Greeks, Romans, Shang Chinese

and Mayans). It is what the Inkas and their ancestors made of their observations of the universe

from their unusual perspective that will be of interest to us here. How did they make sense of

the movements of the celestial sphere from a position on the globe from which, for instance,

“up” was to the south? How did they represent their perceptions of their lived world – both the

terrestrial and celestial spheres – in their creation and production of everything from a

cosmology to material objects (e.g., textiles, buildings, settlements)? And how did they

integrate their peculiar view of the celestial sphere with their social lives and cultural values?

These are some of the questions we will explore in this work.

The observation of the uniqueness of the view to and of the celestial sphere from the

southern hemisphere by peoples in the west-central Andes will be our starting point to explore
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the Andean/Inka cosmological tradition. As we will see, central to this cosmology were

settlements patterns, iconography, and material cultural products emphasizing quadripartite,

usually inter-cardinal, cross forms and radial line centers. We will find that certain aspects of

this cosmological tradition were shared among peoples and societies in South America from

just below the equator southward to around the Tropic of Capricorn and from the Pacific coast

eastward, over the Andes, to settlements along several of the major southeastern tributaries of

the Amazon River (e.g., the Xingu and Tocantins Rivers), in Brazil.

Finally, my more specific objective in this study will be to explore the origins and

rationale behind what was one of the most complex cultural constructions of ancient South

America – the ceque (“[imaginary/conceptual] line”) system of the Inka capital city of Cuzco.

The ceque system was the framework, structure, and organization for life in the Inka capital –

its social structure, political organization, history, state ceremonies and rituals, the calendar,

and the local agro-pastoral economy – all wrapped up by a bundle of conceptual lines of

orientation emanating from the center of the city and crossing through the topography of the

Cuzco valley – much like the imaginary lines of latitude and longitude organize and orient our

view of our global maps.

This case study will illustrate the extraordinary significance of lines of every type,

function, and dimension in the project of the construction of a unified culture and cosmology

within a highly unstable environment and over a very long time period (on the general

significance of lines in cultural productions, see Ingold, 2007).

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Acknowledgments:

I am extremely grateful to several colleagues for reading and commenting on earlier

drafts of this manuscript. I will not name names here so as to protect the anonymity of my

colleagues (under current, constrained circumstances), but you know who you are. Thanks to

each and every one of you for your kindness and generosity during what has been a complex

and difficult time for the author. I am responsible for any and all errors that remain in the final

manuscript.

My research in the Andes over the past 45 years has been supported by grants and/or

fellowships from a variety of institutions, including: the National Science Foundation, the

National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wenner-

Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Social Science Research Council, the

American Philosophical Society, the National Geographic Society, the John Simon Guggenheim

Memorial Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign, Colgate University, Harvard University and the Dumbarton Oaks Foundation. I

express my appreciation to each of these institutions and/or entities for its support.

My deepest appreciation goes to my wife, Julia L. Meyerson, who has stayed with me

and supported me through thick and thin, as well as to my sons and their wives: Mark and

Joely, Jason and Cristy, and Noah and Jess. I am humbled and deeply grateful to you for your

continued support and forbearance through all the intervening vicissitudes.

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Chapter I

An Introduction to the Study of Andean Cosmology, the Ceque System and “lo andino”

Prolegomenon:

The overriding point to take into the reading of the early chapters of this book is that

the cultures we will examine here – the central Andean societies of Pre-Columbian western

South America – were fundamentally different from every other high civilization of the ancient

world. One of the main reasons for this difference is that, by virtue of their location in the

southern hemisphere, the peoples of these societies viewed and experienced the universe in a

fundamentally different way from people living in the northern hemisphere. For example, for

southern hemisphere inhabitants, south was “up” (as opposed to north as “up,” in the northern

hemisphere); celestial objects wheeled through the sky from the left (east) to the right (west)

as people looked toward the south; and, in the absence of a pole star (like Polaris at the north

celestial pole), every point in the universe in the southern hemisphere was in motion. These are

the primary conditions that set the stage for our examination of a cosmological tradition unlike

any that existed among northern hemisphere civilizations.

We will see how, given the conditions outlined above, central Andean peoples made

sense of, and brought order to, their universe. The culminating expression of that state of order

was with the Inka Empire (1450 – 1532 C.E.) and its capital city, Cuzco. In fact, I will show here

that the system of organization of Cuzco, in what is known as the “ceque [‘line’] system,” was

arguably the most complex cultural construction of Pre-Columbian South America. Two of the

keys to this cosmological tradition were the cross, based on the intersecting axes of the Milky

Way in the zenith, and the radial center.

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The Cross and Radial Systems

What I am interested in initially in this work is to examine two seemingly independent

paradigms that were common, and perhaps unique, to central Andean societies of western

South America in the past and that were central elements of their cosmological traditions. The

first paradigm concerns the wide-spread and long term recognition of the crossing of the two

great celestial, intercardinal axes (X) formed by the opposing arms of the Milky Way

intersecting (over time) in the zenith. This striking celestial vision served as the model for

dividing and orienting both celestial and terrestrial space into four parts, or quarters. I suggest

that this was, historically, the first paradigm to emerge and to become crystallized in central

Andean cosmologies.

The second paradigm was that of a central place defined by multiple lines radiating out

from, and/or converging on, some central place. I think this was the second of the two

paradigms to emerge and that it was derivative from the first. Although radial centers appeared

in cultures from the dry Peruvian coastal desert to the Amazonian tropical forest, the iconic and

most complex example of this form of organization was the ceque system, the complex array of

imaginary lines (“ceques”) radiating out from the center of the city of Cuzco, the capital of the

Inka Empire. Like the imaginary “lines” joining stars to form a constellation, the ceque lines

were like what Ingold categorizes as “ghostly lines” (Ingold, 2007:47-49). The ceque system was

the framework for the social, ritual, and political organization of the ancient city.

I have characterized the oblique axes cross and the radial center as cultural and

cosmological paradigms because I think they were widely recognized by central Andean peoples
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beginning several millennia B.C.E. down to the time of the Inkas (ca. 1450 – 1532 C.E.) as

powerful and formally elegant models of shared, collective values and as sources of order in

what was otherwise a disorderly and potentially chaotic world. As powerful images for

modelling social behavior and action, they would have been employed, in mimetic fashion, to

structure and give coherence and consistency to the mental and material worlds of these

ancient Andean peoples.

After describing the two paradigms in terms of their particular structures and contexts

of formation in certain pre-Inka settings, I suggest that they were eventually fused into a single,

unified cosmological structure in the form of what was termed Tawantinsuyu (“the four parts

intimately united”), the name by which the Inkas knew their empire. I will show that the ideal

framework of this four-part, imperial organization was the crossing of a pair of axes forming

four, ideally equal quarters (suyus) with their center in Cuzco. The four parts, or suyus, were

called Chinchaysuyu, Antisuyu, Collasuyu, and Cuntisuyu. The origin and template for this four-

part division of terrestrial space was the X of the crossing of the two axes of the Milky Way in

the zenith above the capital city of Cuzco. This was as well the framework and genesis of what

would become the radial array of lines of the ceque system of Cuzco.

As we will see in more detail later (Chapter VII), the on-the-ground framework for the

ceque system was a set of four roads going out from the center of the city, and/or of those

same four roads converging on the center. Over time, the original four roads were expanded by

the addition of more lines of orientation (ceques) connecting an array of some 328 (or 350,

depending on how one counts) “sacred places” (wak’as) within the city and valley of Cuzco. The
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ceques accommodated and organized relations among multiple clan-like social, political and

ritual groups – termed ayllus (“lineage, species”) – that resided within each quarter (Figure 1).

Figure 1 – Partial, schematic rendering of the Ceque System of Cuzco

(after Abercrombie, 1998:176)

The initial structure of the ceque system eventually grew to an arrangement of (3x3=) 9

ceques dividing each of the four quarters of the city; this produced a total of (9x4=) 36 lines of

orientation – like 36 slices of a pie – organizing the residential and ritual space of the valley. The

“filling in” of the four quarters was related to such factors as: a) the location of irrigation

districts and the distribution of water within the Cuzco valley; b) the distribution and placement

of strip-like land divisions, referred to as chapas, within the valley that were assigned to

different social groups; and c) the accommodation of the expansion of royal and non-royal

ayllus occupying the capital and the space within the surrounding valley.
 20

The array of 36 lines of the early ceque radial line system represented a balanced (9 x 4)

array of 36 different directions from the center out to the horizon, defining the social and ritual

space in and around the capital and, ultimately, of the empire as a whole. Reciprocally, these

were the 36 different points of view from outside the city from which the center was defined.

From the 36 lines of the original, ideal ceque system structure, the over-all organization was

expanded to 41 lines of orientation by the time it was described to the Spaniards, in the late

16th century. This re-configuring of the original, balanced system was undertaken to

accommodate social, political and historical perturbations that occurred, primarily, in one

quarter of the imperial structure – that of Cuntisuyu, the quarter of the empire located to the

south/southwest of Cuzco. It is perhaps significant that the re-structured quarter was the one

that was associated in Inka mythohistory with the origin places of the Inkas – Lake Titicaca,

Tiwanaku, and a place nearer to Cuzco, called Pacariqtambo.

The complex, re-structured 41-ceque radial system is described, including the sacrifices

that were to be made at each of the sacred places (wak’as) defining the various ceques, in a

document transcribed from a khipu (“knot”-ted cord) account and transcribed in the 17th

century chronicle of the Jesuit priest Bernabé Cobo (1990; see also Bauer, 1997). Over time, the

ceque system could theoretically have potentially grown to 50, or 100, or even more

lines/perspectives making up the total system – that is, had the entire system not collapsed

following the Spanish conquest of Tawantinsuyu, beginning in 1532.

There has been a good deal of literature concerning the organization of Tawantinsuyu

and the ceque system of Cuzco published by archaeologists (see especially Bauer, 1998, 2004;

and Covey, 2006; Kosiba, 2015b, 2017) and ethnohistorians (see D’Altroy, 2015; Pease, 1978;
 21

Rostworowski, 1999; Rowe, 1985, 1992; Wachtel, 1977; and Zuidema, 1964) over the past half-

century, or so. That said, one might well ask, what remains to be investigated, explained and

understood about these cultural phenomena? My answer would be that there is a profound

disjunction between what we know about social, political and ritual arrangements and

organizations in urban centers in the Andes before the time of the Inkas and those of the time

of the Inka empire itself. That is, while we know a good deal about the four-part organizations

and radial center array of the Inka empire and the ceque system of Cuzco, we know virtually

nothing about where these forms of organization came from, what they were based on, and

whether or not they had pre-Inka antecedents.

One might well wonder: How can we know so much (relatively) about the Inkas and so

little about the societies and cultures that preceded them in the central Andes? What is critical

to recognize with respect to this question is that no pre-Columbian Andean civilization

(including the Inkas) invented and used a system of writing to describe their own society.

Therefore, we have no indigenous, pre-European descriptions of Andean socio-political systems

(including the ceque system) prior to the accounts that were recorded by literate European

conquerors and administrators in the early 16th century. Therefore, it is only with the Inkas and

their contemporaries around the central Andes – such peoples as the Chimu, Chankas, Collas,

and others, who were also conquered by and came under the administrative control and

surveillance of literate Europeans – that we have written descriptions of how these societies

were organized. As noted above, the details of the ceque system of Inka Cuzco are laid out in

the chronicle of the 17th century Jesuit priest Bernabé Cobo. What we read in Cobo’s
 22

description is of an exceedingly complex social, political and ritual arrangement in the Inka

capital.

But this raises the question: What about those pre-Inka political and ritual centers that

were occupied earlier and whose glories had passed into (virtual) oblivion, as ruins, before

Europeans arrived – that is, ancient Andean cities and ceremonial centers, like Caral, Chavín de

Huantar, Cahuachi, Tiwanaku, Wari, and other pre-Inka ceremonial and/or urban centers?

Might each of these ancient cities have had its own, earlier version of four-part and radial

center organizations, even ceque systems? In that case, the Inkas would have been the heirs of

a long tradition of ceque system organizations. Or, did the Inkas “invent” this system of

organization, whole-cloth, as it were, and ex nihilo?

Answering the questions posed above depends partially on what presumptions one

makes about the amount and degree of continuity of cultural traditions in central Andean

societies across time. Many students of Andean societies have presumed that there was,

indeed, a long-term persistence of certain forms of organization across the succession of

central Andean societies from very early in the archaeological record to the time of the Inkas –

and, in some cases, down to the present day. Such a presumption goes under the label of lo

andino (“the Andean [way]”).

The term lo andino has a long history of use in Andean studies, in both a positive and a

negative framing. Seen positively, lo andino refers to a particular perspective on the supposed

highly durable nature of certain Andean practices and institutions and the persistence through

time of the values underlying those institutions and giving them coherence over time. The

person whose name is most closely associated with the positive use of this term is John V.
 23

Murra (1975; see also Daniel Gade, 1999, who has clarified the essence and significance of this

concept most clearly). Murra was, indeed, a powerful advocate of the idea of the special nature

of Andean civilizations, attributing much of this, especially as it pertained to the Inkas, to their

adaptation to the high, rugged Andes and to the durable nature of such indigenous institutions

as the ayllu. A Peruvian author who spoke eloquently to these issues, as well as of the special

status of the ayllu in traditional Peruvian communities, was José Carlos Mariátegui (1988

[1928]).

“Lo andino” also has a negative, or pejorative, connotation, as when it is used to accuse

scholars of inappropriately celebrating and over-valorizing the “continuity” of Andean cultures,

particularly when seen in the context of European colonization. Those taking this negative view

(many of whom have approached Andean studies from a Marxist perspective) portray “lo

andino” as a naïve, romantic view of these societies and their place in global history. According

to this view, those who would celebrate “lo andino” fail to recognize the effects of the long

period of colonial domination of Andean societies and the changes that were wrought in them

by European and North American domination. In this view, the so-called “continuity” of

institutions and practices in Andean communities is to mistake a willful persistence of Andean

ways of life for what is to be more properly understood as their long-term impoverishment and

economic dependence as a consequence of the subordination of South American (and other

“Third World”) societies to European powers.

I state and affirm that I am not naïve about the historical transformations of Andean

societies under colonial domination. These transformations have involved the imposition of

profoundly exploitative regimes of enforced labor on indigenous populations; the continuous

 24

extraction of the wealth of minerals and other natural resources from the Andean environment,

generally to little or no profit for local societies and national governments; and the unfavorable

position in global capitalism which has characterized Andean national economies since

European conquest and colonization.

That said, I will nonetheless show that there were, and still are, a number of

extraordinary features of an adaptation to the central Andes for which certain “persistent”

institutions offered the most logical, efficient, and therefore long-term solutions. I will suggest

that it is these characteristics, in the first place, that render Andean societies unique and – dare

I say – special, in human history. To argue that this is the case, and in doing so, to argue for a

long term cosmological tradition with which Andean societies have constructed a unique

identity for themselves, is one of my more general objectives here.

How might we determine whether or not the presumptions of “lo andino,” or long-term

cultural continuity, hold in terms of whether or not four-part and radial center forms of

organization were shared by the Inkas and their ancestors? My answer to this question is that

it is only by reconstructing central elements of Inka cosmology, which were core features of

Tawantinsuyu and the ceque system of Inka Cuzco, and then examining the extent to which

these elements were shared by pre-Inka civilizations that we can begin to make informed

judgments of whether or not there were long-term continuities in central Andean cosmologies.

So, what I am suggesting is that by developing a clearer and more expansive

understanding of what we call “cosmology” (see below) for the Inkas and, on the basis of that

knowledge, investigating what among those elements might have been shared by pre-Inka

societies, will we be able to make informed judgments as to whether or not such (what I am
 25

calling here) paradigms as the Inka four-part and radial center organizations had ancestral,

antecedent roots in earlier central Andean societies.

I recognize that to pursue fully and in detail the program of comparative field

investigations laid out above would, indeed, be exceedingly ambitious. To realize such a

detailed study of the spatial organizations of all or even many pre-Inka political centers in the

terms laid out above would take a great deal of intensive archaeological and material cultural

research and investigation. I do not have the time, resources and/or the expertise to carry out

such an ambitious research program. What I propose to do herein, therefore, is to develop the

background and bases for such a study. I would hope then that the full study might be

undertaken by the next generation of archaeologists, cultural historians, and even cultural

astronomers. In sum, it is the reconstruction of a long-term, shared central Andean

cosmological tradition, which merged at a moment in pre-history to form the structures of the

Inka Empire and the ceque system of Cuzco, that are the specific goals of this study.

To clarify further how I position my present effort in terms of the scope of the study of

Inka cosmology, I note that the first book I published, which was based on my Ph.D.

dissertation, in 1979, was entitled, At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky (1981). The sub-

title of that book was: An Andean Cosmology. I understood at the time that I completed that

study that the cosmology I was exploring concerned how the celestial and terrestrial spheres,

and time and space, were understood in the one small village (Misminay) in the Cuzco region

where I had carried out my dissertation fieldwork. Therefore, the objective there was “an”

Andean cosmology – in the singular. In the present work, I propose to widen the scope of my

investigation to the cosmology of the central Andean region from (theoretically) the earliest
 26

peopling of this region down to the time of the Inkas, and even, in some instances, down to the

present day.

By the term cosmology, I will be addressing what I will formulate as a central Andean

and Inka version of the terms and concepts found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

that pertain to the “philosophy of Cosmology:”

“…[T]here are two main issues that make the philosophy of cosmology unlike

that of any other science. The first is, ‘The uniqueness of the Universe: there

exists only one universe, so there is nothing else similar to compare it with…’

The second is ‘Cosmology deals with the physical situation that is the context

in the large for human existence: the universe has such a nature that our life

is possible’” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmology/).

More simply, the Cambridge English Dictionary defines cosmology as “the study of the

nature and origin of the universe.” This will be an adequate definition for us to begin with here.

I will also from time to time discuss the concept of Andean cosmograms. By this term, I

mean: “… a flat geometric figure depicting a cosmology. Some of them were created for

meditational purpose. Mandalas are the best known cosmograms, but similar diagrams, known

as schema, were also used in western Europe during the Middle Ages.”

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmogram).

The principal cosmogram that I seek to understand and explain in this work is the ceque

system of Cuzco, an understanding which we will construct by unifying terrestrial and celestial

elements, or convergent structures, in paradigmatic forms.

 27

The Organization and Contents of This Book

In Chapter II, I will describe the background from which I arrived at work on the problem

of the origin of the ceque system of Cuzco and its relationship to the broader topic of Andean

cosmology. This will involve brief overviews of my research and publications on Andean

astronomy, Inka myth and history, Quechua numbers and mathematics, and study of the Inka

khipus, the knotted string devices used for recordkeeping in the Inka Empire. Several

theoretical issues central to this study are addressed.

In Chapter III, I will present material relating to the global position of the societies of the

central Andes and discuss the significance of their location, south of the equator, for their view

of and relationship to the celestial sphere. This discussion will be essential – especially for

northern hemisphere readers – for explaining why being located in this particular geographical

location has such a profound effect on how one views and relates to celestial bodies and

motions. Central to this discussion will be an explanation of the extraordinary challenge –

especially when encountered for the first time – of finding a guide for celestial and terrestrial

orientations when one is located in the southern hemisphere. At the end of this discussion, the

reader will come to understand and appreciate the significance of the Milky Way (our galaxy)

for inhabitants of the southern hemisphere.

In Chapter IV, I will present a number of case studies of material cultural expressions, or

mimetic models, of what was evidently a recognition of the significance of the crossing of the

axes of the Milky Way constructed and/or performed by peoples of the central Andes, from the

early settling of the region down to the Inkas – and, in some cases, down to the present day.

From this discussion, we will recognize the broad, wide-spread and long-term importance of the
 28

cross form (X) In central Andean archaeological and material cultural productions. I will argue

that each of the examples viewed and analyzed in this chapter was a mimetic formulation, a

“representation,” performed in one mode or another and in one medium or another, as an

indigenous expression, investigation, and appreciation of the core features of Andean

cosmology. It was through the principles and processes of mimesis and performance that the

Andean cosmological tradition was renewed, innovated on, and memorialized by each

generation of builders and makers of this Andean cosmology through time.

In Chapter V, we will turn to the question of radial centers, focusing on a number of

examples from both the central Andean region, as well as from over the Andes, to the east,

within the great expanse of the Amazon River basin. We will see in this material how a number

of pre-Inka societies in the Andes and Amazonia arrayed their residential structures and public

buildings in circular (or semi-circular), radial center settlements. I will discuss there how this

settlement pattern may have been chosen not only for reasons related to local topographies

but as well for accommodating local organizations to wider scale geo-political arrangements,

particularly in the form of “galactic polities” around “exemplary centers.”

In Chapter VI, I will present what, at that point, may appear as a digression, explaining

the general geographical and environmental features of the territory occupied in the central

Andes by the Inka empire. The purpose of this chapter will be to explain the basis and probable

origin of one of the principal socio-political institutions of Andean civilizations – the ayllu (“type;

species; lineage”). It will be important to understand how these social groupings – the ayllus –

were formed throughout the territory of Tawantinsuyu because, when we later turn to the

internal social organization of the city of Cuzco, we will find that the central social elements
 29

there was a group of 20 ayllus – 10 royal ayllus (known as panacas), and 10 non-royal ayllus

(referred to simply as ayllus). This discussion of the ayllus and their relationship to the complex

Andean geography will give us insights into the social constitution of Andean cosmology.

In Chapter VII, we will turn to a discussion of the geographical location and settlement

pattern of what was the most important urban center in the Inka Empire, the capital city,

Cuzco. We will see in this discussion that the city of Cuzco was laid out in such a way that

accommodated orientation to what was recognized as the most important celestial orientation:

the northwest/southeast axis of the Milky Way. This orientation will be seen not only for the

city of Cuzco but also for its most important, nearby river, the Vilcanota/Urubamba River. We

will also take note of the importance of this orientation in Inka cosmology, mythology and

ritual/ceremonial practices. I also propose that Cuzco was the “exemplary center” of a

heretofore unrecognized “galactic polity.”

In Chapter VIII, we will build on the understanding of the layout of Inka Cuzco from the

previous chapter to present an overview of the radial line center system by which the city was

organized: the ceque system. As described briefly above, the ceque system was the

arrangement of 41 imaginary lines, or rays, within the city and valley of Cuzco along which were

arrayed some 328 (or 350) sites, known as wak’as (“sacred objects, sites, places”). It is argued

that the ceque system was the most complex urban organization in Pre-Columbian South

America – a circumstance that may be accounted for by virtue of the fact that, as the capital of

the Inka Empire, this was the place where literate Europeans (i.e., Spanish conquistadores,

administrators and priests) first settled and began to inquire into and document (in written

form) indigenous central Andean political, social and ritual structures and practices. There may
 30

well have been other, equally complex local organizations elsewhere in the Andes and/or South

America but which did not receive the amount of attention directed at the Inka capital on the

part of literate Europeans in those early, post-conquest years.

In Chapter IX, I will introduce the Inka khipus – the knotted string device used for

recordkeeping in Tawantinsuyu – and discuss the relevance of the structures and recording

technology of this device in relation to the model of the ceque system. Given the fact that one

of our major Spanish chroniclers, Polo de Ondegardo, stated that there were at least one

hundred communities in Tawantinsuyu organized by local ceque systems, I argue that the

ceque system-like khipus would have provided a principal model for such provincial systems, as

well as the means for coordinating between provincial places and the center, Cuzco.

In Chapter X, I discuss how our two principal paradigmatic forms – the cross (X) and the

radial center – have been merged and represented in cosmograms by colonial and present-day

scholars. The focus here will be on Tawantinsuyu and the city of Cuzco, but we will also take

into account other, large-scale South American cosmographic forms, such as the “Galactic

Polities” of the Amazon basin.

In Chapter XI, I conclude by giving an overview of the major findings of this study and

suggest how our study may stimulate further research into central Andean, as well as general

South American and southern hemisphere, societies in the future.

 31

Chapter II

From Astronomy and Cosmology to Khipus – Back Again

From the beginning of work on this book, I have thought of this as a cumulative and

synthetic work, drawing on the different research projects and publications I have engaged in

during my almost half-century of working in the field of Andean studies. The first research

project I undertook, as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in

1975-77, concerned a study of astronomy and the calendar in Misminay, a small peasant

community of several hundred people located on the plain of Anta, several tens of kilometers

north of Cuzco (Urton, 1981). I went to Misminay with the objective of studying the

astronomical knowledge and beliefs of people in this village as a basis for understanding not

only how people at that time viewed the relation between the celestial and terrestrial spheres

and how they adapted their agro-pastoral economy to those phenomena and circumstances,

but also as a basis for rethinking how commoners living under Inka rule, who occupied this

same territory until the early decades of the 16th century, might have viewed their world and

maintained a local political economy within these same, or at least similar, conditions.

These objectives for my fieldwork in the 1970s required that I become familiar with how

people worked the land, and indeed, I spent most of my days during my almost one year of

fieldwork helping the men of the village with a variety of agricultural tasks. This both taught me

how to perform the major agricultural duties of making a living off the land in these climes, and

it gave me the opportunity to become acquainted with (especially) the men of the village. As a
 32

(then) young, single man, it was not really possible to make the acquaintance of the women of

the village, except through my association with their husbands.

After working with men in the fields all day, I would often ask one or a few of the more

receptive, talkative men if I could discuss with them what they knew about the night skies.

When someone was willing to discuss these matters with me, we would meet in their or my

own house at night, and they would point out to me the stars and constellations. After viewing

the night sky with a villager, I would mark the celestial phenomena they had pointed out on a

copy of a star map I used while in the field (Figure 2). This was a hand-drawn map made by a

Russian astronomer, Sergei Gaposhkin, in 1956-57. Gaposhkin states that he drew the map will

sitting night after night, on a hilltop in Australia. The map shows the Milky Way running

horizontally through the center of the drawing, with the south celestial pole to the right of

center, just below the bright line of the galaxy (Gaposhkin, 1960). In the center of the map are

the two bright stars of a and b centauri (known to the Quechua villagers as llamañawin, “the

eyes of the llama”). This map was an extraordinarily useful resource for identifying and

recording the stars and constellations of the southern skies (Urton, 1981:11).
 33

Figure 2 - Drawing of the full line of the Milky Way as viewed from the southern
hemisphere (Gaposhkin, 1960)

After living and working in Misminay for about 12 months (in 1975-76), I had

accumulated a lot of information concerning astronomy, the agricultural calendar and the

duties of the months, as well as a couple of dozen star maps marked with the Quechua names

of stars and constellations prominent in the sky during different months of the year. It was,

however, difficult to make sense of all of this information referring only to the flat, two-

dimensional map of the stars I had used to collect the information.

As it turned out, near the end of my year of fieldwork, while walking down a street in

the city of Cuzco, I saw a celestial globe in a store window. I bought that globe, and I then

closed myself up in my room for about a week, spinning the globe, trying to understand where

the various stars and constellations were located around the full sphere of the night skies over

the course of the year. It was in this way that I came to an understanding of the crossing of the

axes of the Milky Way in the zenith, which I discuss in considerable detail in Chapter II. As I was

at that time still near to Misminay, I was also able to go back to the village from time to time in

order to confirm (or disconfirm, and correct) with people in the village my understanding of

various aspects of the local astronomy.

I have often considered that this first project set something of a long term agenda, at

least implicitly, for my subsequent research projects. I reprise the central features of the study

of Andean and Inka astronomy in Chapter II. In fact, my argument for the origins of the ceque

system of Cuzco will be built explicitly on the foundations of this first of my research projects.
 34

A few years after carrying out the ethnographic fieldwork in Misminay, I received an NSF

grant to study astronomy in another community in the Cuzco region. The objective of this new

project was to determine if the astronomical beliefs and calendrical organization in the one

village north of Cuzco where I had worked (Misminay) were similar to or different from what

one might encounter in another village in the Cuzco region. For my second study, I chose to go

to the opposite side of Cuzco, to the south, and ended up in the town of Pacariqtambo, in the

province of Paruro. I spent more than two and a half years in fieldwork in Pacariqtambo, with

my wife, Julia Meyerson, through the 1980s (see Meyerson, 1990). As for how we ended up in

Pacariqtambo, I was aware at the time that a place known in the Spanish colonial chronicles

and documents as “Pacaritambo” was reputedly the origin place of the first king of the Inka

dynasty, Manco Capac and his siblings. I found this status of the town to be intriguing, and thus

I was attracted to the idea of pursuing fieldwork there.

In terms of the origin myth, the Inka ancestor, Manco Capac, was said to have come out

of the earth from a cave, called Tambo T’oco (“split/crack resting place”), near to

“Pacaritambo.” The original site of the origin place turned out to be an archeological ruin,

known today as Maukallaqta (“ancient town”), which is located a few kilometers north of the

town which, since colonial times, has been known as Pacariqtambo (see Bauer, 1992). In the

Quechua language, pacari[q] may be glossed as “dawn,” while tambo (or tampu) referred to a

“way-station,” or a rest stop along a road. From their origin in the cave of Tambo T’oco in

Maukallaqta/Pacariqtambo, the Inka ancestors, along with ayllus made up of residents from

Pacaritambo/Tambo T’oco, wandered around the land until they came upon the Cuzco valley,

where they founded their capital.

 35

I discovered very early on in this second period of fieldwork that there was a great deal

of similarity between Pacariqtambo and Misminay in terms of the astronomical knowledge and

beliefs of their residents. Thus, it appeared that staying with that research topic might well

result in a mere repetition of my earlier research in Misminay. Soon enough however, my

interest turned to trying to understand what was a very complex organization of 10 clan-like

social groups, termed ayllus (“kin group; lineage; species”), in Pacariqtambo. The 10 ayllus were

divided equally into moieties, five pertained to Hanansayaq (“of the upper part”) and five to

Hurinsayaq (“of the lower part”). Every individual in the community was affiliated with one or

another of the 10 ayllus (see Urton, 1984, 1986, 1992, 1993a and b).

The ayllus were the principal groups through which individuals gained rights to land,

helped sponsor community-wide festivals, and were recruited for performing public works.

Through historical research in Pacariqtambo and Cuzco, I documented the existence of the 10

ayllus and their division into moieties in Pacariqtambo going back to the mid-16th century, just a

few decades after the Spanish conquest of the Inka Empire, which began in 1532. As we will see

later, there were 10 royal ayllus and 10 commoner ayllus that composed the social organization

of Inka Cuzco. The 10 + 10 Cuzco ayllus were each divided equally between two moieties, also

designated hanan (“upper”) and hurin (“lower”). Therefore, it seemed early on in my fieldwork

in Pacariqtambo that by studying the ayllus and moieties of Pacariqtambo, this would not only

be valuable research for understanding the social organization of Andean communities at that

time (i.e., the 1980s), but also – and especially given the status of Pacariqtambo as the Inka

place of origin – there might be some implications of the study of this particular contemporary

community for the social organization of the Inkas and their ceque system (see Urton, 1990b).
 36

Thus, my first two field projects set in motion what I would characterize as a slow, and

at that time still distant, orbiting of my research topics around the problem of the origin and

significance of the ceque system of Cuzco. Did the ceque system relate in some fundamental

way to the peculiar nature of Andean astronomy and the cosmological tradition as seen in

Misminay, on one hand, as well as to the ayllu- and moiety-based social organization of the Inka

capital as seemingly derived from, or at least related to, a similar organization in the ancestral

town of Pacariqtambo, on the other hand? We will explore a number of aspects of these

relations in the course of this study.

The fieldwork and ethnohistorical research focusing on Pacariqtambo soon led to a

study of the Inka recording device, the khipu (“knot”). As it turns out, this is another topic that

we can place in orbit around the problem of the ceque system. This is because the main

account of the details of the ceque system that has come down to us in the Spanish chronicles –

that contained in the writings of the 17th century chronicler Bernabé Cobo (1990 [1653]) –

indicates that the ceque system was recorded on a khipu in Inka times. It was an earlier (i.e.,

pre-Cobo) Spaniard, probably the jurist Polo de Ondegardo, who oversaw the transcription of

the ceque system khipu registry into a written document (Bauer, 1997).

The fact that just about any khipu can be easily turned into a circle with lines composed

of knotted strings radiating out from the center (i.e., as in a radial line center ceque system-like

arrangement) has often been characterized as pointing to an intimate, structural connection

between the ceque system and khipus. As I have argued elsewhere (Urton, 2017:143-53), I

think it is highly likely, despite the testimony of Polo de Ondegardo that the ceque system was

recorded on “a khipu” (i.e., singular), and because of the ubiquity of dualism in virtually all
 37

aspects of life and organization in Inka society, that the ceque system would have probably

been recorded on a pair of khipus – one each for upper (hanan) and lower (hurin) Cuzco –

rather than on a single khipu (see Figure 3).

Figure 3 - A pair of khipus compared to the organization of the ceque system

Most studies of khipus up to the early 1990s had focused on the mathematical

properties of the data recorded in these devices (see especially Ascher & Ascher, 1997).

However, when we read what the Spanish chroniclers had to say about the officials – known as

khipukamayuqs (“knot makers/organizers/ animators”) – who recorded, maintained, and read

the khipus, they indicate clearly that these devices not only recorded numerical and statistical

information of interest to the Inka state (e.g., census data, storehouse records, tribute

accounts), but also accounts of Inka history, the calendar, and other such narrative records. As I

had been studying several of these topics in my research up to that time, I became curious

about what one might still discover about these matters from an indigenous point of view by a

focus not only on the extant khipus themselves, but also on the materials and techniques of
 38

production of these devices. The latter involved the production of cotton and camelid (i.e.,

llama and alpaca) fibers for yarn, the spinning and plying of threads, and the dyeing of fibers –

that is, the materials and techniques in the production of textiles.

I determined in the early 1990s to begin a broad-scale study of the khipus, focusing on:

a) the materials, techniques and language [esp. of Quechua numbers and mathematics] relating

to weaving, b) study of khipus in museum collections around the world, and c) research in

historical archives on documents concerning colonial recordkeeping and the transcription of

khipus in the post-Inka, colonial societies of the central Andes.1

At the beginning of my research, I decided to carry out fieldwork in villages of weavers,

communicating as much as possible in the Quechua language. This, I thought, would give me

the opportunity to learn from Quechua-speaking weavers about the physical and intellectual

components critical to the materials, technologies and the knowledge system (especially of

numbers and mathematics) related to khipus, including the recording of information in threads,

knots, colors, etc. These objectives led to fieldwork, supported by the National Endowment for

the Humanities, on weaving and weavers in Bolivia, in 1990-1991. These were years in which

the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso was disrupting highland Peruvian communities;

therefore, avoiding the potential perils of living with my family in Peru, I carried out a year of

fieldwork in weaving villages near to Sucre, in central Bolivia.

During this time, I also worked regularly with a Quechua language teacher at a university

in Sucre, Primitivo Nina Llanos. This linguistic research involved an intensive study of numbers,

numeration, arithmetic, and aspects of mathematics in the Quechua language. For instance, we

began by spending several days talking, in Quechua (to the extent possible), about the number
 39

one; then several days on the number two, then three, and so on. We then spent many days

and weeks talking, in Quechua and Spanish, about the basic arithmetic operations (addition,

subtraction, multiplication, and division). This research resulted in a book on the ontology of

Quechua numbers and the philosophy of arithmetic (Urton, 1997).

The central argument of that book was that the principal concept and value guiding

much of Quechua arithmetic thinking was “rectification.” This refers to the notion that

arithmetic operations are ideally considered to be guided toward continually seeking to achieve

balance in the world, as represented in numerical values and operations and in the distribution

of material goods. The emphasis on balance was expressed as well in the centrality of

decimalization in Quechua numeration and the effort to seek to avoid odd (“imbalanced”)

values in favor of (i.e., rectifying them to) even values. It is important to note that numeration

in the Inka khipus was grounded in a base-10, decimal place-value system of numeration in the

Quechua language. In addition, decimalization was an important structural/organizational value

in the ceque system. By the end of the research in Bolivia, in the mid-1990s, I felt that I was

ready to begin focused work on the Inka khipus.

Since the mid-1990s, I have carried out many years of mostly museum-based research

on the ca. 1,050 surviving khipus in museum collections in Europe and North and South

America, as well as consulting colonial archives in Cuzco and Lima, Peru, and in the Archivo de

Indias, in Seville, Spain. Over the same period, I began collaborative work building an electronic

database, the Khipu Database

(https://web.archive.org/web/20210126031628/https:/khipukamayuq.fas.harvard.edu/)
 40

at Harvard with the support of four research grants from the National Science Foundation.2

The KDB application was built by my research team at Harvard, headed by Carrie J. Brezine,

over the period from 2002 to 2004 and was subsequently reworked into a web-based

application by Pavlo Kononenko, then a graduate student in the Harvard business school. The

KDB has been maintained in recent years by Dr. Jon Clindaniel (a former Harvard archaeology

graduate student), now at the University of Chicago.

My most recent book on the khipus, Inka History in Knots: Reading Khipus as Primary

Sources (2017), is a broad-scale overview of my and others’ khipu research over the past half-

century or so, with a special focus on how histories were recorded in the strings, knots and

colors of the khipus.3 I note that that book contains a chapter on a pair of khipus in a Peruvian

collection that is structured and organized like the ceque system of Cuzco. Thus, my khipu

research orbited even more closely around the long-term gravitational center of my studies:

the ceque system of Cuzco.

This leads us to the present book and to ask the question: What new insights into the

study of the ceque system of Cuzco might be provided by an approach informed by the studies

briefly outlined above? This question immediately thrusts us into a field in which a number of

rather thorny theoretical problems become apparent, and must be addressed.

Theoretical Issues

There are multiple, imbricated theoretical problems – concerning perception, cognition,

description and representation – emerging within and from the issues I address here. Generally,

these have to do with such matters as: How does one know what one (supposedly) knows?
 41

What does “knowing” mean in the context of a person from one language/culture encountering

and trying to understand another, very different language/culture? How should we think about

the nature and significance of what we, in Western societies, term “representation” in a

society, like that of the Quechua-speaking peoples of the central Andes? And, in general, what

was (and is) the understanding of such ontological concepts as existence, being, objects (or

objecthood), and the cosmos in central Andean societies over the long span of time I deal with

here?

I note that I addressed ontological issues earlier in relation to the origin, essence,

meaning and status of numbers in the Quechua language (Urton, 1997). Here, I am concerned

with the larger and much more diffuse and abstract question of how the world, the cosmos, is

understood to “be;” what kinds of things exist in the world and what is their essence; and how

can we communicate, or translate, the nature of being between two different

ontological/cultural traditions. Over the course of the present study, I will be concerned with

such matters particularly in terms of how the relationship between the earth and the sky is

understood in Andean communities and how, in turn, the understanding of that relationship

might have been represented in material productions in the past.

Several of these issues have been discussed recently by Bruce Mannheim, in an

insightful and highly relevant article, entitled, “Southern Quechua ontology” (2020). I would

note that Southern Quechua is the variant of the Quechua language of the central Andes that

not only Mannheim works with, but that is also the variant spoken by people in villages where I

have carried out fieldwork (i.e., Misminay and Pacariqtambo, Peru and Sucre, Bolivia). I
 42

especially want to address here issues raised in Mannheim’s discussions of the ontological fields

of what he terms “properties of the world,” and “frame of reference.”

Properties of the World

The former of these two concepts, properties of the world, relates to the circumstance

that the kinds of objects that are recognized, and the relationship one kind has to a(-ny) other

kind, recognized by people of a certain culture and speaking a certain language is a

fundamental feature of the ontology of that society (Mannheim, 2020:373-77). Not all societies

share the same conception of what constitutes any particular kind or of how any particular kind

relates to any other kind. The discernment of how a given culture and society constitutes kinds

and relations between/among different kinds is a central challenge for the ethnographer in

seeking to understand some other society.

To give a case in point drawn from my fieldwork in Misminay discussed briefly above,

when an informant/friend in the village and I stood outside a house and seemed (to me) to be

pointing at the same thing in the night sky, what kind of thing did we each think we were

pointing at? Beyond the simple question of whether or not we were both in fact pointing at the

same celestial object, what were our ideas about what that object was – i.e., what “kind” of

thing it was? For instance, we might have been pointing at a pair of very bright stars in the

southern skies. What would have been the consequence of his identifying that pair of stars as

“the eyes of the llama” and of my writing down that information but glossing it with the

statement, “he is pointing at a and b centauri?” For my friend, he would know that the “eyes of

the llama” are a pair of very bright stars in the neck of a llama seen in a long, dark streak in the
 43

Milky Way (composed, astronomers tell us, of cosmic dust in the Milky Way). The llama is a

major character in one story in which it is responsible for bringing rain to the earth, as well as

for overseeing the reproduction of llamas. How and where could one develop a field of

conceptualization and discourse that would accommodate the two very different bodies of

knowledge, naming, storytelling and cosmology in which these two identities, the eyes of a

llama and the stars a and b centauri, were meaningful – and meaningfully cross-referential?

Issues such as those outlined above were of primary concern in my initial research on

Andean astronomy in Misminay, and they are matters that I try to thread a path through in the

next chapter. This will also become relevant in Chapter IV, where I examine a number of items

of Andean material culture, including objects used in divination, iconographic imagery, and in

other such media and methods of production and seek to understand them as related to a

larger, over-arching cosmological conception and tradition of representation that (I will be

arguing) were shared by Andean peoples over several millennia. In fact, we will find that

representation, which we might otherwise refer to as mimesis, and the performance and/or

productions of representations of cosmic structures and motions, will be central issues

addressed in Chapter IV. It is highly relevant, therefore, to say something about these matters

at this point.

Mimesis and Performance

A central feature of my description and analysis In Chapter IV will concern the analysis

of made objects – from archaeological artifacts to the pattern of movement of performers –

which, I will argue, are produced as representations or mimetic instantiations of the crossing of
 44

the two inter-cardinal axes of the Milky Way passing through the zenith. We will come to know

this icon as: X. In the sense that the examples we will examine in Chapter IV are

representations, or instantiations in material form, of the intersection of the two celestial axes,

I consider them as constituting icons of this spectacle of galactic movements produced over

every 24 hours – presumably from the beginning of time until eternity.

I would note that I can (as I have done above) make my own version of this icon by

striking a single key on my computer keyboard: X. I can even highlight this image, making it

stand out from the rest of the alphabetic images in this paragraph by making the icon in bold

type: X. These have been my own versions of the making of an iconic image that I will argue

was a key image in Andean cultures and in their cosmology over a long period of time. What we

will examine in chapter IV is a variety of forms and media in which Andean peoples produced

their own versions of this icon for a variety of reasons – e.g., for appreciation of its balance,

elegance and grandeur; for assurance of order in their universe; and so on.

The concept that I suggest describes the actions and intentions by means of which our X

images were produced in the various Andean cultural settings discussed in Chapter IV is

mimesis. As Konstan (2004) has noted, mimesis was a central concept in ancient Greek

aesthetics. In their analysis of Plato’s representation of the social and intellectual significance of

mimesis, Gebaurer and Wulf note that he [Plato]

…attributed to it [mimesis] the capacity of producing a world of appearances.

He understood imitation as the capacity not for producing things but for

producing images. Definitive of these images is the relation of similarity

they bear to things and objects, in which the real and the imaginary come
 45

into combination. (1992:26).

In Stephen Halliwell’s study, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern

Problems (2002), he argues that while “mimesis” is often glossed as “copying,” it is actually a

far more complex and richer concept than that term suggests; in fact, mimesis constitutes what

he terms “a family of concepts” (2002:6). Halliwell notes that the best rendering of the Greek

µiµhsis (mimesis) is “representation.” As he states the matter: “first, the idea of mimesis as

committed to depicting and illuminating a world that is (partly) accessible and knowable

outside art…[and] second, the idea of mimesis as the creator of an independent artistic

heterocosm, a world of its own” (2002:23) renders representation/mimesis as “world-

simulating,” or “world-creating.” I would argue that the mimetic productions of the X iconic

imagery we will examine later in this study are both world-simulating and world-creating in the

sense that they were meant to represent, materialize, memorialize and to situationally bring

into being images conceived to be related to the core features of the galactic motions and

interaction of the two cosmic axes as meaningful to/for the creation of Andean cosmology..

In sum, the making of representations of the iconic celestial/galactic movements

constitutes what I would term acts of mimesis; that is, the objects, motions and repetitive

movements seen in the sky are made manifest – represented – in a variety of material forms, all

of which partake of some aspect of the form I produced above: X. These acts of “making

manifest” – i.e., the mimeses – are some of the actions performed by people transferring the

perceived inter-cardinal X in the heavens into a variety of material forms by the various means

available to them. I suggest that these mimetic performances were undertaken for the purpose
 46

of celebrating, contemplating and attempting to penetrate the meaning and significance of the

X icon for human life; in short, they were “world-simulating” and “world-creating.”

Central to such productions is the expectation of the transfer, or instantiation, of power

from the original object to the copy. As Taussig notes regarding this aspect of mimesis in his

incisive and stimulating book, Mimesis and Alterity (1993):

[T]he mimetic faculty carries outs its honest labor suturing nature to artifice

and bringing sensuousness to sense by means of what was once called

sympathetic magic, granting the copy the character and power of the

original, the representation the power of the represented (Taussig, 1993:

xviii).

In addition to the repeated and diverse instantiations of our iconic X image in a variety

of forms through mimesis, performance was also a feature of each of these productions. For

instance, just as my production of the X image in this text requires that I strike that key on my

keyboard, each instance of the production of this iconic image in the variety of media discussed

below requires some manner of intentional, usually concerted action – performance – on the

part of an individual or a community. As Gebauer and Wulf have noted,

Associated with the physical aspect of mimesis is its performative aspect, as

an actualization, a presentation of what has been mimetically indicated…In

other [than written] modes mimesis tends toward condensed symbols, for

example, toward rituals and images” (1992:5 [emphasis in original].

Whether the task in producing the X icon in our various Andean settings involves the

artistry of sculpting crossed arms in adobe below a niche on the interior of a ceremonial
 47

precinct, or the drawing of the icon (X) on a page of a Colonial manuscript, or the concerted

movement of men and women walking together along the high Bolivian altiplano (as we will

see in one example below), each instance of the production of the X iconic image is

performative. What it is important to state in this regard, then, is that the images we will

examine later are, in toto, not static, as they will appear in the text and in the illustrations

presented in Chapter IV. Rather, each was in its time of enactment, and as an affective object in

its own time and place of production, the product of performative activity, such as the telling of

a myth, a dance of ritual performers, or some other form of activity. In this sense, each of the

images will be understood as an active, performative part of “world-making” in ancient,

Colonial and contemporary Andean societies (see above, and Gebauer and Wulf, 1992:17).

Frame of Reference

Returning to the concept discussed by Mannheim (see above) of “frame of reference,”

this relates to the ways different languages and cultures conceive of and articulate the

relationship between people and the world (Mannheim, 2020: 374). Mannheim distinguishes

between “allocentric” and “egocentric” frames of reference. In the former (characteristic of

Quechua), “…social interaction (in all activities, important and mundane) is anchored primarily

in the physical space surrounding the interaction rather than in the participants.” In the latter

(egocentric systems), “…the frame of reference is projected from the vantage point of the

speaker” (Mannheim, 2020: 377).

In fact, Mannheim (2020:377) uses as his initial example of the Quechua allocentric

frame of reference precisely the observations on the Milky Way I described from my fieldwork
 48

in Misminay, in my book, At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky (1981). This material is the

central topic of Chapter III. There are also very interesting examples of allocentric-like frames of

reference in Howard-Malverde’s, The Speaking of History: ‘Willapaakushayki,’ or Quechua Ways

of Telling the Past (1990). In this work, Howard-Malverde adduces numerous examples in which

Quechua-speakers formulate statements and/or claims about objects, places or events, many

of the latter of which are in the past, based on assuming the point of view from some known

place elsewhere in the landscape (i.e., away from the speaker). As she shows through her

analysis of validation markers in storytelling, people in the village where she carried out her

research would often confirm their knowledge of the truth of this or that event in a story about

the past by proclaiming an intimate familiarity with the places in the landscape that were said

to be central to the events and action in the (hi-)story.

I would note that central to the issue of frame of reference I will be concerned with

here, especially given my focus in Chapter III on a number of astronomical features of

Andean/Inka cosmology, is the fieldwork strategy of collecting astronomical data in the

community of Misminay (and elsewhere), described above, and of incorporating those

phenomena into an overall cosmology. These may raise for the reader certain issues of the

intelligibility, even the veracity, of certain claims I make about those data. For instance, how

much confidence ought the reader to have in a set of descriptions of astronomical data

collected in my fieldwork in which, first, an “informant” and I stood outside, at night, and

viewed the night sky, the informant pointing out and naming this and that celestial body (a star,

constellations, etc.) by pointing with a finger or a nod of his head; second, of our then going

into a house and looking together at a flat, two-dimensional black-and-white drawing of the
 49

night sky made by a Russian astronomer in the 1950s, in the act of transferring what we had

seen outside onto a copy of that map; and then, third, of my later transferring the

identifications of those celestial phenomena from the maps I had collected onto a celestial

globe?

This sequence of transferences, or translations, is particularly poignant in relation In the

last phase of the transfer of information. In identifying the location of a star or constellation

from a flat, two-dimensional map to a celestial globe, the viewer of the globe takes on the

positionality (i.e., the “frame of reference”) of an all-seeing deity, standing outside of the

universe, looking down on the curved surface of a hard-cardboard object molded into the

shape of a celestial globe that can be spun on its north-south axis. What and whose perception

are we to take as meaningful, even authoritative, in this long, multi-stage process of the

transference of information between two (or sometimes more) individual observers across

time, and between at least two very different cultural and linguistic traditions, and finally,

between referential objects (stars in the sky, on a map, and on a globe) having radically

different qualities of media, dimensionality, and other essential properties?

What can be the status – especially the “truth value” – of my verbal descriptions in this

book of the understanding that emerged – within my own, Western-trained brain – of what I

am herein presenting as a Quechua-speaker’s view of astronomy and the cosmos? And

furthermore, what degree of confidence can the reader have in my attempts, in Chapter IV, to

identify objects of material culture – e.g., a drawing of the Inka Empire by an indigenous,

Quechua-speaking chronicler (Guaman Poma de Ayala) as representing the entire cosmos; a

stucco rendering of crossed arms on a 5-6,000 year-old building; or the cross-form of men and
 50

women positioning themselves vis-à-vis each other as they walk along the road over the course

of the year in the Bolivian highlands – and impute to those images a significance of being

representational of “Andean cosmology?”

These issues of representationalism involve ontological matters raised earlier with

respect to both “properties of the world,” and “frame of reference.” I will not attempt to give a

summary, authoritative statement here to justify my later efforts in this regard (and again in

deference to the observation in the epigraph from Carlo Severi). However, I will return when

we discuss these matters to heighten the awareness of how claims about an object

representing something else – including a cross drawn on a wall supposedly representing the

entire cosmos (!) – reflect presumptions about the nature, substance and essence of things as

formulated in the particular cultures, languages, and cosmologies of the central Andes over

several millennia.

A summary of the subject Matter and Objectives of this Book

I suggested earlier that I have long considered that my first book (1981), which focused

on Andean astronomy and which is subtitled “An Andean Cosmology,” addressed a set of issues

that I now believe subsumed much of my subsequent research and that can be said to have set

the agenda for my efforts in this book. I say this because, as I noted earlier, “cosmology”

denotes the totality of some given entity, which may be the universe as a whole, or it may also

refer to some smaller fragment of the total universe but one which understands itself to be a,

or the, totality. The latter describes very nicely how the Inkas thought of their empire, which
 51

they knew as Tawantinsuyu (“the four parts intimately connected”) within their relatively

delimited portion of what we know today as “South America.”

What I am interested in here is the fragment of the total universe that we can designate

as “the Central Andes,” the region of the continent of South America from Ecuador in the north

down to north-central Chile, in the south, and from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the upper

headwaters of the Amazon and Paraná rivers, in the east. My thesis is that the central Andes

constituted a unique setting for cultural developments in human history, and, concomitantly,

that the societies that emerged in the central Andes should be considered as fundamentally

unlike any other societies that developed in the ancient world – before the Western

colonization and domination of the non-West and the emergence of globalism and

globalization, with the spread of capitalism, science, and the subsequent centuries of contests

between different northern hemisphere political and economic systems and ideological

programs over control of the south.

In summary and in essence, what I intend to explore, examine and explain in this work is

the conception and form of central Andean, and especially Inka, cosmology. More specifically, I

will attempt to develop an argument explaining the origin of the ceque system of the Inka

capital, Cuzco. I will show that it is only by coming to understand and adopt an Inka perspective

on the cosmos that we can arrive at an understanding of how the ceque system was a natural

product of living in the central Andean space of the valley of Cuzco.

 52

Chapter III

Building the Andean X Cosmological Paradigm

In order to build up an understanding of the cross of oblique, inter-cardinal axes (X),

which I show in this study was a – if not the – major component of central Andean cosmologies,

of when, where and how it originated, and what phenomena it actually refers to, or represents,

we need to remove ourselves to a location somewhere within the central Andes. From there,

we will look around the landscape and up at the sky, especially at night, and try to make sense

of the extraordinary view one has of these tropical and (in the high Andes) crystal clear skies.

What we will view there will be a sight of celestial motions that can be seen only by a sky-

watcher located in the southern hemisphere. This is the first and most critical act of re-

orienting ourselves to the universe we need to undertake in this investigation, as the celestial

phenomena seen in the skies south of the equator are very different from those viewed by

people inhabiting the lands of any one of the continents wholly within the northern

hemisphere.

Global Position and Its Perceptual and Ideological Implications

One of the most interesting and potentially significant things, in comparative

geographical terms, about the ancient civilizations of the central Andean region – especially the

last of those great societies, the Inka Empire (ca. 1400 – 1532 C.E.) – was their global

positioning. To understand my point, I begin by noting that the total chain of Andes mountains
 53

stretches essentially north-south along the western edge of the continent of South America,

running all the way from the Caribbean Sea, in the north, southward to Tierra del Fuego, at the

bottom of South America, in the south. Within this immense stretch of high mountain ranges,

with the Pacific coastal lowlands to the west and the lowlands of the Amazonian tropical forest

to the east, the northern boundary of the Inka Empire was, at least according to Inka ideology

(Garcilaso de la Vega, 1966 [1609]:117), coincidental with the line of the equator. The empire

stretched from the equator in the north down to about 35o south latitude. This is the portion of

this continent-long stretch of mountains that I refer to in this study as the “central Andes.”

A note of clarification about the global positioning of the central Andes vis à vis the geo-

location of other ancient states is in order. Figure 4 shows the global position of the Inka Empire

with respect to the other, what are commonly referred to as, “pristine” states of the ancient

world. By pristine state, I mean that handful of ancient societies (i.e., Mesopotamia, Egypt,

Shang China, the Maya, and the Inka) that are considered by archaeologists and world

historians to have emerged without the influence of a pre-existing state. All of the ancient

states identified above, except those of the central Andes, were located north of the equator.
 54

Figure 4 – Location of the Central Andes vis à vis the line of the Equator

Let me repeat the last observation to emphasize this critical point: The societies of the

central Andes were the only ancient, state-level civilizations that emerged and lived out their

life histories completely within the southern hemisphere. One might be forgiven for asking

about this observation: So what? I would offer a two-part response. The first has to do with the

issue of which direction was “up;” that is, what was the dominant direction for general

orientation to a view of the universe for central Andean peoples? The second aspect of this

observation is the question of what implications did the peculiar orientation (of “up”) for

central Andean populations have in terms of the positioning of the human body, in particular,

and of society, in general, in relation to terrestrial and celestial spaces and motions?
 55

Addressing these questions will lead us to a perspective on the celestial sphere that will

eventually open up a view of the great celestial cross that was a critical feature of central

Andean cosmologies.

Which Way is Up in the Andes? And What Difference Does It Make?

As an illustration of the unusual geographic position of the central Andes, I offer Figure

5, which depicts the two continents of the Americas but inverts the normal “up-is-north”

orientation of most world maps, placing the south in the position of “up.” In fact, there is no

logical reason why we should accept the standard “north is up” orientation to the world shown

on most world maps. This is a product of the history of the Age of Discovery, the history of

map-making in the northern hemisphere, and the priority of the north over the south in

Western political and intellectual history. Since we are focusing in this study on peoples who

occupied territory fully within the southern hemisphere, it is therefore logical that we should

adjust our view of the world with the south as the privileged direction of orientation for our

view to the universe.

 56

Figure 5 – “South-is-Up” hemispheric map

Recognizing the “south-is-up” orientation of a civilization located within the southern

hemisphere has a number of profound implications, especially in relation to observations of

celestial motions. For instance, note that when the south is in the position of “up,” and

therefore when an observer on earth views the center point of rotation of heavenly bodies

through the sky and around the south celestial pole, the sun, moon, planets and stars will rise

to the viewer’s left (i.e., to the east) and set to the viewer’s right (i.e., to the west). These bodily

orientations to celestial motions are 180o reversed from the bodily orientations of inhabitants

of the northern hemisphere in their viewing of the rise and set of celestial bodies while facing

the motion of celestial bodies around the north celestial pole. That is, in the north, looking
 57

toward the “north star” (i.e., Polaris), celestial bodies rise on the viewer’s right and set on the

left. Therefore, the peoples of the central Andes viewed and experienced the universe, in bodily

terms, in an exactly reversed – we could say mirror image – orientation compared to that of the

inhabitants of all northern hemisphere-based states and societies of the ancient world (and of

those today as well).

There are a number of other, what we might term “secondary,” implications of the

above observations. These are most clearly explained by prefacing these comments with the

observations that, while one or the other of various stars near to the celestial north pole –

today this star is Polaris (alpha Ursae Minoris), the brightest star in the constellation Ursae

Minoris – have stood, relatively motionless, near to or at the center of the rotation of the

heavens in the northern hemisphere, there is no pole star, comparable to Polaris (today),

located at the south celestial pole. Thus, while northern hemisphere civilizations have long had

a stellar guide for defining the fixed north position (and from which the orientations to south,

east, and west could be drawn), there was no comparable fixed, stellar directional guide for

cardinal directions standing at the south celestial pole.

One consequence of the above circumstances is that, while northern hemisphere

societies all designed explicit cardinal directional orientations in their cosmologies and applied

these in the layout of their great cities (e.g., the Chinese capital as “the pivot of the four

quarters;” Wheatley, 1971), for southern hemisphere peoples, there was no such cardinal

orientational guide post. Every point in the skies in the southern hemisphere is in motion;

nothing is fixed – all the stars wheel around an empty center. As a consequence of this, central

Andean peoples seem not to have privileged the cardinal directions (i.e., north, south, east, and
 58

west) in their earthly directional and cosmological traditions. In fact, it is unusual to find an

archaeological site in the central Andes that is oriented precisely to the cardinal directions. A

notable exception is the site of Tiwanaku, located southeast of Lake Titicaca, whose cardinal

orientation was probably based on the position of sunrise straight east, toward the equinox

sunrise (see Vranich 2016:187-194).

The sun’s rise at the equinoxes, on the two days in the year when it rises directly to the

east and sets directly west, between the solstice extremes, is a reasonable guide for

establishing the east and west points of the cardinal directions. From these two points, one can

draw the perpendicular to derive the north and south points. This method of deriving a system

of cardinal directions was available to peoples in the southern hemisphere as well, although for

reasons that are not clear (at least not to me), this seems not to have been done by, or at least

appears not to have been common among, ancient central Andean societies. That said, when

we view settlement patterns in the Amazon basin, we will find that many circular village

settlements there were oriented to the cardinal directions (see Chap. V). This seems, in my

understanding, to have been related more to the important spectacle of the rise and set of the

equinox sun along the east/west line, rather than to a commitment to the north/south line.

These comments lead us to ask: What celestial guide posts did central Andean peoples

view and privilege in their cosmographies? As I demonstrated extensively in an earlier study

(Urton, 1981), the most common celestial feature viewed and given directional significance by

peoples in central Andean communities today and in the past, in terms of orienting their views

to and of the sky and the earth, are the alternating, inter-cardinal axes of the Milky Way when

they cross the zenith (i.e., the mid-point of the sky, directly overhead; see Figure 6).
 59

Figure 6 – The Alternating Axes of the Milky Way from a Fixed Place on Earth

As we see in Figure 6, the plane of the Milky Way – i.e., the linear band of stars we see

in the sky which is the galaxy in which the solar system and Earth reside – varies between about

26-30o from the plane of the north-south axis of rotation of the Earth. This angle is what

produces the alternating inter-cardinal axes of the line of the Milky Way through the sky as the

Earth rotates on its axis.4 These two axes alternate with each other every 24 hours. That is,

when either arm of the Milky Way – say the northwest/southeast band – stands at the zenith,

then 12 hours later, the opposite arm – in this case the northeast/southwest band – will stand

in the zenith.
 60

The oblique, tumbling motion of the Milky Way described above was once

demonstrated to me by a man in Misminay by his tumbling his hands over each other, wrist to

fingertips, round and round, repeatedly, his two hands representing the two Milky Way axes

(see Mannheim on this mode of orientation from a non-egocentric perspective, which he terms

an outside, “allocentric” [i.e., away from ego] frame of reference; 2020:377).

I should clarify here that, as the Earth spins on its axis and as it moves around the sun

over the course of the year, the actual time of day and/or night when the two arms of the Milky

Way will be seen actually passing through the zenith at some location will vary over the course

of the year. For instance, I will show below the different orientations of the Milky Way just

before sunrise on the two solstices. At sunrise on the June solstice, the Milky Way will stretch

from the northeast to the southwest just before being lost in the light of the rising sun; at

sunrise on the December solstice, the Milky Way stretches from the southeast to the

northwest. The Milky Way orientations will vary between these positions daily and nightly over

the course of the year.

Thus, from any given place on earth, especially when viewed from near to the equator,

any time one or the other of the two arms of the Milky Way passes through the local zenith,

there will be an alternation between one arm stretching across the sky from the southwest to

the northeast (/), like the oblique axis of the letter Z, and, 12 hours later, the other arm will

form a line in the sky from the southeast to the northwest (\), like the oblique axis of the letter

S. These “Z” and “S” notations will become important later.

What is particularly interesting and of great significance for Andean cosmologies in

general about the movements of the Milky Way when seen crossing overhead is that this
 61

motion is understood to produce a quadripartitioning of the heavens, which may, in turn, be

projected onto the earth (Urton 1981). The latter projection may be said to produce, or to be

associated with, a four-part division of earthly space. This was what I found to be the case in

the village of Misminay. The residents of that village conceptually linked two inter-cardinal

footpaths that ran through and intersected in the center of the village, dividing the space of the

village into four quarters, with the four quarters in the sky formed by the intersecting, inter-

cardinal Milky Way axes passing through the zenith.

Another way of representing the two arms of the Milky Way, stretching fully across the

sky and emphasizing how the quarters may also be identified in the celestial sphere and

thereby relating the celestial and terrestrial quarters, is shown in Fig. 7.

Figure 7 - The Quarters of the Milky Way (from Urton, 1979:226)

It is important to note here that people in Misminay (and in other villages in the Cuzco

region where I discussed these matters with residents) refer to the Milky Way by the Quechua

term Mayu (“river”). It is thought of as a great celestial river that carries water from the earth
 62

up into the sky from where it falls to the earth again in the form of rain (Urton, 1981). In fact,

the celestial river is believed to have a point of origin in the north. From the northern point of

origin, the celestial river separates into two branches, moving away from each other, in

opposite directions, flowing through the sky around the Earth. The two rivers come together

again, in a great celestial collision, in the southern skies, at the point where the brightest

section of the Milky Way (around the Western constellation of Scorpius) circles around the

empty south celestial pole. The bright stars in this portion of the Milky Way are called posuku

(“foam”); they are the frothy turbulence caused by the collision of the two branches of the

celestial river.

The River, the Milky Way and the Solstices

Having raised the issue of the connection of the solstices in relation to the Milky Way,

conceived of as a great celestial river, this is the appropriate place to discuss a pair of

ethnographic and archaeological examples which, together, suggest a greater antiquity and a

possible wider geographic pervasiveness for the merging of these ideas, images and

cosmological concepts in the central Andes.

The ethnographic example comes from my research in Misminay, in the 1970s,

concerning what people in that village considered to be the connection between the solstices

and the two, alternating axes of the Milky Way. I begin by pointing out that there is roughly a

900 skewing of the axis of the Milky Way passing through the zenith, on one hand, and the

generally east-west plane of the ecliptic – the path of the sun, moon and planets through the

heavens – on the other hand. As we saw above (Fig. 6), the plane of the Milky Way passes
 63

through our skies approximately 300 east and west of the north celestial pole and 260 east and

west of the south celestial pole. The ecliptic, on the other hand, passes through the sky 23.50

north and south of the equator. Thus, we might expect that there would be times when events

relating to these two, great celestial planes – the Milky Way and the ecliptic – would coincide,

or be correlated. Indeed, there are – at the solstices – which were carefully observed in

Misminay, primarily for their significance for planning agro-pastoral activities.

Now, it turns out, as noted in passing above, that the rise points of the June 21st and

December 21st solstices are coordinated with the line of the alternating axes of the Milky Way

in the zenith at sunrise on the mornings of the two solstice sunrises. This is illustrated in Figure

8.

Figure 8 – The Solstices and the Seasonal Axes of the Milky Way (from Urton, 1981:62)

As we see in Figure 8, on the morning of the June solstice sunrise, the NE-SW axis of the

Milky Way stands in the zenith, just before the light of the rising sun eliminates it from view.

The NE-SW axis is the dominant, visible axis of the Milky Way in the nighttime skies from May

to August, which is the period of the dry season in the Andes. Similarly, on the morning of the

December solstice sunrise, the SE-NW axis of the Milky Way stands in the zenith just before it is
 64

lost to view by the rising sun. This is the dominant, visible axis of the Milky Way in the skies

from November to February, which is the period of the rainy season.

Since the rainy season was the principal season for the growth of crops in the Andes, the

SE-NW axis of the Milky Way had symbolic priority over the dry season NE-SW axis for peoples

of the central Andes. Cushman has noted, on the authority of the indigenous Peruvian

chronicler Guaman Poma and other colonial sources, that the sunrise at the December solstice

was the fundamental point of orientation for Andeans (2015:91). As I will discuss in more detail

later, the SE-NW axis was considered to be the Hanan (“upper, superior”) axis vis à vis the NE-

SW axis, which was the Hurin (“lower, subordinate”) axis (see Manga Quispe, nd, on the

ubiquity of such dualisms in the Andes). These directional associations and their differently

weighted values may have been of great antiquity in the central Andes, as is suggested at the

very ancient site of Caral.

In an article entitled, “The River and the Sky: Astronomy and Topography in Caral

Society, America’s First Urban Centers” (González-García et al, 2021), the authors were

interested in the orientation of buildings at what was one of the oldest ceremonial centers and

(they argue) earliest cities in the Americas – the site of Caral – and related sites. These very

ancient sites – Caral is dated to around 3,200 B.C.E. – are located on the left bank of the Supe

river, on the north-central coast of Peru. The orientation of the Supe river, where Caral and the

other associated sites are located, is coincidental with the orientation from the December

solstice sunrise point, in the southeast, to the June solstice sunset point, in the northwest

(Figure 9).
 65

Figure 9 – The orientation of the Supe River at Caral and Associated Sites
(González-García et al, 2021:156)

When González-Garcia and colleagues measured a large number of buildings at Caral,

they found two major axes of orientation. The dominant and most common axis of orientation

was from the December solstice rise point in the SE to the June solstice set point in the NW.

These orientations also seem to have included an interest in viewing the lunar extremes, which

rise and set on the horizon a few degrees beyond the solstice points. This SE-NW axis was

almost directly aligned with the orientation of the riverbed of the Supe River at Caral and

associated sites (Figure 10).

 66

Figure 10 – The most common orientations of buildings at Caral and the angle of the Supe River
(González-García et al, 2021:163)

In addition to an alignment with the DS rise/JS set solstitial axis, the other most common

axial orientation of buildings was at around 25o east of north, with its reciprocal at 25o west of

south. The authors suggest that this axial orientation could have pointed to stars in the

southern Milky Way, such as the Southern Cross and the “dark cloud” constellation of the

Llama (González-García et al, 2021:168; see also Urton, 1981 for the dark cloud constellations).

To emphasize the point, this axis also generally coincides with the NE-SW axis of the Milky Way

(Figure 6).

If we compare the orientations of astronomical rise/set points and axial alignments in

Figures 6, 9 and 10, it is not too fanciful to propose that the residents of Caral would have

conceived of themselves as living along the mayu, the “river” that would have been conceived

of as an equation between the local Supe River valley with the celestial river – the Milky Way.

Overall, Caral was aligned with the SE-NW axis of the Milky Way and, coincidentally, with the

axis joining the DS sunrise and the JS sunset. This axial orientation gave them the coordinates of

the sun and the Milky Way during the rainy season (see again Fig. 8) in the nearby highlands,

when the waters of the Supe River would be augmented. As was true of many other places
 67

within the tropics, the people at Caral would have considered themselves to be located at the

center of the universe – that is, at the place where the alternating axes of the Milky Way

crossed directly overhead, in the zenith, and one of the arms of which coincided with the

orientation of the earthly river along which they lived.

The Milky Way in Inka Cosmology

To return to our general exploration of central Andean ideas about the Milky Way, what

was most remarkable to discover, upon my return from fieldwork in Misminay, in the mid-

1970s, as I began to read once again the Spanish chronicles from Colonial Peru, was that the

Inka were said to have had a conception of the Milky Way (Mayu) that was strikingly similar to

what I had learned in Misminay. As recounted by the mid-seventeenth chronicler Bernabé

Cobo, the Inkas believed that Thunder was a deity in the sky that had the form of a man made

up of stars. He carried a whip and when he cracked the whip it gave off lightning and thunder

(see Ciancia, 2018, on the figure of the celestial slinger). Cobo went on to say:

…[T]hey [the Inkas] say that he [Thunder] passed across a very large

river in the middle of the sky. They indicated that this river was the

white band that we see down here called the Milky Way [Sp. Via lactea].

Regarding this matter, they made up a great deal of foolishness that

would be too detailed to include here[!]. Anyway, they believed that

from this river the Thunder drew the water that he would let fall down

upon the earth (Cobo, 1990 [1653]:32)

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The Inka notion that all water on the earth comes, ultimately, from the Milky Way, gives

us a necessary and rather profound perspective on what has often been recognized as an Inka

preoccupation with integrating water into their architectural and settlement patterns (e.g., see

Cummins and Mannheim, 2011; and Mannheim, 2020). The water flowing through rivers and

irrigation canals throughout Tawantinsuyu, fructifying and fertilizing the earth, all comes from

the “river” (mayu) in the sky (see Sherbondy’s detailed discussion of this point, 1993a).

We can also make a comparison between the water circulating through the cosmos, via

the Milky Way, and the circulation of the fertilizing fluid, termed sami, which Catherine Allen

described in her ethnography of the village of Sonqo, in the Cuzco region (1988:49-52). Allen

describes sami as a “fertilizing essence,” a kind of “genius or ebullient spirit” (Allen, 1988:50),

which pervades the universe. She also explicitly connects the cosmic circulation of sami to the

Milky Way:

Rivers and streams provide a tangible manifestation of the sami’s flow, and

they are conceptualized in terms of a vast circulatory system that distributes

water throughout the cosmos. Rivers that flow out of highland lakes into the

jungle are believed to return underground to their places of origin. Water

flows through the heavens through the great celestial Mayu (River), the Milky

Way (Allen, 1988:52).

Now, all of this discussion of viewing the Milky Way raises the question of just how

visible are the celestial motions of the Milky Way as described above and as essentially foretold

in Cobo’s mid-seventeenth century account. As it turns out, that all depends on where you are

standing on the Earth when you view the Milky Way. It will be necessary to find the right place
 69

to look at the Milky Way, because only by placing ourselves in the appropriate location– i.e.,

one of those locations being the central Andes – will we see the motions of that great celestial

body that will allow us later to connect the crossing axes of the Milky Way and, emerging from

that celestial X, the framework of the ceque system and of Tawantinsuyu itself.

Before turning for a closer look at the bright stars of the Milky Way as seen from the

southern hemisphere, however, I will make a detour to describe briefly ideas about the Milky

Way among another South American society, the Barasana, who live along the equator, in the

northwest Amazon basin. We will see in these data ideas about the Milky Way that are very

similar, structurally and in terms of its motions, to what we have seen in Misminay and Caral.

The Alternating Diagonal Milky Way Axes in Barasana Astronomy and Cosmology

The Barasana are a Tukanoan-speaking people who live on the Pirá-Paraná river in the

Colombian Vaupés region in the northwest Amazon basin. The Barasana live directly under the

equator; thus, they are justified (astronomically) in believing that they live at the center of the

universe (Hugh-Jones, 1982:183-201)! The principal stars recognized in Barasana astronomy are

located along the path of the Milky Way, which they refer to as “Star Path.” In fact, the Star

Path is divided into two distinct diagonal paths, which, the Barasana say, came into existence at

different times and that have very different symbolic associations. As the ethnographer Hugh-

Jones notes,

Though the overall path of the stars is from east to west, the diagonal orientation

of the Milky Way with respect to the ecliptic [the path of the sun, moon and

planets through the sky] serves to divide the Star Path into two segments, a

New Path (mama ma) running from southeast to northwest and an Old Path
 70

(buku ma) running from northeast to southwest. The Old Path is said to have

come into being before the New but today it is the New Path that precedes the

Old in the annual cycle (Hugh-Jones, 1982:185).

The two diagonal paths of the Milky Way in Barasana astronomy are shown in Figure 11.

As Hugh-Jones notes, the symbolism of stars of the New Path are positive and benign, while

those of the Old Path are dangerous and toxic. The Barasana star paths are the same as the

opposing diagonal bands of the Milky Way (Fig. 6) and the quarters of the Milky Way (Fig. 7)

described earlier for central Andean astronomy.

Figure 11 - The Diagonal Axes of the Barasana Milky Way “Zodiac” (Hugh-Jones, 1982:186)

Living as they do along the equator, the great celestial crossing (X) of the two axes of

the Milky Way alternately passing through the zenith must be a spectacular sight in the

Barasana heavens. One sees similar ideas and beliefs about the Milky Way among the Barasana

in the cosmological tradition of the Desana, another Tukanoan-speaking group of the Vaupés

region of Colombia (Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1971, 1982).

 71

I turn now to the question of how different the view of the Milky Way is for the

Barasana and the central Andean Quechua-speaking peoples (including the Inkas), on one hand,

and that of peoples living within the northern hemisphere, on the other.

The Differential Visibility of the Milky Way in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

The reader who has not spent a great deal of time out-of-doors, at night, in the

southern hemisphere may wonder at the claims made above concerning the feasibility and the

potential cultural significance of observations of the Milky Way by inhabitants of the central

Andes (or those living along the Amazon River). For instance, a reader living in the northern

hemisphere may assume that the view of the Milky Way as seen in the U.S. or Europe, where

the line of our galaxy (i.e., the Milky Way) is quite dim, must be the same as that seen from the

southern hemisphere. If this were true, one might indeed wonder how such a faint line through

the sky as we see when we view the Milky Way in the northern hemisphere could possibly have

served such a pronounced and profound role in celestial orientations as outlined in the

previous sections. In the recognition of such possible skepticism on the part of my northern

hemisphere readers, it is therefore worth devoting a few pages here to explain to our northern

hemisphere sky watchers why such skepticism is unwarranted.

The most salient point here is that the view toward the Milky Way from the southern

hemisphere is significantly more impressive than the view from the northern hemisphere. The

photograph in Figure 12 shows the center of the southern half of the Milky Way, the upper

right portion of which rotates around and near to the south celestial pole. Such a brilliant line of

stars of the Milky Way as seen in Figure 12 is much more impressive than any view of the galaxy
 72

from the northern hemisphere. To put a finer point on it: you cannot see the view of the Milky

Way shown in Figure 12 if you are more than a dozen degrees or so north of the equator. The

seeming explosion of bright stars in the southern Milky Way is, in Quechua cosmology, the

“foam” (posuku) where the two branches of the Milky Way are continually colliding.

Figure 12 – The center of the Southern Milky Way

To emphasize the difference in the brilliance of the galaxy/Milky Way when viewed from

the southern hemisphere as compared to the northern hemisphere, I direct the reader to

Figure 13, a composite photograph showing the full, round disk of the Milky Way (our galaxy)

opened out into a straight line. If one imagines taking the two ends of this image and curving

the right and left ends around, so that they join, one will have the full line of the circular disk of

the Milky Way, within which our earth and the Solar system are located, formed around us, in a

circle. This circle/line is a result of the fact that our galaxy is shaped as a (relatively) flat disk,
 73

like a flat dinner plate, or a discus. We are inside that dinner plate (although not in the center of

it), and when we look toward the plate in any direction, we see it formed as a line through the

sky; this is our view of the Milky Way.

Figure 13 – The full line of the Galaxy/Milky Way

If we now situate ourselves in the center of this curved, round image (i.e., by bringing

the two ends of Fig. 13 together), one sees the bright stars in the center of this circle only from

the southern hemisphere. In the northern hemisphere, one sees only the dimmer sections of

this photograph in the left and right quarters (or so) of the line (see Fig. 14).

| |
(seen from N. Hemisphere)| (seen from S. Hemisphere) |(seen from N. Hemisphere
| |

Figure 14 – The full line of the Milky Way showing sections seen from the northern vs.
the southern hemisphere
 74

The explanation for the different views of the Milky Way from the northern and

southern hemispheres is because of the location of the solar system (with the Earth inside it)

within the galaxy coupled with the inclination of the axis of rotation of the Earth with respect to

the axis of the line of the Milky Way (again, see Fig. 6). That is, the Earth and solar system are

not in the center of the disk (dinner plate) of our galaxy nor does the axis of rotation of the

Earth coincide with the axis of the Milky Way through the sky; rather, the solar system with its

Earth are located about half-way out on one of the spiral arms of the galaxy, and the axis of

rotation of the Earth does not coincide with the axis of the Milky Way through our sky (Fig. 6).

Therefore, a view back toward the center of our galaxy, which, because of the inclination of the

axis of the Earth with respect to the axis of the Milky Way is seen only from the southern

hemisphere, is much brighter than a view from the northern hemisphere (Figure 15).

Figure 15 – The views through the galaxy/Milky Way for a viewer in the southern hemisphere
(upper left) vs. for a viewer in the northern hemisphere (lower right)
 75

As seen in Figure 15, for a viewer in the northern hemisphere, that person has a view

not toward the bright center of the galaxy, but rather toward the outer spiral arms of the

galaxy. There are many more stars in the former view than in the latter. Thus, one has a

radically different view of the Milky Way from the southern hemisphere as opposed to the view

from the northern hemisphere.

In short, when we speak about the view to the galaxy/Milky Way/Mayu from Earth, it

makes a great deal of difference whether we situate the viewer in the northern or the southern

hemisphere. Since (as noted earlier) the central Andean civilizations we are concerned with in

this study were located from the equator southward (e.g., the latitude of Cuzco, capital of the

Inka Empire, is around 13o south latitude), the view of the galaxy we are concerned with in this

study is the one from the southern hemisphere. Thus, when I speak of the alternating axes of

the Milky Way through the sky, as depicted in Fig. 6, I am referring to the sight of a brilliant line

of stars passing through the sky.

To repeat my principal objective of this long discussion of different views of the Milky

Way depending on where one is located on the Earth, when the galaxy stands in the zenith in

any locale for a southern hemisphere viewer, the bright line of the Milky Way will alternate

every 12 hours from the southwest to the northeast (/), like the axis of the letter Z, and then to

the southeast to the northwest (\ ), like the axis of the letter S.

My basic argument in this work is that the cosmography outlined in this chapter

represented what Andean peoples would have synthesized from their observations and

experiences of their world from very soon after the settlement of this region of South America

by the earliest human inhabitants. This extraordinary view of celestial motions of the two
 76

branches of the Milky Way would have been central to emergent ideas about how the world

was formed, how it functioned properly, and where a deep level of significance and unity for

individuals and societies could be found in the universe – that is, where and how the “right

order” of things could be viewed. I note in passing here but will develop this point more

extensively later that I think that the cross formed in the sky by the intersecting axes of the

Milky Way (X), when projected onto the earth, established the framework for the four-part

structure of Tawantinsuyu, as well as for the ceque system of Cuzco.

I have characterized the two axes of the Milky Way – the SE-NW axis and the SW-NE axis

– as essentially equal in terms of their occurrence and of any potential priority of one over the

other. However, I will show later that, at least for the Inkas, the SE-NW axis appears to have

had greater significance than the alternative axis. In effect, we will see that, in what is a long-

standing Andean form of dual organization, with priority accorded to one half of some

phenomenon over the other half, the SE-NW axis was hanan (“higher; superior”) vis à vis the

SW-NE axis, which was hurin (“lower; inferior”). The priority of the SE-NW axis is implicit in the

orientation of buildings at the ancient site of Caral, on the Supe River. It is notable that we saw

a similar distinction between the two bands of the Milky Way – the New Star path and the Old

Star path – in Barasana astronomy, with the former having positive symbolism and the latter

negative associations.

In sum, I am proposing that the cosmographic model developed in this chapter – the

celestial X projected onto the earth as a four-part structure – constituted a paradigm of major

significance for Andean societies from very early times through to the time of the Inka Empire

and down to the present day. If this was indeed the case, we must ask, how might this
 77

paradigm have been shaped and represented, materially and otherwise, in pre-conquest and

colonial cultures of the central Andes? I explore several such examples in the next chapter. But

before we move to that discussion, we should take note of a few more features of Andean

understandings of the constitution of the Milky Way that were important to recognizing the full

significance of this heavenly body in Andean cosmology.

Connections Between the Celestial and Terrestrial Spheres

I do not want to leave the impression that we can treat of the celestial and terrestrial

spheres, as they were understood and experienced by Andean peoples, as though they were

completely separate domains of the universe. For instance, I have noted above that, at least

conceptually, the crossing axes of the Milky Way in the zenith were potentially (in various

cultures) projected onto the earth to form a quartering of earthly space – as I believe was the

case in terms of the four-part division of the territory of Tawantinsuyu. I have also noted above

that with the development of calendar systems by coastal populations, there would have been

an awareness of lunar and stellar cycles linked to the periodic and seasonal availability of fish,

shellfish, and other maritime resources. However, there are two other contexts in which

connections were, and still are, made between what goes on in the sky and certain conditions

and resources on the earth. These concern rainfall and, rather surprisingly, animals.

It will be recalled from the quotation from the chronicle of Bernabé Cobo cited above

that the Inkas understood that the Milky Way was the source of rainfall on the earth. As Cobo

noted, “…they believed that from this [celestial] river the Thunder drew the water that he
 78

would let fall down upon the earth (Cobo, 1990 [1653]:32). In fact, I encountered the same

ideas and beliefs in the fieldwork I carried out in Misminay, in the 1970s.

From accounts I heard in Misminay, it was said that after each branch of the Milky Way

passes through the sky, overhead, it goes below the horizon and enters a great cosmic sea that

encircles the earth. As it passes under the earth, the Milky Way takes up the water from the

cosmic sea and, rising again in the east, carries water back into the sky from where it falls again

to the earth, in the form of rainfall (Urton, 1981:59-60). I note that this was a seasonally

variable phenomenon. That is, the branch of the Milky Way that runs from the southeast to the

northwest, which was related to the December solstice, is associated with the rainy season,

while the branch of the Milky Way that runs from the northeast to the southwest is associated

with the June solstice, at the height of the dry season (Urton, 1981:62-63).

So, we know now that the sky and the earth are connected via the Milky Way as the

latter is the source of rainfall on the earth. But there is another resource on the earth that has

its origin in the Milky Way and the cosmic sea: animals. I learned in Misminay that as the Milky

Way (Mayu, “river”) passes through the nadir, the bottom point of its passage under the earth,

it encounters and takes into its body a very fecund earth that lies at the bottom of the universe.

This “earth” is referred to as pachatira. This term is a combination of the Quechua term pacha

(“earth/time”) and the Spanish tierra (“earth”). Pachatira is a very fecund, fertile cosmic muck

that enters the body of the river of the Milky Way as it passes underground. Pachatira forms a

darkening of the Milky Way – in spots and streaks – along the full course of the river.

Astronomically, these dark spots and streaks in the galaxy are clouds of interstellar dust that

block the light of the stars of the galaxy in those directions. (see Fig. 16).
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Fig. 16 - The arc of the southern Milky Way showing the dark spots and streaks
composed of clouds of cosmic dust, which are the prototypes of earthly animals

In Quechua ideas about the Milky Way, these dark spots and streaks are each one a

prototype of a different earthly animal; in fact, they are the sources of those same animals on

the earth. These dark constellations are called yana phuyu (“dark cloud;” see Fig. 17).

Fig.17 - The Quechua/Inka “dark cloud” constellations

The animals and birds in the Milky Way shown in the drawing in Fig.17, going from right-

to-left (i.e., the order in which they arise from the eastern horizon), include: a serpent
 80

(machacuay), toad (hanp’atu), the partridge-like tinamou (yutu), a mother llama (llama) and its

suckling baby (uñallamacha), a fox (atoq), and another tinamou. I note that the mother llama is

actually headless; her eyes (called llamañawin – “llama’s eyes”), which are located in her long

neck, are the stars of alpha and beta centaurus. One colonial source, the Huarochirí

Manuscript, informs us that this huge llama was called yacana (Salomon, 1991).

One of our early Spanish sources, Polo de Ondegardo, says the following about these

celestial animals: “In general, they [the Inkas] believed that all the animals and birds on the

earth had their likeness in the sky in whose responsibility was their procreation and

augmentation” (Polo 1916 [1571]:chap. 1). We find many of the same constellations recognized

in the Milky Way in Misminay, in the 1970s, also referenced in a variety of Colonial chronicles as

they pertained to Inka astronomy (Urton, 1981:196-200). Thus, it is important to bear in mind

that there was not a clear separation between the celestial and terrestrial realms in

Andean/Inka cosmology.
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Chapter IV

Mimetic Performances of the Intersecting, Inter-Cardinal Axes Paradigm

While I described and analyzed in some considerable detail many years ago the inter-

cardinal Milky Way orientations (X) based on my ethnography-based fieldwork in the

community of Misminay (Urton, 1979, 1981), I have continued to mull over the potential

significance of these cosmographic and cosmological formations for ways they may have been

implicated in, imported into, or given significance with respect to other cultural settings and

symbolic expressions through time in Andean cultures. I explore several such symbolic

expressions – what I have referred to above as “mimetic performances” – in this chapter,

beginning with the most ancient and proceeding to the most recent.

To orient the reader temporally to the succession of cultures in the central Andes, some

periods of which I refer to below, I give below a periodization chart of Andean cultures which is

commonly (but not universally) referenced among Andean archaeologists today. The last of the

phases noted here, the “Late Horizon,” is the period associated with the Inka Empire. In the

upper half of the chart, “Horizon” periods are times of broad cultural uniformity across the

central Andes; “Intermediate Periods,” are periods characterized by the dissolution of the

uniformity of prior Horizon periods and the balkanization of cultures.

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Table 1 – A Periodization Table of central Andean Cultures

My objective here will be to illustrate, through examples from the late Precereamic

period down to the present day, a variety of examples of material expressions of what I argue

are representations – conscious mimetic productions – celebrating the oblique crossing axes of

the Milky Way as the dominant, shared celestial component of the world view of central

Andean peoples over a long span of time. From these examples, I seek to understand what

significance people in these societies attributed to this form. But first, a few words are in order

about the assumptions I am making below concerning the nature of “representation.”

What I suggest in this chapter is that when we look across an array of material

productions (e.g., sculptures, drawings, engravings, etc.) in various central Andean societies

from very early, pre-Inka times down to the time of Tawantinsuyu, we see a record of mimetic

imagery, or representations, depicting inter-cardinal cross forms, like an: X. My argument is

that the prominence of this figure, or image, is based on an interest among the people of these

early central Andean societies to depict, in mimetic form, the constructed, composite form of

the two axes of the Milky Way crossing in the zenith over any given 24-hour period. This form
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would have had significance for these people as a structural form seen in the skies above them

repeatedly, night after night and year after year, that was accorded cosmic, cosmological

significance. Their representations of the intersection of these cosmic axes would constitute

their many and varied ways of projecting, constructing and performing imitations, or “copies,”

of this celestial phenomenon for their own collective edification. The making of this imagery

was a part of the habitus of people in these societies – that is, they were just the ways they

made images when what was at issue for them was how they perceived and understood their

world to be ordered. I argue that, in contemporary theoretical parlance, central Andean

people’s reactions to the varied representations of the celestial X discussed below would have

had for them, individually and collectively, great psychological and emotional “affective”

significance.

It must be said before proceeding that the central Andes was not the only region of the

world in which the depiction of a celestial cross involving the Milky Way was an important

iconographic and cosmological form. George Latura (2012) discusses Plato’s projection of a

great cosmic X in the skies formed by intersecting celestial axes. In its setting in the Classical

Mediterranean, there was much uncertainty for generations about what these two axes were

composed of. The most common explanation was that the X referred to the crossing of the

ecliptic (i.e., the path of the sun, moon, and planets through the sky) with the equator.

However, as Latura notes, Plato proclaimed at the end of the Timaeus that the living Cosmos,

which he said had the shape of an X, is a visible, discernible god.

However, the equator is not a visible line; rather, it is a mathematical calculation and a

geometric projection (i.e., it is not the line of the movement of celestial bodies, like the ecliptic;
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Latura, 2012:882). Latura shows that what Plato had in mind was the crossing of the ecliptic

with the Milky Way:

…[T]he Via Galactica [Milky Way] is visible even today at a good distance from

light-polluting cities, and since this awesome apparition in the night sky partakes

of the revolution of the fixed stars…it becomes evident that the Milky Way is

the component of Plato’s visible celestial X that intersects the path of the

Planets” (Latura, 2012:883 [emphasis in the original]).

Latura goes on to discuss how Plato’s X, formed by the Milky Way and the ecliptic, made

its way onto the face of several Roman coins (2012:884).

What I am suggesting in the following is that the two, alternating axes of the Milky Way

crossing in the zenith – a crossing that is even more visible than that of the Milky Way and the

ecliptic – was the celestial manifestation of an X form that made its way into Andean

iconography, just as Plato’s X came to be depicted on Roman coins.

Certainly the X is not the only shape that we see in central Andean art forms, but I argue

that the X of the Milky Way crossing was, as an expressive form, a signifier that referenced

what Andeans would have taken as representative of a dynamic, formative, and fundamental

feature of the cosmos. I suggest this was the case because the X served as a way to organize –

that is, actively to project order into – the cosmos. By the “cosmos,” I mean the structure of the

combined terrestrial and celestial spheres. As I show below, the maximum expression of this

cosmic form was the four quarters of Tawantinsuyu, the Inka empire.

The Alternating Crosses in a Preceramic Context - Kotosh

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We have a striking example of the symbolic representation of opposing oblique axes in

an architectural construct from a Preceramic archaeological site at the central highlands

Peruvian site of Kotosh, in a temple/ceremonial building known as the Temple of the Crossed

Hands. This was a temple precinct belonging to what is known as the Kotosh Religious Tradition

(ca. 3,000-1,800 B.C.E.; Izumi and Sono, 1963; Izumi and Terada, 1972; Onuki, 2017). Figure 18

is a reconstructed top view of the general layout of this building.

Figure 18 – Reconstruction of the Temple of the Crossed Hands

Figure 19 shows the view into the temple precinct that a person would have upon

entering through the main doorway (shown at the bottom left in Figure 18).
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Figure 19 – View inside the Kotosh Temple of the Crossed Hands through the Doorway

If one looks closely at the photo in Figure 19, one sees, on the back wall of the temple, a

small niche in the center which is set within a trapezoidal frame. On either side of the center

niche are pairs of larger, walled-off niches. From the view seen in Figure 19, one can just make

out a sculpted X at the bottom of the niche to the viewer’s right, adjacent to the center niche.

In fact, until sometime in the 1940s, there was also a sculpted X image at the bottom of the

niche on the viewer’s left, adjacent to the center niche. This latter sculpted element was

destroyed sometime in the middle of the last century. We do, thankfully however, have

photographs of both of these sculpted images from earlier times (see Figure 20a & b).

(a) (b)
Figure 20a & b – Sculpted “crossed arms” below the niches in the Temple of the Crossed Hands
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What we see in Figures 20a & b are pairs of crossed arms, with the arms crossing below

the center lines of the two niches. On the viewer’s left is a pair of crossed arms with the right

arm crossed over the left, while on the viewer’s right is a pair of crossed arms with the left arm

crossed over the right arm. I will term the crossed arm arrangement in Figure 20a one that

emphasizes the S axis, as the upper left to lower right (\) axis is dominant, while the

arrangement in Figure 20b emphasizes the Z axis, as the upper right to lower left (/) is

dominant. Therefore, the two sets of crossed arms, forming a pair of opposing oblique axes,

each produces a four-part division of the immediate space of the architectural/sculptural area

below the two niches, with an emphasis on one or the other of the two oblique axes in the

sculptures.

In sum, the image of crossing, oblique/inter-cardinal axes we saw earlier in the

alternating axes of the Milky Way across the North-South axis of rotation of the earth (see Fig.

6) finds a very ancient analog in the pairing of the right and left crossed arms at the Kotosh

Temple of the Crossed Hands. Granted, the crossing of human arms as shown in the manner of

these sculpted Kotosh arms is, of course, a natural way to create and demonstrate a dual

opposition, something that is ubiquitous in Andean imagery and social organization. I would

argue, however, that within the powerful, sacred setting of a ceremonial precinct like the

Temple of the Crossed Hands, the symbolic power of such imagery would have been profound,

if not of cosmic significance.

I think that the analogy of the pair of crossed arms would have taken on an appropriate,

cosmic significance with its comparison to the celestial motions of the two arms of the Milky

Way occurring nightly above the Temple of the Crossed Hands. In short, I think the pair of
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images we have been examining is suggestive of a great antiquity in Andean cultures of what

we will chart below as common mimetic performances and instantiations of the four-part,

oblique cross-axes form.

Paired, Alternating Cross-Axes in the Early Horizon – Chavín de Huantar

We see another example of the structural arrangement of paired S/Z axes in an

engraved image from a much later culture – the so-called “Smiling God” (Rowe 1962:12) – from

the Early Horizon Chavín culture (ca. 1,000 - 250 B.C.E.), at the site of Chavín de Huantar in the

north-central highlands of Peru. The engraved image in question is shown in Figure 21.

Figure 21 – The So-Called “Smiling God” of Chavín Culture (from Rowe, 1962)

It has been shown in numerous publications analyzing this figure (Rowe, 1962; Lathrap,

1977a and b; Urton, 1996a) that the standing, frontal being in Figure 21 manifests dualism in

several forms, such as the merging of feline and human in the figure’s overall bodily identity, as
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well as in the paired shells held in the figure’s hands: a spondylus shell in its left hand and a

carved strombus shell in its right hand. In Andean symbolism, the former is often gendered

female, the latter as male (Lathrap, 1977a).

What I have always found especially interesting about this figure, however, and

particularly in connection with what we have discussed so far, is the hair, which falls from

either side of the head of the figure in the form of pairs of entwined, twisted serpents (Urton,

2020). I think that we can understand something deeper about this figure as a whole, and of

why it was of interest to its Chavín makers and viewers, if we analyze the structural

characteristics of these pairs of entwined serpents and consider their comparison to the

opposition of the S-\ and Z-/ pairings discussed above.

I should point out before moving on that it is perhaps quite significant, symbolically, that

there is a pair of twisted serpents on each side of the head of this figure; that is, we have here a

four-part division composed of two opposed pairs. We will see later that such an arrangement

was a central feature of many Andean social formations, including the moiety (dual) system of

Tawantinsuyu and its capital city, Cuzco (see below, Chapter VIII).

I think that the referents of the twisted serpents that form the hair of the Chavín image

were to pairs of twisted, plied threads (as I have suggested by placing appropriately plied

threads on either side of our figure). Viewed this way, we see that the pairs of threads on the

right side (to the viewer’s left) of the figure’s head are twisted (as if we were grasping and

twisting the pairs of serpents’ heads together) to the left, or counter-clockwise, forming two

pairs of Z-ply threads, whereas the two pairs on the left side of its head (the viewer’s right) are

twisted to the right, or clockwise, forming two pairs of S-ply threads. As is well known by
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students of Andean weaving, these two opposed elements—Z- and S-twisted threads—are the

initial construction moves of the spinning and plying of threads in the production of woven

fabrics, an artistic tradition that would become highly elaborated in Chavín and later societies,

especially in the Paracas culture of the south coast of Peru (Conklin, 2008; Paul, 1991).

It will also be noted that the oblique angles formed by the two pairs of twisted

serpents/threads as they descend from the two sides of the center line formed by the image’s

head and body also produce another expression of the \ and / pairing. The pairs on the image’s

left side (viewer’s right) are angled like an \, while those on the image’s right side (viewer’s left)

are angled /. Thus, the S-plied serpents on the image’s left are angled \ (S), while the Z-plied

serpents on the image’s right are angled / (Z). This represents a highly complex expression of

the paired, intersecting, oblique crossing of axes with respect to the center line, or axis of the

body of the main figure itself.

What we could term the “insistence” (Ascher and Ascher, 1997) on opposed, oblique

axes in the image from Chavín de Huantar suggests that this pairing of axes represented an

important symbolic element for the artists of this ancient central Andean artistic tradition. I

suggest that the significance of this pairing was more than happenstance, or that it was merely

an idiosyncrasy of the carver(s) of the “smiling god,” throwing such imagery in for stylistic effect

alone. rather, I think that he/she/they would have understood the connection between the

oblique axes they carved into this figure and the cosmic axes they would have had visible to

them nightly in the skies overhead. Engraving this imagery into the hirsute, Medusa-like head of

the human/jaguar dyadic figure would have had the effect of signaling its cosmic significance.
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The Cross in Andean Loom Weaving

Further on the topic of threads and weaving, the crossing of opposing, diagonal axes –

threads in this case – forming a cross is the key structure in the loom weaving of threads that

have been spun and plied in the manner shown in the twisted serpents falling from the head of

the “Smiling God,” in Figure 21. To appreciate my point here, we can view briefly the activity by

Andean artisans of preparing threads for weaving on a loom. In preparing warp threads, a ball

of thread is passed between a pair of warping partners (ayllwimasi, “warping mates”), back and

forth between two bars or stakes, which may be set either vertically or horizontally. In passing

the thread around opposite sides of the two stakes, the warp threads will form a cross in the

center of the warp plane. In Andean weaving, the process of warping threads is termed allwiy

(“to work, or warp threads”), while the cross formed in the center, between the two stakes, is

called the sonqo (“heart;” Figure 22). The cross is the critical structural element in the process

of preparing threads for loom weaving.

Figure 22 – Allwiy Partners Warping a Textile in Misminay (Urton photo, 1975)

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In attaching the completed warp threads to the back-strap loom commonly used in the

Andes today and in the past (Figure 23a), the warped threads will be attached to two loom

bars, one at the top, the other at the bottom of the collection of warp threads. A shed stick will

then be inserted near the cross between the two sets of warp threads. The shed stick separates

the two sets of threads, emphasizing the warp cross (Fig. 23b).

(a) (b)
Figure 23 – An Andean Backstrap Loom (a) and the Cross (Sonqo) of the Warp Threads (b)

In loom weaving, one or the other of the two sets of warp threads is attached to what is

termed the heddle rod. The heddle is worked up and down (or in and out), aided by the sword,

or batten, to alternately raise and depress the two sets of warps threads. The weft thread,

attached to the bobbin, is inserted between the crossing threads to produce the woven fabric.

Andean weavers were, and still are, among the most skilled weavers of hand woven

fabrics in the world. This art form began with the introduction of loom weaving in the late Initial
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period, with its increasing frequency during the Early Horizon, Chavín culture (Conklin,

2008:262). From that time forward, Andean weavers have produced some of the finest and

most complex weavings in the world. The art and craft of weaving is a central part of our story

of the importance of the cross in Andean societies. As described above, loom weaving is

essentially the process of manipulating the cross of the two, alternate groups of warp threads

back and forth, inserting the weft thread with each shift or alteration of the position of the

crossing of the two sets of warp threads. At the heart of this enterprise were crossing axes

formed at an oblique angle to the plane of the warp and the completed fabric.

In a very real sense, we can say that the alternating sets of threads – one set up and the

opposite set down on one pass of the weft, with the positions of the two sets reversed on the

next pass of the weft – are very much like the alternating axes of the Milky Way passing

through the sky every 24 hours. In the heavens, one sees at one moment the northeast to

southwest (/) axis on one pass, followed 12 hours later by the northwest to southeast (\) axis

on the next pass. In this sense, the constant motion of the alternating axes of the Milky Way

may be likened to the act of weaving the world – producing through the action of the opposed,

cosmic axes an ever expanding, tightly woven fabric across the land of Tawantinsuyu.5

Weavers throughout Tawantinsuyu, exerting tension on the cords of their backstrap

looms, working the vital point of the crossing of the warp threads in and out in producing

beautifully woven fabrics for the home or the state, could have understood their task as

constituting a world-forming act of cosmic significance.

Tawantinsuyu and the Intercardinal Axes of the Milky Way

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We jump far ahead in time now to the Late Horizon period, which is the time period

associated with the Inka Empire. As I noted earlier, the Inkas knew their empire by the name

“Tawantinsuyu,” which we can gloss as “the four parts/quarters intimately connected”

(Primitivo Nina, personal communication, 1992). The four parts of the empire were referred to

as suyus (“parts, turns”). These four parts represented the largest, most inclusive level of

administrative organization of Tawantinsuyu.

I noted in Chapter III, in the quotation from Bernabe Cobo, that the Inkas identified the

Milky Way as a great river that ran through the sky and that was the source of rainfall. In that

quotation, however, Cobo chose not to explain what he termed the “great deal of foolishness”

which the Inkas had to say about the Milky Way. I strongly suspect that he had heard

something like what I have explained in Chapter III about the crossing axes of the Milky Way

through the sky. However, as these ideas did not accord with what Europeans of the time (and

perhaps Cobo himself) thought about the Milky Way (i.e., most Europeans of the time would

have agreed with Aristotle that the Milky Way was basically composed of aither, essentially

“swamp gas,” raised to the level of the stars; Jaki, 1975:5; Wright, 1995:110-120), he rejected it

as “nonsense.” I suggest, in fact, that what the Inkas perceived as the ideal cosmogonic form of

the alternating intercardinal axes of the Milky Way they synthesized and unified into what they

knew as Tawantinsuyu, the unity of the four quarters of their empire.

What I would term a – if not the – iconic Inkaic image of Tawantinsuyu is the Mapa

Mundi (“world map”) drawn by the indigenous chronicler, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (1980

[1585-1615]: 983-984; see Figure 24). Labeled across the top of the map Mapa mundi del Reino

de las Incas (“World Map of the Kingdom of the Inkas”), Guaman Poma’s map takes the
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perspective on the empire of looking from the sky, above the Pacific Ocean, from the west

toward the east (this is another example of Mannheim’s notion of “allocentric,” rather than

egocentric, orientation as a manifestation of Quechua ontology and the principle of

cosmological construction and representation; Mannheim, 2020). The map depicts the

encompassment of Tawantinsuyu within what would be the coastal plain, with the Andes

mountains looming ominously in the background.

Figure 24 – Guaman Poma de Ayala’s “Mapa Mundi” of Tawantinsuyu with a cross in the center
(1980 [1585-1615]:983-984)

Crossing through the center of Guaman Poma’s map, dividing the territory into four

parts (suyus), is a pair of intercardinal axes (Note: in this map, south would be approximately to
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our right, and north to our left). At the center of the crossing axes (though not visible in the

image reproduced here, as it is in the binding of the two pages bound together into the book) is

a human couple, a richly and formally dressed male and female. These were certainly meant to

represent the Inka and his wife, the qoya, in the capital city, Cuzco. There is a human couple

shown within the territory of each of the four suyus as well. These were meant, I suspect, to be

iconic of the various, different populations inhabiting the four quarters of the empire.

I think that Guaman Poma was clearly rendering Tawantinsuyu in a cosmic form

(especially as we see mythical animals floating through the ocean in the foreground and in the

distant sky), and therefore, that the cross at the center of the terrestrial space of the empire

was intended to represent not only the four-part division of the terrestrial empire, but as well it

would have been understood as related to, or reflecting, the quartering of the celestial sphere

by the alternating, intercardinal axes of the Milky Way crossing the zenith. This seems wholly

likely and reasonable, since Guaman Poma would have known that the four quarters of

Tawantinsuyu were not of equal size, as he depicts them in his map (i.e., Chinchaysuyu and

Collasuyu were far larger than the other two quarters, Antisuyu and Cuntisuyu). What else

could have given him the notion of an ideal, cosmic division of space into four equal parts? I

suggest it would have been his understanding of the motions of the Milky Way.

I will return to Guaman Poma’s map later, as I think it incorporates not only the inter-

cardinal cross (X) paradigmatic form for the four quarters of the empire, but also that this was

the basic framework for the radial center structure of the ceque system of Cuzco, with its four

boundary lines or roads radiating outward from the capital city to the limits of the empire. With

this notion that the city of Cuzco should properly be the center of a cosmogram of the four
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quarters of the empire, we should look at another highly suggestive Colonial era representation

of Tawantinsuyu; this is a rather more abstract rendering in the chronicle of Martín de Murúa

(2004 [1590] ; see Fig. 25).

Fig. 25 - Tawantinsuyu as four suyu/settlements with Cuzco in the center (Murúa, 2004 [1590])

In Murúa’s image of Tawantinsuyu (which, in fact, was probably drawn by Guaman

Poma de Ayala, who served as an assistant to Murúa; see Ossio, 2004:38-40), we see four

settlements in the four corners of the image with the city of Cuzco in the center. The latter is

labeled La grand ciudad del Cuzco..[and, in another hand]..cabezca del peru (“The grand city of

Cuzco, head of Peru”). The four settlements in the corners are labeled with the names of the
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four suyus (quarters) of the empire; these are, from our point of view: Chinchaysuyu (bottom

left), Antisuyu (top left), Collasuyu (top right), and Cuntisuyu (bottom right).

One thing that is particularly interesting about Murúa’s drawing, or cosmogram, of

Tawantinsuyu is its orientation. The drawing is made as though viewed from above ground,

looking approximately from the north to the south (i.e., more or less between Antisuyu and

Collasuyu). That is, this image, very unusually, from a northern hemisphere perspective, adopts

a “south-is-up” perspective. As will be seen from close examination of the image in Fig. 25, the

artist has drawn four inter-cardinal footpaths, one going out from Cuzco to each of the four

suyu/settlements in the corners. Projecting these footpaths across the center, we see that they

form two intercardinal axes, or the cosmic X, with Cuzco in the center.

Thus, both the Murúa and the Guaman Poma mapa mundis are built on the frame, or

format, of an intercardinal cross with Cuzco at the center and a suyu associated with each of

the spaces between the lines or pathways of the cross.

The Crystalline Cross in the Center of Cuzco

One of the most remarkable and explicit accounts of an Inka interest in, if not

preoccupation with, the sign of (an Andean version of) the cross is a passage in the chronicle of

the great mestizo chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega. The son of a conquistador and an Inka

princess, de la Vega grew up in Cuzco, leaving for Spain in 1560, at the age of twenty-one, to

seek to gain his inheritance from his father. Almost forty-two years later, in 1602, in Córdoba,

Spain, de la Vega began writing up his memoires of life in Cuzco, of the nature and character of

the Inkas and their empire, of the Spanish conquest of Tawantinsuyu, and of the dissolution of
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the empire under the chaos, greed and discord of Spanish rule. Describing a remarkable sight

he saw in his youth in the cathedral in Cuzco, de la Vega says the following.

The Inca Kings had in Cuzco a cross of fine marble, of the white and red color

called crystalline jasper. They cannot say how long they have had it. When

I left in 1560 it was in the sacristy of the cathedral church of that city, where

it hung from a nail by a cord running through a hole in the top of the cross…

The cross was square, as broad as it was high, and would be perhaps three

quarters of a vara or a little less in size, each arm being about three fingers

in width and the same in thickness. It was all in one piece, very well carved,

with its edges perfectly smooth, both sides exactly matched, and the stone

polished to a high luster. They used to have it in one of their royal houses,

in one of the chambers called huaca, a ‘sacred place.’ They did not worship

it, though they held it in reverence, possibly because of its handsome

appearance or for some other reason they could not express (Garcilaso

de la Vega, 1966 [1609]:73).

Some might imagine in the cross described by Garcilaso de la Vega what is popularly

known throughout the Andes (and much of the Americas) today as “the Andean Cross.”

However, the shape of what goes by that name today – -- is, I must say, nothing like the

above description. Rather, I would suggest the form shown in Figure 26.
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Figure 26 - A Reconstruction of Garcilaso de la Vega’s “crystalline” Cross in a huaca in Cuzco

(Thanks to Alexei Vranich for this drawing)

But, one might say, de la Vega says there was a hole drilled in one of the arms and that

the cross was suspended from a cord threaded through the hole. In that case, the arms of the

cross would have been upright and horizontal, like a cross oriented to the cardinal directions. I

strongly suspect that the drilling of the hole in the cross was a Colonial period deformation of

the original cross. I suggest this since de la Vega says that the cross was appropriated by the

Spaniards and was hung on the high altar of the Cathedral (1966:73).

When suspended from one of its arms, the inter-cardinal Inka cross would have been

considered appropriate for placement in the Cathedral, perhaps as an “indigenous” version of

the Latin cross (see Fig. 27).

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Fig. 27 - The drilled and re-oriented Cuzco Cross for placement in the cathedral
(Thanks to Alexei Vranich for this drawing)

To return to what I am suggesting was the original crystalline Cuzco cross, in Figure 26, it

will be seen immediately that the shape of this cross was perfectly representative of the

oblique crossing axes we have been examining since the beginning of this chapter. Such a cross

would be a fine, mobile version of the cross similar to the sketched cross in the center of

Guaman Poma’s mapa mundi, or as an overlay to Murúa’s four-cornered cosmogram of

Tawantinsuyu. All of these versions of inter-cardinal, oblique crossing axes would suitably

represent the crossing of the Milky Way in the skies above the city of Cuzco.

Garcilaso de la Vega’s account cited above is extremely important for my argument.

From the shape of the crystalline cross he describes, as well as from his testimony that this

cross was kept in a house that was considered to be sacred (i.e., a “huaca”), it seems clear that

the form of the cross reconstructed in Fig. 26 was accorded great significance by the Inkas in

Cuzco. I am unaware of any phenomenon, other than the crossing axes of the Milky Way, that

could have been the source of such an object of veneration by the Inkas.

Before leaving this example, I note that we will later return to these two representations

of the Cuzco cross (see Chapter X). The pairing of crosses will become relevant when we discuss
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two crosses in what I will term an Inka cosmogram included in a drawing by the 17th century

chronicler, Pachacuti Yamqui, from an image of the Inka cosmos that was said to have been

drawn on a wall of the Korikancha. One of the two crosses in the drawing was composed of

oblique, inter-cardinal axes, while the other was an upright cross, like the abbreviated Latin

cross in Fig. 27.

I suggest that the pair of crosses in the drawing by Pachacuti Yamqui (Chap. X, Fig. 80)

imitate – whether consciously, or not – the complex, and I would say contested, pairing and (re-

)orientation of Andean vs. Christian crosses in the cathedral in Cuzco, as recounted in the

testimony from de la Vega.

The Alternating Axes as a Binary Pair in the Inka Khipus

In my recent studies of the khipus, the knotted-string recording devices used by the

Inkas for recording administrative and narrative information in Tawantinsuyu (see Urton, 2003

and 2017), I have shown that one of the principal structural features by which information was

encoded was by means of variations in sets of binary features. One of these features was

variation in the tying of knots in khipu cords, a difference that resulted in some knots produced

as so-called S-knots and others as what I have termed Z-knots. S-knots have an oblique axis

crossing the line of the cord on which the knot is tied going from upper-left to lower-right (\),

like the axis in the letter S. Z-knots have an oblique axis going from upper-right to lower-left (/),

like the axis of the letter Z (see Figure 28).

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Figure 28 – S- and Z- long knots on khipu cords

If we compare Figures 6 and 28, we see that the inter-cardinal axes of the Milky Way as

it rotates around the north-south axis of rotation of the earth is strikingly similar to the

orientations of S-knots and Z-knots with respect to the linear structure of a khipu cord.

Now, I must say that even though this is a truly striking correlation, we must ask: Would

any Andean person of an earlier time, viewing the Milky Way high in the sky over a 24-hour

period, have made the association between the alternating, oblique Milky Way axes with S- and

Z-knots tied along the cords of a khipu held in the hands of a khipu master? This would have

constituted a form of mimesis that, while the coincidences between the images are striking in

two-dimensional drawings, as in this text, as an actual comparison between knots in strings and

the motions of the Milky Way, I must say, stretches the bounds of credulity. That said, I think

that this is a most interesting and possible association between the two domains concerned. I

suspect that such a comparison could have had significance at an implicit, or an intuitive level,

for Inka khipu-keepers or for anyone who had intimate knowledge of these knotted string

devices as well as who was familiar with what was going on in the skies nightly.
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I want to be clear that with the above comparison, I am not suggesting that any pair of

oblique lines (\ or /) or axes might be comparable to either the Milky Way or the khipu knots.

Rather, what is potentially meaningful in this suggested comparison is the pairing of two such

opposed oblique axes with respect to, or across, a center line, point, or axis either

simultaneously or over time. In the case of the Milky Way, the complete image of the X

emerges only over a full 24-hour period (one axis being visible every 12 hours). In the case of

the S- and Z- khipu knots, any given knot is either S or Z. However, as I have noted, this is a

binary choice; each individual knot is either one or the other, and many khipus display both

types of knots.

Even more supportive of this suggested correlation is a particularly interesting (for

knotting patterns) khipu found at the great central coastal Peruvian pilgrimage site of

Pachacamac (Eeckhout, 2004, 2012). The khipu sample, in the Ethnologische Museum, in Berlin

(VA52527), is shown in Figure 29.

(a) (b)
Figure 29 - Pachacamac khipu with directional knotting in X pattern
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Figure 29a is a photo of the Pachacamac khipu with lines dividing the khipu cords into

four parts. The four-part structure is the result of differences in the directionality of knots tied

in the quarters. Figure 29b shows the scheme of directionality of knots in the four-parts of the

khipu. As we see, knots in the upper-left and lower-right quadrants are tied as S-knots (\), while

those in the upper-right and lower-left are tied as Z-knots (/). When the opposing quadrants are

united by lines, we see that the overall structure of the knotting is of crossing, oblique axes: X.

Interestingly, S-knots form the \ (S) axis of the X, while Z-knots form the / (Z) axis of the X – as

with the twisted hair falling from the head of the Chavín “Smiling God” (Fig. 21).

Having personally examined many hundreds of Inka khipus, I can affirm that the X

structure of knotting in the khipu from Pachacamac in Figure 29 is not only unusual – it is

unique (to my knowledge). That said, I have no doubt in this case that whatever khipukamayuq

– cord master – tied and maintained this khipu would have had some sense, implicit though it

might have been, of its following a paradigmatic form and, therefore, of its cosmic significance.

Futhermore, it is interesting to note that, in a sense, this Pachacamac khipu displays, in its

quadripartite knotting pattern forming complementary and opposed oblique axes, a structure

similar to the mapa mundi of Guaman Poma de Ayala.

The Inka Cross Goes into Battle

A striking image of our two opposing axes was a prominent design element on a well-

known article of Inka clothing – the tunic worn by Inka warriors when they went into battle

(Herring, 2015:103-108). These tunics, which were known primarily for their striking black-and-

white checkerboard design had, in their upper portion, a brilliant red V pattern composed of
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opposing S (\) and Z (/) axes across the center line of the tunic (Figure 30). Lines of warriors

wearing such tunics would surely have made a spectacular sight – of a vibrant, zig-zag structure

– on the field of battle, as they were, for instance, on the fateful day when Inka troops,

attending to the Inka Atahualpa, met Francisco Pizarro’s troops in battle at the Inka tambo

(rest-stop) of Cajamarca (Herring, 2015:103).

Figure 30 - Inka Checkerboard Military Tunic

Displaying as it did the V-shaped design evoking the upper half of the Cuzco cross, the

warrior’s tunic would have become iconic of the majesty of the Inka Empire as squadrons of

Inka troops formed zig-zags of bright vermillion Vs marching along the Inka road. In this sense,

the V design and the checkboard would have become as iconic of Inka identity on the field of

battle, as the army of the Inka moved across the land, as the Latin cross emblazoned on the

armor and standards of knights from around Europe became iconic of Christendom as

crusaders marched into the Holy Land.

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The set of features and mimetic instances of our X paradigmatic form examined so far in

Pre-Columbian contexts is also found in several items of material culture from the Colonial

period, and later. I discuss several such examples below.

The Replication and Multiplication of the Oblique Crossing Axes Paradigm

Having traced the oblique intersecting cross form from very early (Preceramic) Andean

societies to the Late Horizon Inka civilization, I want to extend this exposition by discussing

three other, later examples of the expression, or representation, of this paradigmatic form. The

first will be from the colonial period, although we know enough about this form to project it

back into Inka times. The second will be a more speculative example drawn from Inka

arithmetic recordkeeping by means of khipus. The third will be drawn from recent ethnographic

research in the highlands of Bolivia.

Figure 31 is a photograph of an object referred to in the literature as a paqcha

(“waterfall;” see Allen, 2002). The paqcha was a device used for performing divinations. The

example shown in Fig. 31, with its painted figural drawings on the bowl on the right side, clearly

dates from colonial times; however, we are aware of examples of these ritual objects from pre-

colonial, Inka times as well (see Carrión Cachot, 1955).

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Fig. 31 – Paqcha (“waterfall”) – A Vessel Used for Divination

From what we learn in various colonial sources (Allen, 2002:183-185; Cummins, 2002),

paqchas functioned in the following way. The bowl would be filled with liquid, usually chicha

(corn beer). At the bottom of the bowl was a hole that drained the liquid out of the bowl

through the body of the figure shown to the left of the bowl and on out the mouth of that

figure. The stream of chicha would form in a pool in the small space in front of the figure from

where it would begin to descend through the repetitive diamond-shaped path leading down

the course of the long slab. The liquid would alternately separate, when the course separated,

and would converge when the two courses repeatedly came together. Divinations were

performed by “reading” the turbulence of the liquid as it coursed down the slab of the paqcha,

the stream alternately separating and colliding.

As will be seen, the paqcha operated on the principle of the simultaneous divergence

and convergence of oblique S (\) and Z (/) streams, or axes, along the length of the carved slab.

Therefore, the paqcha is an elegant example, in microcosm, of the repetitive action of the
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crossing of the alternating axes of the Milky Way in the sky. In this regard, I want to emphasize,

as noted earlier, that in my ethnographic study of ideas about the Milky Way in the community

of Misminay, in the 1970s, I was told by an informant that

“…the Milky Way [mayu – “river”]…is actually made up of two rivers, not one.

The two Mayus originate at a common point in the north, flow in opposite

directions from north to south, and collide head-on in the southern Milky Way.

The bright clouds in this [southern] part of the Milky Way are the “foam”

(posuku) resulting from the celestial collision” (Urton, 1981:59).

Thus, like the two rivers that form the Milky Way, the paqcha is a fabricated object in

which the action of repeatedly separating and bringing streams of liquid together, at which

time the streams undergo a state of turbulence, which we can liken to the formation of “foam”

(posuku) when the two rivers of the Milky Way collide, apparently gave a diviner insights into

the state of things, for making prognostications and divinations.

In other words, the cosmic motion of the two streams of the Milky Way separating and

then coming together is like a cosmic paqcha. I suspect that an interpretation of a cosmic

divination would have taken place, perhaps by a highly knowledgeable shamanic figure, in Inka

times based on an interpretation of the bright, “frothing” clouds of the two colliding streams of

the Mayu/ Milky Way/Galaxy at different times of night over the course of the years.

Crossing Oblique Arithmetic Axes

The next example of our alternating oblique axes is a pattern of arithmetic calculations

in the khipus, the record-keeping devices used by Inka administrators, discussed earlier (with

respect to S and Z knots). The example involves two of the some 45 khipus excavated by Dr.
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Alejandro Chu and his team at the site of Inkawasi, an Inka military installation on the south

coast of Peru, in the Cañete River valley (Chu, 2018; Urton and Chu, 2015, 2019). Chu excavated

these samples from a large storehouse at the site. The two khipus in question, designated

UR267A and UR255, are shown in Figure 32.

What Figure 32 shows are sets of notations from khipu cords from the two khipus

shown above the two columns of figures. The cord numbers (i.e., where these cords are located

along the primary cords of the two khipus) are shown in the first column, for khipu UR267A,

and the fourth column, for khipu UR255.

Figure 32 – Arithmetic calculations recorded on two khipus from Inkawasi

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The cord series shown are cords 44 to 58 for khipu UR267A, and cords 50 to 65 for khipu

UR255. When we look at the numerical values knotted on the cord groups of these two khipus

(respectively, columns two and three), we see a repetitive pattern of groups of three values (in

the alternating, shaded and unshaded sets of rows) on matching cords on the two samples;

these are made up, in khipu UR267A by: 1) a large value, then 2) a “fixed” value 15, followed by

3) the result of subtracting the fixed value from the large value. On khipu UR255, the same

three values are organized as: 1) the same large value in the first position on UR267A, then, 2)

the value that is the result of subtracting the “fixed” value from the large value, followed by 3)

the “fixed” value.

The arithmetic operations displayed on the five sets of three cords on these two khipus

were clearly devised as a system of “checks and balances” that was applied in the record

keeping by khipu accountants working at the storehouse in Inkawasi. These configurations of

cords and values would have allowed the accountants to check their calculations in order to

ensure accuracy in accounting. However, what I would note is that the arithmetic operations

performed in the two accounts constitute “off-setting” numerical values such that the

relationship between the actions of subtraction of the two sides constitute paired, alternating

arithmetic structures (see Fig. 33).

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Figure 33 – The alternating axes of arithmetic calculations of two khipus from Inkawasi

The pattern that is established in the paired, off-setting rows of data is one that, in the

notation of values, produces crossing axial relations between a fixed value and the subtractive

value. Although this example is, I admit, a highly speculative example of our X paradigmatic

form. Nonetheless, if what we have seen in all the previous examples, in which structures of

alternating, crossing axes have been shown to have been a dominant, repetitive formulation in

many different contexts in Andean societies from very early times down to the time of the

Inkas, then, indeed, the crossing vectors and structural relations in these arithmetic calculations

in khipu accounting may be seen as logical and not to stretch too greatly the limits of credulity.

The khipus were maintained and operated by Inka administrators, who were individuals

who were thoroughly inculcated in the most subtle principles and values of standardized Inka
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ways of doing things (see Chap. IX). I suggest, therefore, that it would have been second nature

– a matter of habit – for the Inka accountants/mathematicians to have devised a method for

checking their arithmetic calculations according to a format that was consistent with a common

ideological pattern, or habitus, linked to a dominant cultural and cosmological paradigm.

The Crossing Oblique Axes Paradigm as a Seasonal/Annual Moebius Strip

I end this discussion of examples of crossing oblique axes by drawing on some

extraordinary ethnographic data collected in Bolivia by Dr. Laurence J. Cuelenaere (2009).

These data relate to patterns of gendered walking over the course of the year among people in

the altiplano (high altitude) villages around El Alto, Bolivia, where Cuelenaere carried out her

fieldwork. Cuelenaere was told by her informants/friends that women and men change

positions in walking together depending on the season, as well as the predominant wind

direction associated with each seasonal period. As she describes these patterns,

Depending on the season, women change position with respect to men. In

the South, or between September and December, women walk behind men.

In the East, or between the 21st of March and 21st of June, the woman

walks on the right side of the man. In the North, or between 21st of June

and 21st September, women walk in front of men. And finally, in the

West, or between 21st December and 21st of March women walk on

the left side of men. Thus, the gender rotation follows the sequences

of the solstices or annual cycles of the sun (Cuelenaere, 2009).

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When Cuelenaere worked with her informants to determine how to sketch out these

seasonal movements, the most satisfactory representation was on a Moebius strip (Figure 34).

Figure 34 – Bolivian gendered walking schemata translated into a moebius strip-like pattern of
motion (Cuelenaere, 2009)

As Cuelenaere explains her sketch of the patterns of yearly motion tied to the gendered

walking described and diagrammed above, which when shown in two dimensions mimics the

intersecting, crossing axes we have described throughout this chapter, she notes:

…according to these discrete sequences, men and women rotating around

each other also constitute alternating and flowing paths that resemble the

intertwining strings in a Moebius strip. The moebius strip is a three-

dimensional figure that can be formed by taking a long rectangle of paper

and twisting it once before joining its ends together. The result is a figure

which subverts our normal (Euclidian) way of representing space, for it

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seems to have two sides but in fact has only one edge. Two sides can be

distinguished, but when the whole strip is traversed it becomes clear that

they are continuous. The two sides are only distinguished by the dimension

of time, the time it takes to traverse the whole strip (Cuelenaere, 2009).

Two things are quite interesting to note in regard to this information. First, the pattern

of annual movement of male/female pairs forming the crossed axes, which makes its

transitions according to the solstices and equinoxes, has an overall structure similar to what we

saw in Chapter III, Figure 8. In that figure, we saw the connection between the rising of the June

solstice, in the northeast, when the Milky Way passed from the northeast to the southwest,

and between the rising of the December solstice, in the southeast, when the Milky Way passed

from the southeast to the northwest. This suggests a deep connection, or interaction, among

the sun, the Milky Way and male and female pairs moving across the landscape, which is quite

striking and profound.

And second, I note in these Bolivian data a striking similarity between the

representation of four male and female figures in each of the four quadrants in Figure 34 and

what we saw in the mapa mundi drawn by Guaman Poma de Ayala, in Figure 24. In the latter,

the map-maker placed a male and female couple in each of the four directional quadrants of

the image of Tawantinsuyu at the center of the cosmogram. Perhaps Guaman Poma had in

mind a directional and seasonal structuring of male/female relations and positionality similar to

the ethnographic data collected in Bolivia by Cuelenaere.

From the information presented in this last case study, I think we must consider the

possibility that all of the examples discussed in this chapter of the crossing oblique axes form
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should be considered as having not only a spatial dimension, but a temporal one as well. We

saw this explicitly in the case of the alternating axes of the Milky Way (Fig. 6), which replace or

alternate with each other once every 12 hours over every 24-hour period, as well as in the

alternation, back and forth, of the crossing of the sets of warp threads in loom weaving. The

data from Cuelenaere suggests that the other cases presented above, which emphasize only

the spatial dimension of our paradigm, should perhaps all be animated so as to be understood

as one axis replacing the other over time – with the two forming a continuous, integrated

motion over some determined period (e.g., annual time, or spans of greater or lesser temporal

periodicity).

What Was the Meaning and Significance of the Paradigm of Opposing Oblique, Crossing Axes in

Andean Cultures?

I suggest that what we have assembled in the above discussion is a collection of

material-symbolic manifestations, performances, or mimetic instantiations of what was a highly

significant paradigmatic form of some core set of meanings and values in Andean societies over

a very long period of time – from around 3,000 B.C.E. down to the present day. The question

that we must address now is: What meanings were associated with, and expressed by, the

oblique cross form in its various manifestations in these different settings?

Recognizing that it would be important to place each of our examples in its proper

context in order to interpret its full significance – a demand that is, for the most part, not

possible, given the Pre-Columbian and/or colonial contexts of the various examples – still, there

must be something we can deduce from the fact that what I have termed the structural
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arrangement, form, or paradigm of intersecting, oblique axes across a center line/point has

appeared so prominently, and explicitly, in such a wide variety of material productions from

Andean societies over some five thousand years. I would simply say, and this is my principal

thesis, that we would be hard-put to identify any other structural form, or composition, from

Andean cultures that appears as prominently and over as long a span of time as what we have

seen in the above examples of the paradigmatic X. Phrased as broadly and positively as I think is

warranted, I suggest that the paradigm of the Andean cross we have developed in this

discussion may be/have been for central Andean cultures and societies comparable to what the

Latin cross ( ) represented for Western Christianity.

We could summarize these values, in both their Western and Andean settings (i.e.,

respectively, for the Christian cross and for the Andean inter-cardinal cross – X), as: a) a – if not

the – symbolic form that synthesized fundamental religious principles and values for a

particular society or religious and cultural tradition; b) a paradigmatic form, based on

complementary opposition between the two axes of the crosses, that was recognized and

shared broadly by different social, ethnic and political groups across time and space; and c) a

symbolic form that could serve to unify a variety of different, even competing socio-political

groups into a unified society and that might be considered to have been – and continue to be

today – a highly meaningful element that differentiated the in-group from any other, outside,

competing group(s).

To the extent that this set of values can be affirmed for the central Andean societies we

are concerned with here, I think it is clear that the inter-cardinal cross (X) was, indeed, a symbol

or expressive form of profound significance and continuity coursing through, and giving long-
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term coherence to, successive societies that emerged and lived out their histories within the

central Andean region over a very long period of time. That is, the Andean/Cuzco cross was a

powerful and meaningful mimetic element of what we could term “lo andino,” as it was given a

particular symbolic, performative form over time – i.e., it was an element of the central Andean

habitus. The synthesis and culmination of the social and political instantiation of this form in

the Pre-Columbian period was realized in the structure of the Inka Empire, Tawantinsuyu.

We turn in the next chapter to the second of the two paradigmatic forms that we are

examining here in order to understand the fundamental forms and principles of central Andean

cosmology – the radial center. This will involve a look at instances of circular settlements and

radial centers in the Andes as well as across the Andean cordilleras, in the Amazon basin.
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Chapter V

Circular Villages and Radial Centers in the Andes and Amazonia

Introduction:

My objective in this chapter is to show that circular villages and the radial center

settlement form were common in pre-Columbian times in the central Andes, as well as to the

east, in the Amazon basin, and that they were, in both settings, the bases for the wide-scale

organization of multiple settlements in each of these regions into what are termed “galactic

polities,” or “galactic clusters.” I will first review the evidence for circular villages and radial

centers in the Andes and Amazonia and then go on to introduce the topic of “galactic polities,”

a concept of settlement systems that was first developed in Southeast Asian studies but which

has recently been much employed in South American studies in the description and analysis of

Amazonian archaeological settlements.

We will find in the Andean highlands that the city of Cuzco, the capital of the Inka

empire and, by virtue of this status was, therefore, an “exemplary center,” was not only

organized as a radial center (by means of the “ceque system”) but that it was likely also the

center of a regional galactic polity. The fact that the radial center structure of the Cuzco ceque

system looks more like an Amazonian socio-political and ritual construction than what we know

of any possible Andean predecessor archaeological site has always been something of a

conundrum (see Zuidema, 1964; and below).

I will show that the existence of the galactic polity settlement form was, in fact,

common among societies in a broad swath of territory on the South American continent from a

few degrees south of the equator, along the Amazon River, in the north, southward to about
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20o south of the equator. This suggests that the center of the South American continent was as

much the home of galactic polities as was the region where this settlement form was first

recognized and described – Southeast Asia.

While research on connections between the Andes and Amazonia in terms of their

relative, and potentially inter-connected, cultural developments has lagged considerably behind

research within the two regions respectively, this has begun to change rather dramatically in

recent years (see Clasby and Nesbit, 2021; and Pearce, Beresford-Jones and Heggarty, 2020). It

appears increasingly that there is a prehistory of intimate and sustained contacts between

Andean and Amazonian societies going back several thousands of years B.C.E. (see Erickson,

2006; Lathrap, 1970, 1973, 1977a; Valdez, 2008, 2014; Zeidler, 1988). The question here, for

when we see similarities between the two regions – for instance in the presence of circular and

radial center settlements in the two regions – is: To what can we attribute those similarities?

Diffusion from one place to the other? Similar geo-political environments? Or some other

explanation(s)? The answer to these questions is rather important, as it would potentially

clarify how the radial center arrangement ended up as the core structural property of the

settlement of the capital city of the Inka Empire.

There are other questions to raise at the beginning of this discussion. For instance, in

the data presented below, we will see some examples of circular settlement patterns in which

there are numerous pathways, or roads, going out from the center. These can obviously be

classified as “radial centers.” However, what of those cases where there is no physical evidence

of radial pathways? Can we assume that every archaeological circular village, whether they

display multiple pathways into and out of the site or not, would have been, in its living pattern,
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a “radial center?” We should be reminded here, as I noted in the Introduction, that the “lines”

of the ceque (“imaginary line, alignment”) system of Cuzco were not, in fact, visible on the

ground. We know of the imaginary radial lines in Cuzco because of the evidence contained in

written documents describing the city from Spanish colonial times (Cobo, 1990 [1653]).

In short, there are clearly two things to be considered in the data we will look at here on

circular villages and radial centers. One is the shape of the settlement – is it circular, or semi-

circular in its layout? The other issue is whether or not, regardless of the settlement form, there

is evidence of radial lines going from a center out to potentially subordinate centers? The latter

will be especially important in terms of the extent to which we can identify or make reasonably

confident presumptions of the existence of galactic polity-like arrangements in either the Andes

or Amazonia (or both).

The Swath of Territory with Radial Center Circular Villages

In terms of circular settlements and/or radial centers, it appears that at least this

settlement form was common very early in both Andean and Amazonian prehistory and that it

persisted for several millennia. When we look at the locations of such sites, we find that they

generally occur within a geographical band from approximately 50 south of the equator (which

coincides approximately with the main course of the Amazon River), in the north, down to

about 200 south latitude, in the south. This band is located within the tropics, which means that

the sun will pass overhead within this territory twice every year, once on its way to the south,

toward its December solstice position, and again on its way to the north, toward the June

solstice (Figure 35).

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Figure 35 – The Principal Territorial Region of Circular Villages and Radial Center Settlements
(between 50 south of the Equator to 200 South Latitude)

I should note that all of the features of the view of the celestial sphere in the southern

hemisphere described in Chapter III (e.g., concerning the brightness of the Milky Way and the

intersection of its alternating axes) hold for the swath of territory across the South American

continent just defined. Therefore, we will need to be attentive to possible interest in the Milky

Way detailed earlier. That said, it should be noted that much less work has been done on

ethnoastronomical beliefs and practices within the Amazonian portion of this region (see

Fabian, 1982, 1992, 2001; Lima, 2006, 2010; Lima and Figueiroa, 2008; Urton, 2016) than in the

Andes (e.g., Gullberg, 2020, Bauer and Dearborn, 1995; Urton, 1981).

Although I cannot confirm this, the southern extent of the band of territory in central

South America with concentrations of circular/radial villages shown in Figure 35 may in fact

have extended down to 23o26” south latitude, which is the latitude of the Tropic of Capricorn,

the path of the sun through the sky every year on December 21st, the summer solstice (in the
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southern hemisphere). Further research should be undertaken to determine whether or not the

circular village settlement form was common down to the Tropic of Capricorn. The point for the

moment is that all of the examples we will discuss in this chapter are located within the band of

territory within the tropics (i.e., see Aveni, 1981b) as defined above and as shown in Figure 35.

The Lake Titicaca Region: Chiripa and Pukará

Some of the earliest evidence for circular and/or semi-circular village settlements in the

Andes pertains to sites on both the north and south ends of Lake Titicaca, which today sits on

the border between Peru and Bolivia. I should make clear that although we will see this

settlement pattern in the sites discussed below, it cannot be established for certain – as these

are very ancient archaeological sites and there is little to no evidence of lines/paths emanating

from the sites – whether or not the residents of these sites conceived of them, and moved

around within and outside of them, as “radial centers.” My general presumption, and

hypothesis, is that they were conceived of in that way.

The early sites in the Lake Titicaca region date before the emergence of the largest

state-level site, Tiwanaku, the massive and well-planned site (Vranich and Levine, 2013; Vranich

and Stanish, 2013) located at the south end of the lake that was the major political and ritual

center in this region during what is known as the Middle Horizon period (600 – 1,000 C.E.). The

pre-Tiwanaku Chiripa cultural tradition emerged around 1,200 B.C.E., at the south end of the

lake, on the Taraco Peninsula (Chavez, 1988; Hastorf, 1999; and Plourde and Stanish, 2005;

Figure 36).
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Fig. 36 – The Site of Chiripa on the Taraco Peninsula Relative to the Homeland of Tiwanaku

The height of the Chiripa cultural tradition coincides approximately with what is termed

the Early Intermediate Period in the common Andean periodization (see above, Chapter IV,

Table 1). Plourde and Stanish argue that the degree of architectural complexity and the form of

the settlement pattern arrangement at the site suggest that this was a “complex society,” by

which I assume they mean this was a fairly large-scale, non-egalitarian society (Plourde and

Stanish, 2005:237).

At the base of the occupation of the type site of Chiripa, archaeologists found two levels

of circular settlements. The houses at the two lowest levels were arrayed in a squared-circle,

around a square sunken plaza, as shown in Figure 37.

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Figure 37 – Chiripa-Site map of sunken temple and surrounding structures at Chiripa, based on
the Sawyer map, Kidder’s notes, and Bennett 1936 (K. Chávez 1988)

It is interesting to note that while the straight sides of the generally circular settlement

arrangement at the Chiripa site are oriented to the cardinal directions, the formation of the

settlement in circular form is accomplished by the placement of houses at the corners oriented

at 450 angles to the cardinal orientation of the houses on the north, south, east and west sides.

I suggest that this arrangement emphasizes the importance in the Chiripa settlement pattern of

the X form of the inter-cardinal axes discussed in the previous chapter.

To the north of Lake Titicaca, at approximately the same time period as the Middle and

Late Chiripa phases, there existed another pre-Tiwanaku cultural tradition known as Qaluyu

(500 B.C.E. – 300 C.E.). The principal Qaluyu site in the region was Pukara, a site that was laid

out and constructed in a semi-circular fashion, around a square sunken plaza, somewhat similar

to the circular patterns seen at Chiripa (Plourde and Stanish, 2005:244-247; see Vranich, 2019,

on semi-circular and radial settlements; see Figure 38).

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Figure 38 – Pukara – Semi-Circular and Sunken Plaza Settlement of the Qaluyu Culture

As with Chiripa, Plourde and Stanish argue that, with its sequence of temples and

sunken court complexes beginning many centuries before its collapse, the site of Pukara shows

evidence that this was a complex society, similar in that regard to the site of Chiripa in the

south (2005:246). These two sites, one to the north, the other to the south of Lake Titicaca,

were the principal precursors in this region of the complex, state-level civilization of Tiwanaku

of the Middle Horizon period.

We see here, as we will elsewhere, that circular or semi-circular settlements with

complex architecture are signatures of complexity in early Andean societies. Moreover, I

suggest that the circular/semi-circular settlement patterns of these early sites around Lake

Titicaca may have been related to, if not directly influenced by, societies of the western
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Amazon basin. The small amount of genetic evidence we have from skeletal material recovered

at Tiwanaku shows connections to Tropical Forest populations (Alexei Vranich, personal

communication, 2021; see also Santos, 2020:150-151). In addition, Adelaar has shown close

connections between Puquina, which is thought to have been the dominant language spoken at

Tiwanaku, with Arawak, which was one of the principal language families of lowland South

America. Adelaar concluded from his study of Puquina that it was probably a linguistic hybrid,

“…a combination of both Amazonian and Andean characteristics” (Adelaar, 2020:244 & 247). In

this regard, it is important to note (as we will see below; Chapters VII and VIII) that the Inkas

considered Lake Titicaca and the site of Tiwanaku in particular to be their place(s) of origin.

The connection to Arawak-speakers may be quite relevant for our interests, as circular

villages were common among Arawakan populations throughout the southern Amazon basin

(Ozorio de Almeida, 2017:282). In addition, Heckenberger has shown that the settlement

systems of Arawak-speaking populations of the Amazon were characterized by monumentalism

(e.g., in terms of producing earthworks and artificial landscaping) and radial systems. From this

observation, Heckenberger goes on to note that:

The settlement grammars, which in some cases…are truly crystalline and, like

Southwest Pueblos or some Andean peoples (e.g., Nazca geoglyphs or the

sacred valley and ceque system of the Inka come immediately to mind)

show an over-determination of space that fits easily (in many respects) with

the cosmocentric cultural models of Amazonian peoples designed on idioms

of the human body and the cosmos. (Heckenberger, 2005:123-4).

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I explore these comparisons – especially those between Arawak-like earthworks and

radial settlements to the Nazca geoglyphs and the ceque system – below, and in later chapters.

Nazca Ray Centers

Before leaving the Andean region to look at the much more extensive record of circular

settlements and radial centers in the Amazon basin, it is important to take note of another site

– what might be termed the “radial center type-site” – which is located in the Pacific coastal

desert on what is today the south coast of Peru. This is the site of Nazca. Nazca is famous for its

geoglyphs etched into the raised pampa between the Nazca and Ingenio River valleys. The

florescence of Nazca culture occurred during the Early Intermediate period (Silverman and

Proulx, 2002), contemporary with the major period of florescence of the sites of Chiripa and

Pukara in the region of Lake Titicaca (Clarkson, 1990:141).

Anthony Aveni and the author took Earthwatch and Colgate University student field

crews to Nazca over three summers, in the 1980s. Our objective was to investigate the

organization and alignments especially of the straight lines on the pampa. What we found

there, which had not been noted previously, was a very large number (62) of what we termed

“ray centers.” These are locales on the Nazca pampa, usually located on what appeared to be

artificial earthen platforms raised a meter or two above the level of the pampa, that were the

sites of the convergence/divergence of multiple lines (Aveni, 1990:71-75 [see pull-out map at

the end of that volume]; see Figure 39).

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Figure 39 – A Raised “Ray Center” on the Nazca Pampa (Photo by G. Urton)

Figure 40 shows maps that were made of four of the ray centers (Aveni, 1990:68).

Figure 40 – Four Ray Centers on the Nazca Pampa (Aveni, 1990:68)

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After three summers of research on the Nazca pampa, we were able to map the 62 ray

centers, spread out across the pampa like a grid of coordinates (Figure 41). As far as we were

able to determine, all of the ray centers on the Nazca pampa were connected by two or more

lines (most by many more), and all straight lines running across the pampa were found to be

connected to one or more of the ray centers. There was a total of 762 straight lines connecting

the 62 centers. Laid end-to-end, Aveni has estimated that the total length of these lines would

stretch a minimum of 1000km and perhaps as much as 2000km (Aveni, 1990:82).

Figure 41 – The Locations of the 62 Ray Centers on the Nazca Pampa (Aveni, 1990: pull-out map
at end of volume)
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What is the significance of the Nazca ray/radial centers for our investigation of circular,

radial center villages? I would say that in at least one sense, the Nazca ray center phenomenon

is different from the main object of our inquiry in the sense that they were not the centers of

settlements. Rather, in most cases, the Nazca ray centers are raised platforms scattered more

or less randomly around the pampa. That said, as can be seen in Figure 41, the majority of the

ray centers are located at the edges of the pampa, along the border with both the Nazca River

(on the south side) and the Ingenio River (on the north side). Thus, while the ray centers are not

themselves settlement locations, they are nonetheless oriented to what were in fact dense

concentrations of settlements in the two bordering river valleys. That such density of sites was,

in fact, the case was shown by the large number of settlements identified in one major survey

of archaeological sites in the two valleys (Schreiber and Lancho, 2003). We think these

populations would have gained access to the ray centers, and from there made ritual

excursions around and perhaps across the pampa, for ritual and ceremonial purposes (Aveni,

1990; Urton, 1990a).

In his concise conclusion to his overview of this study of the Nazca lines, Aveni

concluded that:

…[W]e would suggest that the Nazca lines and the associated geometry

were intended, at least in part, to be walked over in some complex set

of rituals that pertained most likely to the bringing of water to the Nazca

valley and perhaps to associated mountain worship (Aveni, 1990:112).

It is also important to note in terms of the overall significance and ritual use of the lines

that Aveni argued (1990:110) for an ideological, functional and structural connection between
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the Nazca lines and ray centers and the “lines” of the ceque system of Cuzco – a topic to which

we turn in Chapter VIII.

The Ceque System of Cuzco as a Radial Center

I remind the reader, before turning to examples of circular villages and radial centers in

Amazonia, that the ceque system of the Inka capital city of Cuzco was a system of radial lines

from the center of the city out to the horizon. The ceques accommodated and organized

relations among multiple clan-like social, political and ritual groups – termed ayllus (“lineage,

species”) – that resided within each quarter. Therefore, the ceque system was the framework,

structure, and organization for life in the Inka capital – its social structure, political organization,

history, state ceremonies and rituals, the calendar, and the local agro-pastoral economy – all

wrapped up by a bundle of conceptual lines of orientation emanating from the center of the

city and crossing through the topography of the Cuzco valley – much like the imaginary lines of

latitude and longitude organize and orient our view of our global maps.

Circular Villages and Radial Centers in Amazonia

When we turn to the record of settlements in the Amazonian tropical lowlands, we find

a much higher incidence of circular villages with, in many case, either roads or footpaths

indicating a merging of circular settlements and radial centers. The majority of these sites are

located within the southern and southwestern regions of the Amazon basin. There is, in fact, a

dense concentration of such sites just to the east of the Andes, in the Brazilian state of Acre.
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This is a region of a high concentration of Arawakan-speakers, especially east of central Bolivia

and Lake Titicaca.

Saunaluoma and her colleagues have recently carried out a drone-based study of

circular and radial center settlements in Acre (Saunaluoma et al, 2021; see Figure 42).6 In the

images of circular village sites in Figure 42, the raised projections represent mounds at the

various sites. In some cases, these were house mounds, while in other cases, they were raised

areas of long-term debris disposal, each associated with a house site (Eduardo Neves, personal

communication, 2018). The important point here is that many of the circular village sites shown

in Figure 42 also display sections of very straight roads going into/out of the circular villages. In

many cases, these straight roads ran for considerable distances across the terrain, connecting

two or more circular villages or, in some cases, connecting circular villages to geometrical

configurations composed of ditches and earthen mounds (Saunaluoma et al, 2021:174).

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Figure 42 – Aerial (drone) images of Archaeological Circular and Semi-Circular settlements in

the state of Acre, Brazil (from Saunaluoma et al, 2021)

As Saunaluoma and her colleagues noted:

The roads radiate outward from the villages, forming elemental parts of

a regional network connecting scattered settlements situated 2-10 km from

each other in eastern Acre. In addition to the intersite routes, there are

also roads leading to nearby watercourses and other activity areas located
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outside the villages…The data presented here on the roads and plaza villages

of Acre show similarity with evidence relating to the “galactic clusters” –

supra-local village communities organized and linked by radial road networks

in the Upper Xingu region…[see below] (2021:175).

As noted by Saunaluoma and her colleagues, the archaeological circular villages and

road networks of Acre appear similar to complex settlement arrangements recovered

archaeologically farther to the east, in the area of the upper Xingu River. Extraordinary work in

that area has been carried out over the past couple of decades by Michael Heckenberger (2005;

Heckenberger et al, 2008). In his research in the Upper Xingu region, Heckenberger has found

evidence of very large, multi-concentric ring villages (Figure 43), which date to the 14th and 15th

centuries A.D.

Figure 43 – Reconstruction of Kuhikugu village site, Upper Xingu (1500 A.D.; Heckenberger,
2005)

The soils associated with these large settlements are commonly composed of

Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE). These are carbon-rich soils that result from the disposal of

organic matter in and around these formerly highly productive and heavily populated
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horticultural settlements (Neves and Heckenberger, 2019). The presence of vast expanses of

ADE along the Amazon River and its tributaries has helped to re-orient our thinking about

populations in this region, demonstrating that they were much larger and more complex than

was previously thought (e.g., see Meggars, 1996 [1971]).

Heckenberger has also shown that, in some cases, two or more circular village

settlements were connected by straight roads running through the gallery forests and open

terrain of the Upper Xingu (Fig. 44).

Figure 44 – Multiple circular village array – the Ipatse Cluster – connected by straight roads
(Heckenberger, 2008)

Heckenberger has articulated an extremely interesting and provocative analysis and

representation of the inter-connectedness of settlements in the Upper Xingu (“Xinguano”)

region in late pre-Conquest times. The model, adopted from Stanley Tambiah’s elegant study,
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“The galactic polity in Southeast Asia” (2013 [1973]), entails a group of Xinguano settlements

connected by roads and organized among themselves into three-tier settlement hierarchies,

which Heckenberger refers to as “galactic clusters,” or “galactic polities” (Figure 45).

Figure 45 – Schema of a “Galactic Polity” in the Upper Xingu (Heckenberger, 2005:124-129)

The basic structure of the galactic polity was a hierarchical organization of tiered

settlements, generally arrayed with a center and four satellite settlements in the cardinal

directions.7 The center of a cluster within the galactic polity is represented in Figure 45 by the

large, dark circles; arrayed around the centers, in the cardinal directions, was a group of four
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middle-tier settlements, shown as medium gray circles; and beyond those four mid-tier

settlements was a more distant, lower tier of settlements, shown as light gray, in Figure 45. The

whole of the three-tiered hierarchical galactic polity arrays were connected via roads running

straight across the terrain. As Heckenberger summarized the Xinguano galactic polity

arrangement:

This basic radial model is characterized by exemplary centers and satellites

oriented to the cardinal directions in galactic polities and plaza villages, But,

whereas the expression of this “ethnophysics” is today limited to plazas,

“Houses,” radial paths, and a countryside of single settlements, in the regional

galactic pattern typical of prehistoric times, great and small plaza settlements

were linked by major roads and positioned at regular intervals, about every

two to three miles. (Heckenberger, 2005:128).

Clearly, the “galactic polity” of the Xinguano cultural tradition fits into the circular village

and radial center model we have been working to reconstruct and examine in this chapter.

Heckenberger’s Amazonian galactic polities are grounded in a similar set of concepts to those

Tambiah articulated in relation to his Southeast Asian case studies. As Tambiah notes:

The most central of these concepts is mandala (Thai: monthon), standing in

an arrangement of a center and its surrounding satellites…[O]ther key concepts

…are: muang, which in a politico-territorial sense signifies kingdom/principality

in terms of center-oriented space, and of central and satellite domains; and

krom, which represents the radial mapping of an administrative system of

departments and their subdivisions, as well as the constitution of successively

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expanding circles of leaders and followers or factions (Tambiah, 2013 [1973]:508).

A final point about the Southeast Asian galactic polities is what Tambiah had

emphasized as the “pulsating,” or “oscillating” nature of political relations between the king at

the center and the heads of the surrounding, subordinate settlements, the latter of whom were

constantly being tempted by relations with other polities – i.e., other than with the exemplary

center. As Tambiah noted, “In theory, the king was safe only when these rulers and officials had

dyadic relations solely with him as the radial center of the network” (2013 [1973]:515 [my

emphasis]). We will return to consider these elements of the Southeast Asian/Amazonian

“galactic polities” in our discussion of the organization of Cuzco, its radial ceque system, and

the arrangement of settlements around the imperial capital.

It is important to note that the wider region of the Xingu and other nearby southern

Amazonian tributaries was not uniform, nor homogenous in socio-political terms. Heckenberger

argues that while the Xinguano, organized in their galactic polities, were generally peaceful and

non-aggressive toward their neighbors, the favor was often not reciprocated by those same

neighbors. This particularly goes for the highly aggressive Tupian-speaking groups to the north

of the Xinguano clusters and the Ge and Bororo to the south. The Tupi and Ge and Bororo were

warlike, boisterous, and quite aggressive. The Xinguano peoples apparently had to maintain an

effective defensive posture vis à vis these two sets of aggressive neighbors (Heckenberger,

2005:135-141).

What is particularly interesting is that when we look at the archaeological and

ethnological records especially of Ge and Bororo settlements (i.e., to the south of the
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Xinguanos), we find that they exhibit very strong examples of the circular village radial center

pattern. One such circular radial village, of the Ge-speaking Canela Indians, is seen in Figure 46.

Figure 46 – Canela village of Escalvado, in 1970 (Crocker and Crocker, 1994:2)

Anyone familiar with the social organization of Ge and Bororo villages will attest to the

highly complex level of social and ritual organization of these settlements. They were often

organized by houses in circular arrangements, each household usually composed by a

matrilineal descent group, with young men moving across the village perimeter from their natal

households to the houses of their wives. As an intermediate stage in this movement, however,

there was usually a transitional period of residence of the young men (usually in age graded

groups) in a centrally located “men’s house,” in the center of the radial pathways leading

to/from the houses around the perimeter (see Figure 47).

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Figure 47 – Plan of a Bororo village with Moiety, Clan and Household Sites Indicated
(Crocker, 1985:31)

What is particularly interesting in these data for our study, especially in relation to what

we will see in terms of the organization of the Cuzco ceque system radial center is that in the

Bororo village plan (Fig. 47), the whole circular settlement is divided into moieties, one to the

north (“Exerai”), the other to the south (“Tugarege”). Each moiety is sub-divided into two parts

with two clan groups in each of the two parts and with each clan group composed of a

hierarchical arrangement of two or three household units. This structure and organization of

moieties, sub-moieties and a triadic arrangement of sectors of the village was, as we will see

below, very similar to the structure and hierarchical organization of socio-political and ritual

groups in the ceque system of Cuzco.

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Recognizing the similarities of the Xinguano galactic polities and the Ge and Bororo

circular settlements to Andean, especially Inka, organizations, Heckenberger speculates on

whether or not these complex settlement and socio-political systems of the southern Amazon

basin were perhaps influenced by the Inkas (2005:133-141). In the end, it is impossible for him

to conclude with any certainty whether or not the Amazonian cultures were influenced by the

Inka state and its expansive, warlike imperial apparatus. In fact, I think it can be argued, as has

been suggested previously (see below), that the cultures all across the region that I identified

earlier just south of the Amazon River and perhaps as far south as the Tropic of Capricorn (see

Fig. 35), were all bound up together into a continent-wide, highly complex interaction sphere

stretching from the Nazca pampa, in the west, to somewhat east of the Xingu and Tocantins

Rivers, in the east (along the eastern, Atlantic coast were the non-related Tupian- and Carib-

speaking peoples).

In the interaction sphere briefly sketched out above, the peoples who built, occupied

and maintained the circular radial villages of the Acre region, in the southwest Amazon region,

would have acted as intermediaries between the highly complex late pre-Hispanic cultures of

the Inkas, in the Andes, and the Xinguano/Ge/Bororo of the southern tributaries of the

Amazon.

The Relationship Between Andean and Amazonian Radial Centers

We have seen in this chapter what is an expansive and not always entirely clear set of

relations among circular villages and radial/ray centers stretching in a territorial band some 5o –

20o south latitude from the western edge of the South American continent (Nazca) to several
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major southeastern tributaries (e.g., the Xingu and Tocantins rivers) of the Amazon River. The

sites in question date from about 1,200 B.C.E. (Chiripa) to the present-day (the Xinguano, Ge

and Bororo). What are we to make of the significance of the similarities across this broad

expanse and long-term record of settlement systems and their commitment to hierarchical

organization, circular villages and/or radial centers?

My purpose here has been to present evidence relating to radial centers that will allow

us to put the radial center system of the Inka capital city of Cuzco, the ceque system, which we

will take up in Chapter VIII, in a broader context. That context now goes from very early in the

pre-Inka past to the present and from the western side of the South American continent to

close to the eastern side. What is most striking here is that this is not the first effort to link the

peoples and cultures of this wide-spread and ancient set of cultural traditions. For, in fact, the

principal student of the ceque system of Cuzco, R. Tom Zuidema, long ago argued for what he

termed was a deep cultural connection among these cultures across space and time.

As early as 1953, I was struck by the very great superficial resemblance

between the ceque system of Cuzco and the village organization of the

Bororo from the Matto Grosso and that of several of the Ge tribes from

East Brazil. This resemblance then appeared to extend to several aspects

of the social organization. Thus, the suspicion that the organization into

age groups among the Inca could be interpreted in the same way as that

among the Canella…drew my attention to relevant facts which proved

the existence of a similar organization among the Inca… (Zuidema, 1964:

21-22).
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In the end, Zuidema proposed what could be termed a common “field of ethnological

studies” (FES), which he conceived of as composed of: a) the Incas of the Pre-Columbian Andes,

b) the contemporary—1940s-1950s – Indian communities of the highlands of Peru, Bolivia and

Ecuador, and c) the Ge and Bororo Indians of Brazil (see Urton, 1996b:19; see also Fabian,

1998). Based on the material presented in this chapter, I would expand Zuidema’s FES to

include the ancient Arawakan-influenced cultures of the Lake Titicaca region, as well as the

archaeological cultures of the southwestern Amazon, particularly those in the state of Acre,

Brazil.

It is important to note in passing, as I have done previously (Urton, 1996b), that in his

earlier studies at the University of Leiden, Zuidema had focused on pre-colonial societies of

Southeast Asia, making him intimately familiar with the mandala and monca-pot (i.e., a center

surrounded by four settlements) systems of Southeast Asia. Therefore, as he sought to identify

connections and structural relationships between the radial scheme of the ceque system in the

Andes and similar arrangements in Amazonia, he was already intimately familiar with the

character of such arrangements as mandala-based galactic polities – whether in Southeast Asia

or in Amazonia.

In the end, the most difficult question to answer is: How can we account for the

similarities among the societies across time and space identified in the modified

Andean/Amazonian FES in the above paragraph? Addressing and giving a provisional answer to

this question would take another entire book! For our purposes here, I would suggest that the

core principles they shared included: a) a deep commitment to hierarchy in socio-political

relations, including age-grades, or age sets; b) kinship, marriage and descent systems that
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embedded the hierarchical relations among groups in the social fabric of the communities; c)

the playing out and display of hierarchical relations in rich and complex ritual and ceremonial

traditions (e.g., racing, dancing, masking, etc.); and d) at some level, a belief in the status of the

societies occupying and reproducing those circular and/or radial centers with celestial bodies,

especially the Sun and the Milky Way – i.e., these peoples believed they were located at the

center of the universe.

In the next chapter, we will turn our attention back to the Andes, focusing on a central

institution of social, political, economic and ritual organization in the central Andes, as well as in

the city of Cuzco, that is critical for an understanding of the social contours of the ceque

system. This institution is the ayllu, a wonderfully complex form of social and economic

organization that was perfectly – and perhaps uniquely – adapted to the highly vertical and

diverse central Andean geography and environment.

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Chapter VI

The Ayllu and Vertical Archipelago in Andean Cosmology

One social institution which it is essential to explore in order to gain an understanding of

Andean cosmology and the ceque system of Cuzco is the ayllu (“lineage, species, type”). Ayllus

were the principal groupings of social, political, ritual and economic organization in central

Andean communities from at least Inka times (if not well before; see Isbell, 1997) and, in some

instances, down to the present day (Urton, 1990b). There were 20 royal and non-royal ayllus

whose members made up the population of Inka Cuzco. The members of each of these groups

were arrayed along or near to the territory associated with a specific ceque line. The link

between any one of the ayllus and a particular ceque undoubtedly went back into remote

times, as would have been recounted in the mythohistory of each ayllu.

Although the basic social groups within Cuzco are referred to in the Spanish chronicles

as “ayllus” – in fact, as either panacas (royal ayllus) or simply (non-royal) ayllus – this same term

was used as well for what were hundreds, if not a few thousands, of social groups into which

the commoner populations – the hatunruna (“great people”) – in the provinces throughout the

central Andes in imperial times were organized. Therefore, in order to understand the social

components of the general model of “Andean cosmology” we are developing here, we must

integrate into that conception an understanding of what the ayllus were, how they were

constituted, and how they fit into the cosmology.

One thing to note in the beginning is that the ayllus in Cuzco appear to have been

constituted differently from how the provincial ayllus were formed. To the best of my

knowledge, and beyond what we are told in the mythological traditions recounting the Inka
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past, no one has yet explained – scientifically and culture historically – how the ayllus of Cuzco

were originally formed and why they appear so different from the constitution of ayllus in the

hinterland (for the make-up of the Cuzco ayllus according to colonial mythohistorical sources,

see Rowe, 1985; Zuidema, 1964, 1982). Perhaps the ayllus of Cuzco were, at some point in the

distant past, composed as were the provincial ayllus, in the manner to be explained below. If

so, our sources do not help us to untangle this aspect of their deep history.

My sense is that the way in which the commoner ayllus in the provinces, on one hand,

and the royal ayllus (panacas) and ayllus of Cuzco, on the other hand, were equivalent, or at

least the way they may be compared, is that they both referred in their respective settings to

the concept of “species.” That is, as I explain below, the term ayllu had the value and function

of indicating the various types (i.e., species) within a larger social matrix composed of multiple

such types. Each species had its own particular characteristics. We will first examine how the

provincial ayllus were formed and what their general features were and then turn in Chapter

VIII to examine the nature and place of ayllus in the organization of Inka Cuzco.

In order to develop an understanding of the conditions that gave rise to ayllus in the

Andean countryside, it will require a brief discussion of the geographic challenges and

opportunities facing populations that resided in the coastal, highlands and tropical forest

regions of the central Andes. The reason we must begin with geography is because the

provincial ayllus were formed on the basis of an extraordinarily complex adaptation to the very

diverse features of the vertical Andean environment. A discussion of the geographical aspects

of life “on the ground” in the central Andes, then, will give us insights into how ayllus were

adapted to this unique setting. In fact, and rather surprisingly, we must begin this discussion
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with an introduction to the movement of the cold waters in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, off

the coast of the central Andes, and its implications for the extraordinarily dry desert along the

Pacific coast.

Living Along the Western Edge of the Continent of South America

We can begin by asking what, if anything, is special, or unusual, in comparative global

terms, about the landforms and geography of the central Andes that might account for, or at

least be related to, the emergence of the ayllus? To answer this question, we take note first of

the existence of an extraordinarily deep oceanic trench just off the western edge of the South

American continental shelf. This trench – some four to five miles deep in places – called the

Peru-Chile trench, is a product of plate tectonics. That is, the Peru-Chile trench results from the

subduction of the oceanic plate (called the Nazca Plate), which forms the floor of the Pacific

ocean immediately to the west of the continent, beneath the western edge of the continent.

The inexorable movement eastward of the oceanic plate is caused by the upwelling in the deep,

mid-Pacific ridge of magma, welling up from deep within the earth, pushing the Nazca Plate

eastward until it collides with and dips (i.e., subducts) beneath the western edge of the

continent. This action, occurring over the past tens of millions of years, is what accounts for the

uplift of the terrain of western South America in the form of the Andes mountain chain – which

runs from the Caribbean Sea, in the north, to Tierra del Fuego, in the south.

The subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the western edge of the continent is

responsible for the extreme geological instability of western South America, instability which
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takes the form of frequent seismic action, including earthquakes of various degrees of

magnitude, as well as occasional, cataclysmic volcanic eruptions (Fig. 48).

Figure 48- Subduction of the Nazca Plate Beneath the South American Continental Plate

To continue our description of the extraordinary coastal region of the central Andes, the

very deep waters within the oceanic Peru-Chile trench are driven northward along the coast by

what is termed the Humboldt Current. The waters that are brought from the depths of the

trench to the surface by the north-flowing Humboldt Current are very cold. As the cold waters

engage with the continental landmass, a temperature inversion occurs, and any moisture-

bearing clouds are sent aloft, above the coastline, leaving the coast from central Chile up to the

north coast of Peru a bone-dry desert. In fact, this coastal desert is the driest place on earth,

receiving even less annual precipitation than the Sahara Desert.

The upwelling of the Humboldt Current carries with it plankton and other deep sea life

up to the surface where it sustains extraordinarily rich and diverse maritime resources,
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including vast populations of crustaceans, fish, seals, walruses and marine birds. This makes the

waters off the coast of Chile and Peru some of the richest fishing waters on Earth. This region

was, as a consequence, home to some of the earliest complex societies on the South American

continent (Quilter, 2014).

One requirement of harvesting these diverse maritime resources in the most efficient

way was the development of resource procurement scheduling regimes, or calendar systems,

based on solar, lunar and stellar cycles synchronized with the periodic availability of fish,

shellfish and other marine resources, a topic to which not much attention has been devoted to

date (see Urton, 1982). This was one context in which there was an explicit relationship

between the celestial and terrestrial (i.e., maritime) spheres that must have been integrated

into coastal cosmologies (a topic of study even less developed than highland Andean

cosmologies to date).

An Interlude on Movement

We should pause for a moment to note the extraordinary, and unique, pair of

circumstances described to this point that give rise to a remarkable feature of the central

Andes: almost constant movement. That is, we saw earlier that, due to its location in the

southern hemisphere, in viewing the southern sky and its absence of a pole star, every point in

the southern skies is in motion; nothing in the heavens is stable or fixed. Similarly, in the above

description of the terrestrial sphere, we saw the extreme and continuous instability of the

terrestrial realm, and the frequent shaking of the earth and volcanic eruptions, as the Andes

mountains are pushed slowly, but inexorably, toward the sky.

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In fact, there is perhaps no place on earth in which the universe is in such a state of

almost continual motion as the central Andean region of the continent of South America. These

are the conditions of the universe to which people in all societies that have inhabited this

region – from the earliest hunters and gatherers, to the Inkas and the conquering Spaniards, to

the money-changers, skateboarders and computer geeks on the tree-lined streets of Lima today

– have accommodated themselves.

But let’s look more closely at the unique landforms and landscapes of the central Andes,

from the Pacific coastal desert, in the west, over the Andes, and down into the Amazon basin,

in the east, as this was the setting in which the ayllus came into being and made their home.

Traversing the Landscape

The best way to gain a sense of what it is like living in the central Andes, and, thereby, to

understand the setting in which the ayllus were formed, is to walk through and across it. Thus,

we will take a walking tour of this dramatic landscape, beginning our journey standing on the

dry coastal desert with the ocean to our back. From here, we look off to the east where we see,

surprisingly near to where we are standing on the coast, the western-most foothills of the

Andes, rising higher and higher into the far distance (Figure 49).
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Fig. 49 – The View eastward, up the Nazca River Valley, from the flat coastal desert
looking toward the Andes (photo by G. Urton)

Following any one of the 40-50 river valleys that bring water down to the coast from the

western-most foothills of the Andes, toward the east, one climbs higher and higher, passing the

coastal mountain range and dropping down into broad inter-montane valleys. Proceeding on

eastward, one eventually comes to the high mountains of the central cordillera (“mountain

chain”), where, standing on a high mountaintop, one looks down thousands of meters into a

number of inter-montane river valleys. This sight is seen, for instance, as in Figure 50, the view

from Pachatusan mountain (outside of Cuzco) looking down at the Urubamba River, far below

in the Yucay Valley.

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Figure 50 – The View from Pachatusan Looking Down into the Yucay Valley and
Toward the East (photo by G. Urton)

After a few days of rugged walking farther to the east, from where we took in the view

seen in Figure 50, one comes to the eastern-most edge of the Andes. The precipitous region

along the eastern Andean escarpment is referred to as the ceja de la montaña (“eyebrow of the

tropical forest”). Here, the mountains drop off steeply through very rugged, heavily forested

terrain onto the upper reaches of the rivulets and several very large rivers flowing

northeastward out of the Andes where they join together with other great rivers flowing

eastward – from Colombia in the north to Bolivia in the south – to form the mightiest river on

Earth, the Amazon.

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Perhaps the most dramatic, popular view of the sharp drop-off from the eastern Andean

heights down into the tropical lowlands is the famous scene in the Werner Herzog movie,

Aguirre, the Wrath of God, in which the Spanish conquistadores, dressed in their full body

armor, are seen descending the steep eastern Andean escarpment (Fig. 51).

Figure 51 – Descending the Eastern Andes (W. Herzog, Aguirre, the Wrath of God)

The journey we have just made, from the Pacific coastal desert over the Andes to the

upper Amazon, is a unique trek in terrestrial geography. For nowhere else on Earth can one

pass through a range of altitudes and environments – going from the shoreline of an ocean up

to 20,000+ feet (6,096+ meters) above sea level and down again to just a few hundred feet

above sea level on a major tropical floodplain – all within a horizontal distance (in some places)

of under 155 miles (250 km.), as in the central Andes. This extraordinary range and compression

of altitudes and environments is another circumstance, beyond its global positioning, that
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renders the central Andes a unique setting for the development of civilization when compared

to any other place on earth. And importantly for our interest here, this was the setting within

which the ayllus came into existence.

The Ayllu as an Adaptation to the Ecological Diversity of the Central Andes

Archaeologists have informed us deeply over the past century or so of the many and

varied ways whereby Andean peoples have long exploited the plant, animal, mineral, and other

resources within the complex environmental settings outlined above. These involved the

development of highly complex, specialized tool assemblages and a variety of forms of

exploitation that were employed to harvest the riches of the ocean, the mountains, and the

Amazonian tropical forest. I will not attempt to give an overview of these many resources,

stratagems and affordances here as they make up the substance of the very complex history of

archaeological studies of central Andean societies. There are many excellent sources one can

turn to for such information and overviews (see Quilter, 2014).

That said, nonetheless, one might wonder whether the extraordinary terrestrial

circumstances within which central Andean societies emerged and evolved over time resulted

in any unique forms of adaptation and social action comparable to the formation of the

celestial component of Andean cosmology, as discussed earlier. While there are a number of

such phenomena that could be discussed, I will focus here on one institution and one strategy

of ecological and economic exploitation which together had deep roots in, and profound

implications for, the social, economic, religious and political formations that emerged within

these settings, and that were, arguably, unique to Andean societies. I am referring to the
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organization that was brought about by means of a pair of phenomena, one, an institution, the

ayllu (“lineage; species”) and another, a mode of resource exploitation connected with the

ayllu, known as the “vertical archipelago” (Murra, 1980; Salomon, 1995).

I will argue below that the ayllu/vertical archipelago synergetic union within Andean

societies was as unique to Andean terrestrial cosmology as was the manner of finding, or

projecting, order into the heavens of the southern hemisphere in the form of crossing oblique

zenith axes of the Milky Way was to Andean celestial cosmology. A complete understanding of

Andean cosmology requires that we synthetize these terrestrial and celestial forms of order and

organization.

Ayllu: The Andean “Species” of Things

As I indicated above, the Quechua term ayllu basically refers to the concept of a

“species,” “genus,” or “type.” The term and concept of ayllu has as important a place in central

Andean ideology, classification, ontology, and cosmology as the concept of species had in

Western thinking. The types of things referenced may be to groups of humans, but they may

also be constituted by other types and classes of things as well (Salomon, 1991). As Salomon

notes: “It [the ayllu] has no inherent limits of scale; in principle, it applies to all levels from

sibling groups to huge kindreds, clanlike groups, or even whole ethnic groups defined by

reference to common origin and territory” (1991:22).

To consider the matter of the “species-like” properties of the ayllu comparatively, for a

moment, it is well known that one of the key intellectual developments contributing to the

emergence and development of scientific thinking during the era of the Western Enlightenment
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was the formalization of principles of classification and taxonomy devised by Carl Linnaeus in

the work, Systema Naturae (1735; see Beil, 2019). These principles had at their base systematic

efforts to identify, name and classify morphological similarities and differences within

collections of plants and animals observed in the world of nature in order to make rational

sense of the great diversity of flora and fauna in the world. This effort was the perfect

instrumental stimulus injected into the world of 18th century adventurers and travelers

encountering and struggling to come to terms with whole new life forms in previously

unexplored lands around the world.

Linnaean classification involved the identification of similarities and differences

characterizing groupings of life forms ordered into hierarchical, branching arrangements, each

node of separation of which involved the recognition of morphological and reproductive

differences that reflected distinctions in natural types that would ultimately end in myriad

examples of the separation of individuals into reproductive groups – or species. The latter were

the many different types and varieties of individuals, whether plant, animal, insect, etc., that

not only reproduced its distinctive type, but also that, collectively, constituted the natural order

of living “things” encountered in the world. The objective of this new Enlightenment science of

classification and taxonomy was the effort to make sense of a world seemingly pervaded by

differences but in which, upon careful scrutiny and description, there could be recognized

similarities in different groups of individuals that joined them together into distinctive types.

In a very real sense, we can say that the principles outlined above for Linnaean

taxonomy and classification also fairly neatly define what Andeans have long recognized as the

principles underlying the recognition of the fundamental social groupings within human
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populations, and have named “ayllus.” The similarity between the Andean “ayllu” and the

Western concept of a “species” is reflected in several of the definitions of the former in the

early 17th century Quechua/Spanish dictionary by Diego González Holguín (1952 [1608]39-40).

Some of the ways González Holguín defined and used the term ayllu include:

Ayllu – El genero, o especie en las cosas (“The kind [genus], or species of things”)

Huc ayllu hacha – Los arboles de una especie (“The trees of one species”)

Huc huc ayllum cama tahuachaquiyoccuna – Los animals son de diferentes especies, y

Generos (“Animales are of different species and genera”)

Angel cunam yzcum chacuchacu ayllo – Los angeles son de nueve choros distinctos

(“Angels are of nine distinct forms [types]”)

Ayllo pura, o aillo ayllucama hunanacuni – Iuntarse los de un linage, o cosas de un

Genero (“To gather together those of one lineage [class], or the things of

a genus [kind]”)

In addition to the above definitions from González Holguín’s Quechua/Spanish

dictionary, the ethnohistorical documents from early colonial times make abundantly clear that

people in communities throughout Tawantinsuyu were organized into multiple ayllus, which

were generally further organized into the system of dual social groups, referred to as moieties

(“halves”), we will encounter in Cuzco. Village social organizations in the Andes have

traditionally been composed of multiple ayllus, each belonging to one or the other of the two

moieties. The latter were usually hierarchically related to each other, one being designated

hanan (“upper, superior”), the other as hurin (“lower, inferior, or subordinate”). In addition to

relations of hierarchy between the moieties, the (usually) multiple ayllus within each moiety
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were also ranked hierarchically. We will see this same principle of organization among the

ayllus in Cuzco.

The ayllus and moieties were the principal groupings for social, political, ritual and

economic life and action in the Andes in Inka times and, in many cases, in communities down to

the present day. One question that has been at the heart of Andean studies for quite some time

is: How far into the pre-Inka past were Andean communities organized into ayllus? This

question remains very much a matter of dispute today (Isbell, 1997).

The taxonomic nature of Andean ayllus was brought home to me most poignantly in

living for some two years in the community of Pacariqtambo, located about 60 km. south of

Cuzco, in the 1980s (Urton, 1990; Meyerson, 1990). The social organization of the one-

thousand or so people who lived in Pacariqtambo at that time was a division into 10 ayllus,

which were divided into two groups of five, by a system of moieties. In Pacariqtambo, the latter

were called Hanansaya (“the upper part”) and Hurinsaya (“the lower part”). The ayllus of

Pacariqtambo were responsible for organizing public labor projects, the celebration of saints’

days (in the Catholic calendar), and the apportionment of communal lands (Urton, 1992).

I have documented the existence of multiple ayllus in Pacariqtambo, going back to 1568,

a mere one generation following the entry of Europeans into the Andes, in 1532 (see Table 2).

As we see in Table 2, the ayllus in Pacariqtambo have long been divided hierarchically between

the two moieties. In addition, hierarchy is reflected in the ordering of the ayllus within each

moiety. In the past, as in 1988, the ayllu hierarchy was a critical feature of relations among the

ayllus in terms of priority in festival sponsorship, assignment of communal lands, and other

such matters (see Urton, 1992, 1993a & b). The principle of hierarchy will also be seen when we
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turn to the ceque system of Cuzco, in which moiety and ayllu hierarchies were fundamental to

the organization in that system.

Table 2 – The Ayllus and Moieties of Pacariqtambo, 1568 -1988 (from Urton, 1990b:72)

In countless conversations that I had with people in Pacariqtambo in the 1980s, the

members of any one of the ayllus, while sitting around a cooking stove in a kitchen for instance,

would often talk about the members of “other” ayllus, as though each constituted a distinct

“species,” or “type” of humanity. One ayllu would be said (by the people of certain other ayllus)

to be made up all of lazy people, another of hard-workers, another as being aggressive and

over-bearing, etc. Learning the nature of members of the different ayllus – according to the

prejudices and judgments of the members of one’s natal ayllu – was the vital body of

knowledge every individual needed in order to navigate the social world of the village day-to-

day. Linnaeus would have approved of such a systematic ordering and typologizing of the

similarities and differences among this collection of human types!

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But, one might ask, what does the institution of the ayllu have to do with the great

geographical and ecological diversity of the central Andes described earlier? This is explained by

the way in which the members of each one of these ayllus – of which there were many

hundreds, if not thousands of such groups, from Ecuador down to Chile – were dispersed across

the landscape. I must clarify that the organization of ayllus described below pertains to the

situation before the time of the Spanish conquest. Following the conquest, Spanish

administrators took apart and radically transformed the Inka era, pre-conquest structure and

organization of these groups (see Mumford, 2012).

From accounts of ayllus contained in colonial administrative documents (e.g., see

Murra, 1980), we learn that each ayllu had a central place, which it considered to be the origin

place of the ayllu ancestor(s). The members living in any period of time resided not only in that

central place but also in different settlements at some distance away from the center. The

outlying settlements would be located in different ecological zones from each other, as well as

from the central place. This dispersal of the members of each ayllu was done so that each

group, as a whole, could take advantage of the great variety of resources available across the

different ecological zones of the central Andes. In some cases, the central settlement and its

peripheral satellite settlements might be scattered from the top to the bottom of a high

mountain (e.g., recall the view in Fig. 50). But, equally common (according to our historical

sources) were situations in which ayllu members would disperse to distant settlements far

away from the location of the central home site.

These distant, satellite settlements, wherever they were located, are known in the

Andean literature as “archipelagos.” The strategy of an ayllu dispersing its members to an array
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of different ecological zones across the countryside – from the coast, up into the highlands, and

down into the tropical forest – is referred to as the “vertical archipelago” system of settlements

(Murra, 1980; Salomon, 1991). A typical such settlement arrangement of one hypothetical

ayllu, displayed in a profile cut of the Andes looking toward the north, with the Pacific Ocean on

the left (west) and the Amazonian lowlands on the right (east), is shown in Figure 52.

Figure 52 – An Ayllu Central Place and Its Four Vertical Archipelagos

In Figure 52, the center of this hypothetical ayllu is the large circle in the center, which is

located along the side of a mountain at the bottom of which is an inter-montane river. The

people living at the center will have access to resources around this settlement, from the river

up to mid-altitudes along the mountainside. In order to have access to the high-altitude

grasslands, for herding the ayllu’s camelids (llama and alpaca), some members of the ayllu will

be sent to live in the high (puna) land (the circle shown above the center). Another highland

center is shown to the upper-left of the center, over the western range of mountains, where it

can exploit resources in that region. In order to have access to maritime resources (fish,
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shellfish, the flesh of marine birds, etc.), our ayllu will also send members to live in a settlement

(archipelago) along the coast, which is shown to the left in Fig. 52. And finally, to harvest the

resources of the tropical forest (e.g., feathers, plants for drugs, animal hides, etc.) another

group of ayllu members will be sent down to the settlement shown to the right, in Fig. 52. This

means that the total membership of the ayllu will be widely distributed over several hundreds

of kilometers of vertical and horizontal space.

According to our sources (Murra, 1980 ), ayllu members living in the outer archipelago

settlements would periodically return to the center, bringing with them the resources

harvested from the site each group inhabited at which time they would all exchange resources

from the various settlements across the entire ayllu membership. Thus, through the

combination of the ayllu and the vertical archipelago system, all members of the myriad ayllus,

no matter where any given individual lived, would have had access to resources from all three

ecological zones of the central Andes – the coast, the mountains, and the tropical forest. It has

often been claimed that it was this ayllu-based system of ecological exploitation and economic

organization that accounts for the fact that markets did not exist in the Andes in pre-European

contact times (Murra, 1980) – that is, all exchanges could be accomplished within each ayllu.

From what we can deduce from our sources, it appears that the occasions when all ayllu

members would gather at the central place were not only times for the exchange of resources,

but also times when ayllu mates could socialize, exchange views and news, and when young

people could meet and, potentially, establish relations leading to marriage. As for the

reproduction of the ayllus, the system ideally followed two rules, as I understand them from a

reading of various sources: ayllu endogamy and ecological exogamy. That is, in finding a mate, a
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member of the ayllu had to marry someone within his or her ayllu but a person who lived in a

different/distant ecological zone. This pair of (idealized) rules accounted for the perpetuation of

the ayllu as a biological and social group and sustained the group’s access to the widest array of

resources across the Andes into the future.

In the discussion above, we have traced the disposition of the members of only one

ayllu across different ecological zones. In fact, since there were many ayllus engaged in this

strategy of ecological and economic exploitation, there would result a mix of members of many

different ayllus in any one locale along the coast, within the highlands, and down into the

tropical forest. As a result of this dispersal and intermixing of a myriad of ayllus across the

Andes, the social constitution of populations in the central Andes was exceedingly complex and,

therefore, very difficult for the colonial Spanish administrators to understand and to devise a

strategy to govern effectively (see Mumford, 2012). It was this mosaic of highly complex, inter-

mingled ayllu populations that the Inkas were able successfully to integrate into Tawantinsuyu.

To the best of my knowledge, there is/was no other place on earth where such a system

of the integration of a social unit that dispersed its members to exploit resources across the

land in a regular, ordered, and continuous system of resource and biological exchange that was

carried out and sustained over as long a period of time as in the Andes. We have ample

evidence that this system was in operation in the Inka Empire and that it continued in many

places on into the Colonial era. In addition, ayllu and moiety arrangements have been

documented in an attenuated form down to the present day – although in the absence of

distant archipelago settlements, most of which disappeared following European colonization

(Mumford, 2012). As I have noted earlier, one central, fairly hotly contested issue in Andean
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studies today is, for how long into the distant, pre-Inka past did such an integrated

ayllu/vertical archipelago system operate?

The latter is a profoundly important question in central Andean culture history. For if

the system of ayllus and vertical archipelagos was “invented” by the Inkas, near the end of the

pre-Hispanic era, then we have no reason to see this social/ecological/economic complex as

having played a major, formative role in Andean societies, until just before the Spanish

conquest of Tawantinsuyu, beginning in 1532 C.E. However, I would say that it doesn’t make

sense to me that such a complex, intricate system, which integrated social organization,

economics, ritual, the reproduction of social groups, and all other aspects of society, could have

come into existence and coalesced in the complex form in which it appears in the early Spanish

chronicles and documents if it had only emerged in Inka times. I understand the ayllu to have

constituted a central element of Andean cosmology going back into distant, pre-Columbian

times. This pattern and practice of living in the land, of organizing and reproducing the social

group, and of continuously finding a place and meaning in the world for each group, would

have been core practices and values informing Andean ontology and cosmology through time.

Summary: Implications for Andean Cosmology

It is my belief and hypothesis – as we do not have ethnographic-type information on

these matters from pre-conquest times – that the members of the many ayllus of the central

Andes would have maintained a number of shared cultural/cosmological values and principles.

These would have informed the daily practices and social interactions of members of these

groups over time, both within each ayllu and in a myriad of inter-ayllu interactions across the
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landscape. I believe, and hereby hypothesize, that a key component of these shared principles

and values would have been a conception of one’s place in the world that was ordered, in the

terrestrial realm, by the principles of communalism among the dispersed members of each

ayllu, and by the understanding that their place on the earth was vitally connected to what

went on in the heavens. What “went on” up there, as I believe they would have understood it,

was a relentlessly repetitive, ordered movement of the two, intersecting axes of the Milky Way,

providing a sense and guide for orientation in the world. But beyond that, as the Milky Way was

the source of rainfall and as it held within its course the prototype of animals on the earth,

people in these communities would have conceived of their world as – ideally – balanced,

unified and harmonic and intimately connected with celestial bodies, motions, and cycles.

It would have been the vicissitudes of local history – of social action, conflict and

competition – that would have continually pulled against this conception of an ordered and

orderly world in the central Andes, as it did elsewhere. The continual working out of the

contradictions inherent in these ideal cosmologies and historical processes would have

produced the dialectical tension of life in communities in the Andes and around the world – at

least until the emergence of our own post-modern world. In the central Andes, these

cosmological conceptions and historical processes would have been central elements in the

interaction between local, provincial communities and the Inkas, in Cuzco. It is to the latter that

we turn now.

Chapter VII

Cuzco – the City and Valley and Their Cosmic Coordinates

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Having introduced and sketched out in some detail the view from the tropics of the

crossing axes of the Milky Way as the basis for one of the two core elements of central Andean

and Inka cosmology, it is time – after the introduction to this topic in Chapter V – to turn to the

second element, the radial center. As I suggested earlier, I think there was a temporal

disjunction in terms of when these two elements crystallized as coherent symbols and iconic

forms in Andean prehistory. I think the crossing celestial axes would have been the earliest of

the two elements to become identifiable, and codified, as a defining feature of central Andean

cosmology. I think this because the view of the two great, alternating celestial bands of the

Milky Way would have been evident, and striking, to people as soon as the Andes became

populated by hunting, gathering and fishing populations.

As for what conditions were most likely responsible for the development and increasing

importance of radial centers, I think these would have had to do with the emergence of

complex, hierarchical social, political and ritual systems. The archaeological record suggests

that the expansion of populations throughout the central Andes, attended by competition over

arable land and water, as well as cooperative practices in the building and management of

ceremonial centers, was well underway by the mid-to-late Preceramic periods (ca. by 5,000-

4,000 B.C.E.) and that it had its florescence in the Initial Period (ca. 1,800 -900 B.C.E.; Quilter,

2014:416-420). Between these times, we see the emergence of massive and complex

ceremonial centers at places like Caral, Aspero, and Piedra Parada in the Supe Valley, on the

north-central coast of Peru (Quilter, 2014:417), and elsewhere. I suggest that by the Initial

Period, the cross form would have begun to take on the force and conceptual weight of a

signifier of collective identity within and between different population centers, and that around
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this same time centers characterized by power differences between centers and peripheries

would have become increasingly common throughout the central Andes.

Assuming that the radial center paradigm was indeed built on and grew out of the

widespread recognition of the cross (X) as a signifier of collective unity and identity, I think that

the core conceptual and motivational value behind the emergence of radial systems would

have been increasing inequality and hierarchy between and among population centers. The

basic principle here would have been that of a privileged center vis à vis its subordinate

periphery (i.e., similar to the Amazonian “galactic polities”). I think these values would clearly

have become a part of Andean political systems by at least Middle Horizon times (600 – 1000

C.E.), with the two, contemporaneous centers of Tiwanaku and Wari.

Unfortunately, we have no evidence (that I am aware of) of a radial system of

organization of a settlement or city in the central Andean archaeological record as early as the

Middle Horizon period. It is not until we encounter evidence from the Spanish investigation of

such a system, in Cuzco, following the conquest of Tawantinsuyu, that we can view in any detail

the organization and structure of such a system. As noted in Chapter V, and as I discuss further

below, the Inkas considered their ancestors to have come from Lake Titicaca and the site of

Tiwanaku, south of the lake. Since we saw evidence previously of early circular village forms in

the Lake Titicaca region, and as I suggested there that that tradition may have been linked to

similar circular villages and radial centers in the far western region of Amazonia (especially with

Arawak-speaking populations), there may have been a nexus of influences there that ultimately

gave rise to the ideological and socio-political systems underlying the radial ceque system of
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Cuzco. If so, the details of that nexus are lost to the vagaries of time and especially to the poor

archaeological record in the Tropical Forest.

In the following, I will focus first on the layout and organization of the city of Cuzco and

how these features provided a foundation for its radial center organization and, in turn, for its

status as an “exemplary center.” We will see in these data how the crossing celestial axes would

have been considered as central to the design and layout of the city. From there, we will turn in

Chapter VIII to see how the radial ceque system emerged from recognition of the basic X

framework of the crossing of the Milky Way above the city.

Cuzco – The City at the Center of the Milky Way

For any person living in the central Andes a couple of centuries before the arrival of

Europeans – that is, at the time Cuzco was coming into its own as a central place – the most

appropriate place to stand in order to experience the celestial crossing axes as defining what

would eventually become a radial center would have been at Cuzco, in what is today the

highlands of south-central Peru. This, what would become the “exemplary center” of the Inka

Empire, was originally a small urban settlement that was on the near-periphery of what were

two large Middle Horizon sites associated with the Wari culture – Pikillaqta (McEwan, 1987)

and Huaro (Glowacki, 2002; see also Bauer and Covey, 2002). Since we do not unfortunately

know a great deal about the internal structure and organization of pre-imperial Cuzco, nor of

the early stages of the emergence of what would become its major, state institutions (e.g., the

corvée-based tribute labor system; the decimal-based administration; the hierarchies of

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administrative and priestly officials; etc.) before it became the capital of Tawantinsuyu, I will

focus on what we know of its organization in this later period (Figure 53).

Fig. 53 – Hypothetical reconstruction of Inka Cuzco showing the four roads leaving the city
(from von Hagen and Morris, 1998:174)

As for the general layout of the city, the first observation pertains to how it lies within

the Cuzco Valley. The long axis of the city and of the valley in which it sits runs generally in a

northwest/southeast orientation. This is just the lay of the land, with the elevated part of the

valley to the northwest and sloping down to the southeast (Fig. 54). I would note that,

coincidentally, the two largest and most populous quadrants of the empire were oriented

toward these two, opposed directions from Cuzco: Chinchaysuyu to the northwest and

Collasuyu to the southeast. I will show later that the NW-SE axis was of great significance in

Inka cosmology.
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Figure 54 – Inka Cuzco; note the northwest/southeast orientation of the city

(from D’Altroy, 2015:200)

Another important feature of the layout and organization of Inka Cuzco was its division

into two parts, or moieties, a kind of spatial and social division and organization that was very

common in central Andean communities (as it was in Amazonian circular villages). The two

parts, or moieties, were known in the Inka capital as Hanan Cuzco (“upper Cuzco”), to the

northwest, and Hurin Cuzco (“lower Cuzco”), to the southeast (see these designations in Fig.

54). These differently weighted terms pertained both to the difference in elevation between

the two halves of the city, as well as to their relative positions in the social, political and ritual

hierarchies of groups in the capital. Hanan Cuzco was associated with the most recent group of
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five kings and their descent groups (termed panacas – “royal ayllus”); Hurin Cuzco was

associated with the first five kings and their panacas (Zuidema, 1964). I will return to discuss the

possible cosmographic significance of this dual division below.

We can note another important feature of the layout of Cuzco that probably had

cosmological significance for the people living in the capital. This is the fact that the center of

the city was bounded by two small, local rivers. To the southwest was the Saphy (“root”) River,

and to the northeast was the Tullumayo (“bone river”) River (see Fig. 54). These two rivers have

their origins in the hills above Cuzco, to the northwest, behind the great hilltop ceremonial

installation of Saqsawaman. As we see in Fig. 54, the two rivers converge at the lower end of

the city, in the southeast, where they join together to form the Huatanay River. The Huatanay

River flows southeastward through the lower Cuzco Valley, ultimately bending to the left (east)

and flowing down into the Yucay Valley, where it joins the Vilcanota/Urubamba River.

The union of the Saphy and Tullumayu rivers on the boundaries of the city of Cuzco, in

the southeast, is just beyond the location of the most sacred temple in the Inka city, the

Korikancha (“enclosure of gold;” Fig. 54, #8). I suggest that these two small local rivers may

have been conceived of as analogs of the two branches of the Milky Way, which had their

origins in the northern heavens, from where they split apart, encircled the earth, and

converged again in the south, forming the great celestial disturbance (posuku, “foam”) in the

southern Milky Way.

The course of the most important river valley in the Cuzco region, through which

courses the Vilcanota/Urubamba River,8 flows from the southeast toward the northwest

through what is commonly referred to as the Yucay Valley (Fig. 55). Note that the direction of
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flow of the Vilcanota/Urubamba river reverses that of the Huatanay and its two source rivers,

the Saphy and Tullumayu. The Yucay Valley was the site of many of the major royal estates of

the Inkas, places where the Inkas could retreat from the rigors, and cold, of the capital (Niles,

1999:122ff.). These estates (one of which was Machu Picchu; Burger and Salazar, 2004) were

also places of residence of the members of the ayllus of Inka royalty -- the panacas – the groups

descended from the various kings.

Figure 73 – The southeast/northwest orientation of the Vilcanota/Urubamba River

Thus, we see in the orientation of the city of Cuzco itself, as well as in the major river

valley of the region, the Yucay Valley, that the dominant axis of orientation in this entire region

was the intercardinal northwest/southeast axis. As we saw earlier, this is the orientation of one
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of the two alternating, intercardinal axes of the Milky Way when it crosses the zenith (see Fig.

6). It is important to be reminded here that in the whole of the central Andean region, the

Milky Way is referred to as mayu (“river”); it is conceived of as the great celestial river coursing

through the sky. In this regard, I note that when I was carrying out fieldwork in the village of

Misminay, located above the Yucay Valley, people pointed out to me that the

Vilcanota/Urubamba river is the earthly reflection of the Milky Way (Urton, 1981:56-63).

The conception of the link between the celestial and terrestrial axes – the

northwest/southeast axis of the Milky Way and the course of the Vilcanota/Urubamba river – is

seen in what I constructed some 40 years ago from informants’ accounts as a cosmogram, or a

representation of the cosmology, of the village of Misminay (see Figure 56).

Figure 56 – The cosmology of Misminay, showing the Vilcanota River as a reflection of the
northwest/southeast axis of the Milky Way (Urton, 1981:63)
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As we see in this cosmogram (Fig. 56) with its center in the village of Misminay, the

northwest/ southeast axis of the Vilcanota River was not only conceived of as coincidental with

that axis of the Milky Way, but also with the axis joining the rise of the December solstice sun,

to the southeast, and the set of the June solstice sun, to the northwest. Although these data

were derived from fieldwork in a village near to Cuzco in the 1970s, we have seen earlier (Fig. 8)

how these same correlations of the Milky Way and solstitial axes were recognized by the Inkas,

in Cuzco, in pre-conquest times – as well as at the very early central Peruvian coastal site of

Caral (Fig. 9). I think there is sufficient evidence to support that these axes, in fact, formed the

basic, ideal framework of the ceque system of Cuzco and, by extension, of the division of

Tawantinsuyu into four parts (see below).

To return to the layout of the city of Cuzco, we saw in Figure 46 that the capital city was

divided into two moieties, or halves: Hanan Cuzco (“upper Cuzco”), to the northwest, and Hurin

Cuzco (“lower Cuzco”), to the southeast. The moieties met on the edge of the two major plazas

(Aucaypata and Cusipata) at the center of Cuzco. This would likely have been the place from

where the alternating axes of the Milky Way crossing in the zenith would have been observed,

and celebrated, not only for its significance for the Inka capital but for the empire as a whole.

Near to this point of convergence of the two moieties/plazas in the center of Cuzco,

there stood a round building with a high, conical roof, called the Sunturwasi (“feather house”).

This was the building from where the chroniclers tell us the Inkas made astronomical

observations (Zuidema [citing the Anonymous chronicler], 1981:323; Figure 57). I think the

Sunturwasi would have been conceived of by the Inkas as the site of the axis mundi – the great
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cosmic axis joining the zenith and the nadir – for the whole of Tawantinsuyu, the central point

above which was the zenith crossing of the two intercardinal axes of the celestial river.

Fig. 57 – The two plazas at the center of Cuzco, showing the Sunturwasi, with its conical roof, in
the plaza of Aucaypata (i.e., the plaza labeled #1; Gasparini and Margolies, 1980).

What these data point to is the notion that the orientations of the intercardinal axes of

the Milky Way crossing the zenith was of exceptional importance in the overall layout,

orientation and cosmographic conception of the city of Cuzco. These celestial entities and

earthly constructions were central to the design of a coherent cosmography for the imperial

city, as the exemplary city of the empire, as well as for the region in which it was located.

Indeed, Cuzco would have been the “pivot of the four quarters” of the Inka Empire, although

the coordinates of the Cuzco/Tawantinsuyu four-quarter system, as they were oriented to the

inter-cardinal directions, were fundamentally different from the cardinal direction-based four-
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quarter systems of civilizations in the northern hemisphere, such as the Maya, Aztecs, Shang

Chinese, Mesopotamians and Egyptians.

The Priority of the NW-SE Cosmic Axis in Inka Geo-Politics, Mythology, and Ritual Movements

We saw earlier that while the two axes of the Milky Way passing overhead – the NW-SE

axis and the NE-SW axis – alternate every 12 hours, nonetheless, there appears to have been a

priority of the former over the latter in Inka ideology and cosmology. Indications of the priority

of the NW-SE axis are that the city and valley of Cuzco, the imperial capital, are oriented along

that axis, as is the major local river (the Huatanay) and the major regional river (the

Urubamba/Vilcanota). As asymmetrical duality was such a prominent feature of Andean

symbolism and organizational structures (Cummins, 2002:99-105; Platt, 1986), I think the NW-

SE axis would have been considered as hanan (“upper”) in relation to the NE-SW axis, which

was hurin (“lower”). We find more evidence for this differentiation and symbolic weighting

between the two Milky Way axes in Inka mythology and ritual practices.

For example, when the Inkas turned their thoughts to the origin of the universe, as well

as the origin of the ancestors of the Inkas themselves, they focused attention on the great, high

altitude lake to their southeast, Lake Titicaca, which lies at around 3,812 meters (12,507 feet)

above sea level on the border of present-day Peru and Bolivia (Bauer and Stanish, 2002). Just

beyond the southeast end of the lake sat the great and ancient ceremonial/pilgrimage site of

Tiwanaku (Kolata, 1993; Vranich and Levine, 2013; Vranich and Stanish, 2013). The Inkas held

that all things in the universe – the sun, moon, planets, stars and all of humanity – originated in

Tiwanaku and Lake Titicaca. I will not go into all of the details and variants of the Inka origin
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myths here (see Urbano, 1981; Urton, 1999; Zuidema, 1982b), except to say that, in the

beginning of time, the Andean creator deity, Viracocha, created all things and set the process of

the creation of the universe and humanity in motion at Lake Titicaca.

One of the most prominent Inka origin myths recounted that Viracocha and his two

sons, Imaymana Viracocha and Tocapo Viracocha, began the act of creation by going from the

lake into the sky and from there, passing over the land toward the northwest. Viracocha was in

the center, while his elder son, Imaymana Viracocha, passed over the eastern edge of the

Andes (and western Amazonia), on his right, and his younger son, Tocapo Viracocha, was to his

left, passing over the coastal zone (Molina, 1943 [1575]12-15). As they passed above the land,

they planted the “seeds” of all the different peoples that would populate the universe (i.e., the

central Andes) inside the earth. When they reached the edge of the earth, near what is today

Manta, on the coast of Ecuador, they passed over the ocean off the coast (Fig. 58).

Figure 58 - The trajectories of Viracocha (center) and his two sons in the act of the creation of
humanity from Lake Titicaca toward the northwest
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At a certain moment, Viracocha called for the ancestors of all the different peoples to

come up out of the earth in the places where they had been planted. The ancestors – including

those of the Inkas – then came up out of the interior of the earth through caves, springs, and

cracks in rocks. Each ancestor became the founder of a particular ayllu (“[ca.] clan”) lineage that

would be considered native, or autochthonous, to the place from where he/she emerged. The

principal ancestor of the Inkas, named Manco Capac, who was the founder of the lineage of

Inka kings in Cuzco, emerged with his three brothers and four sisters from a set of three

windows in a rock, called tambo t’oco (“inn of the crack/window”), in a mountain at a place

called Pacariqtambo, located south of Cuzco (Bauer, 1992; Urton, 1990b). Thus, the trajectory

of the creation of the Inkas and of all other ayllus in the central Andes was from an act of

creation that moved above the land from the southeast to the northwest.

Now, it is to be noted that there was an important annual ceremony of priests beginning

in Cuzco that went first along the reverse trajectory to that just recounted – that is, from Cuzco

toward the southeast. This pilgrimage occurred every year on the June 21st solstice. The priests

made their journey from Cuzco to the southeast, moving along the path of the

Vilcanota/Urubamba River, to Lake Titicaca and Tiwanaku (Zuidema, 1982a; see Figure 59).
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Figure 59 - The path of the priests (dashed line) from Cuzco to Lake Titicaca and Tiwanaku in
their annual pilgrimage to the place of origin (from Zuidema, 1982a)

The place near the center of the map in Figure 59 identified as “Vilcanota (La Raya)” was

a very important place in Inka ritualism and cosmology. This was the peak of a high mountain

range from which water flows both to the northwest, to form the Vilcanota/Urubamba River,

and to the southeast, where the Ramis and Huancane Rivers flow into Lake Titicaca.

From the above discussion, we can understand the cosmic and cosmological importance

of the northwest/southeast axis of orientation in terrestrial movements across the land in Inka

mythology and ritualism. I suggest that this would indicate the priority of the NW/SE axis of the

Milky Way over the NE/SW axis; the former would be “hanan” (upper) to the “hurin” (lower) of

the latter.
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The projected straight line of the path of the priests shown in Fig. 59 accords with a

concept of imaginary straight lines running across the landscape from Cuzco to the outside; a

concept related to the phenomenon of ceques (“alignment; [imaginary] lines”), a subject to

which we turn in the next chapter.

In sum, we have seen a large number of terrestrial and celestial phenomena which,

together, indicate the significance and priority of the northwest/southeast axis of orientation in

the Inka capital and the general region in which it is located. I suggest that this particular

orientation would have been considered important in Inka cosmology not only because it was

“given” in the landscape itself (e.g., the lay of the land in the Cuzco valley; the course of the

Vilcanota/Urubamba river in the Yucay valley; and the direction to the source of the Vilcanota

River and of the universe itself, at Lake Titicaca), but also because this was one of the two axes

of the Milky Way – the celestial river – when it crossed the zenith. Thus, I suggest that Cuzco,

the “exemplary center” of the empire of Tawantinsuyu, was situated in what would have been

considered the most propitious place in the universe, according to its residents.

Was Cuzco the Center of An Andean “Galactic Polity?”

I will turn finally to what will be a much more speculative proposal, or a hypothesis,

concerning the organization of settlements in the Cuzco region, particularly in relation to

Cuzco’s status as what was clearly something on the order of an “exemplary center.” That

Cuzco indeed had such a status is related to the following features of its makeup and identity:

a) it was the central place of Tawantinsuyu, which housed the bodies of the ancestral kings; b) it

was the site of all major state rituals and ceremonies, such as those celebrating the two
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solstices, the first planting of crops, and the coronation of kingly successors; and c) it was the

seat of the state politico-ritual administrative hierarchies. These aspects of Cuzco’s identity

have long been recognized from Spanish chroniclers’ accounts. What has not been suggested

before, nor is it explicitly attested to in our main colonial accounts of the city, was whether or

not given its status, it was the central place of the type of exemplary center described for the

mandala-based galactic polities, such as those described above (Chapter V) for the Xinguano of

the Amazon and various Southeast Asian polities.

As we saw earlier, the galactic polities of Southeast Asia, and what Heckenberger

termed the “galactic clusters” in Amazonia, were based on both the mandala arrangement of

four settlements around a center, as well as the notion of a concentric array of spaces (e.g.,

inner and outer, or peripheral) and subsidiary places around the center. The status of a place as

an exemplary center also included its status as a “radial center,” with power and influence

concentrated in the center and radiating outward, and diminishing, as one moved from the

center out to the peripheral satellite settlements, and beyond.

We do in fact have one representation in the chronicles of the concentric arrangement

of space centering on Cuzco. The central city of Cuzco itself (i.e., as represented in Figures 53

and 54) has been characterized as what has been termed the “inner heartland.” Beyond the

center was a ring of territory, out to a distance of 50-80 km (Covey, 2006:209), identified as the

space of the “outer heartland.” Within the latter territory there lived populations identified as

“Incas-by-privilege.” These were people of an intermediate political status the heads of the

ayllus of which had married Inka noblewomen (Kosiba, 2015:160).

Incas by privilege administered the lands of Cuzco and the provinces,

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participated in exclusive ceremonies that affirmed Inca authority, and

served as loyal subjects who colonized new terrain or fought alongside

Inca royalty in military engagements. (Kosiba, 2015:160).

An approximate mapping of the “inner” and “outer” heartland concentric spaces around

Cuzco is shown in Figure 60.

Figure 60 - The Inner and Outer Heartlands around Cuzco

I would here like to go beyond our received (i.e., from the Spanish chronicles) notion of

the nature and structure of the Inner and Outer Heartlands around Cuzco to hypothesize what I

think may have been a further element of the organization of this region that would result in

this arrangement being more like the mandala/“galactic polity” structure than has been
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recognized heretofore. What I am referring to is what I suggest was an arrangement of four

“satellite” settlements around Cuzco located on the outer boundaries of the Outer Heartland.

There would have been one satellite settlement within each suyu of the space of the Incas-by-

privilege. These settlements would have represented, and probably articulated, relations

between Cuzco and the Inkas-by-privilege within their respective suyus. These four places were:

Ollantaytambo (Chinchaysuyu), Paucartambo (Antisuyu), Pacariqtambo (Collasuyu), and

Limatambo (Cuntisuyu). These settlements were what I will term the “four Tambos” (Figure 61).

Figure 61 - Cuzco and the Four Tambos as the Mandala of a Galactic Polity

Let me clarify before continuing that there is a great deal of uncertainty and controversy

about the actual territories of the four suyus, and the lines of division between any two
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adjacent suyus, especially in the immediate environs around Cuzco. For instance, some scholars

have placed Ollantaytambo in Chinchaysuyu, others in Antisuyu; some place Limatambo in

Cuntisuyu, others in Chinchaysuyu. In addition, it is often unclear from maps of Tawantinsuyu if

the names of the suyus are meant to designate the central, core territories of the four suyus, or

if, as often appears to be the case, they indicate one or the other of the boundary roads of any

given suyu. That said, I am aware that the suyu designations of the four Tambos indicated

above do not accord with some constructions of where these places are located within the

boundaries of the suyus of Tawantinsuyu. For the moment, I offer this construction as a

proposal linked to my argument of the conformation of Cuzco and its four satellites (i.e., the

four Tambos) as having constituted a galactic polity in Inka times.

I hypothesize that what was special about the four Tambos, and what made them

secondary elements of a mandala-like, galactic polity structure, with Cuzco at the center, was

that each was considered to be an origin place connected with the suyu within which it was

located. That is, I hypothesize that each suyu originally had its particular myth of origin of the

Inka dynasty in which each “Tambo” positioned itself as the, or at least an, Inka origin place in

the mythohistory of the foundation of Cuzco as the “exemplary center.”

The suffix “-tambo,” which is common to the placenames of these four places, is a

Quechua term that may be glossed as “rest stop,” or “way station” (i.e., on a roadway). All four

of these places are well known in the archaeological and ethnohistorical literatures of the Cuzco

region. However, in colonial times, only one of these places, Pacariqtambo (to the south of

Cuzco), was recognized in the Spanish chronicles to have been a – in fact the – place of origin of

the Inkas. That is, several chroniclers give accounts in which the royal lineage of the Inka kings
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was founded by the ancestor, Manco Capac, who, along with his three brothers and their four

sisters are said to have originally come to the Cuzco region from Lake Titicaca. In other versions

of Inka origins, the ancestors were said to have come out of a group of three caves, called

Tambo T’oco (“slit, or split [rock] waystation”), located at Pacariqtambo, south of Cuzco. From

Pacariqtambo, the ancestors moved across the land, in search of a homeland. They eventually

arrived at a mountain, called Huanacauri, from where they first viewed the valley of Cuzco.

They subsequently went down into the valley, taking it over and making it their future capital

(Urbano, 1981; Urton, 1990b).

Now, it happens that I spent some two years carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in

Pacariqtambo (see the account of the first year of this fieldwork in Meyerson, 1990). On the

basis of a document that I was able to copy from a private collection in the town (the so-called

“Callapiña document”), I wrote a book on the colonial construction of the claim made by a local

nobleman, Rodrigo Sutic Callapiña, that Pacariqtambo was the origin place of the Inka dynasty

(Urton, 1990b). In my book, I concluded that the archaeological ruins of Maukallaqta, to the

north of the town of Pacariqtambo today, was, indeed, the place indicated by many of the

chroniclers as the Inka place of origin (see also Bauer, 1992).

However, I also noted in the conclusion to that study that the validation of this claim by

the Callapiña family in Pacariqtambo was probably due to a set of fortunate (for the Callapiñas)

circumstances in which the family was able to have its claim of nobility brought to the Spanish

court in Cuzco by Rodrigo Sutic Callapiña and inserted into the Spanish written records, and to

have his claim validated by several members of the royal panacas in Cuzco (Urton, 1990b:41-

70), in 1569. The legal action by the Callapiñas took place before members of any other local
 187

lineage from any of the three other “Tambos” could make and legitimate their own claims. The

point here is that since, in the Spanish mind set, there could only be one place of origin of the

Inka kings, therefore, the legal recognition of the Callapiñas’ claim that the origin place of the

Inkas was in Pacariqtambo foreclosed any further, potentially competing, claims on this matter

potentially coming from any other town or site around Cuzco.

Nonetheless, I suggested in my earlier study that originally – i.e., in the pre-conquest,

Inka view of the nature of “origin places” – there may in fact have been four “Pacariqtambos,”

or Inka origin places, one for each of the four suyu (quarters) of Tawantinsuyu. I argue now that

those four places would have been the four identified in Figure 53: Ollantaytambo,

Paucartambo, Pacariqtambo, and Limatambo.

In sum, I hypothesize that the four Tambos identified above constituted four principal,

intermediate-level satellite settlements, one for each suyu, of a mandala-like galactic polity

with Cuzco as its exemplary center. As the center of a galactic polity, the power and influence of

Cuzco radiated out from the center to the boundaries of the “outer heartland” and, in some

cases, beyond. The instantiation of Cuzco as a radial center was the ceque system; a topic to

which we turn in the next chapter.

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Chapter VIII

The Radial Line System at the Center of the Universe: The Ceque System of Cuzco

In the last chapter, we examined the large-scale layout, orientation and organization of

the space of the valley and city of Cuzco including a discussion of the places associated with

Inka origins – Lake Titicaca, Tiwanaku, and Pacariqtambo. We turn now to look in detail at the

internal organization of the space of the valley of Cuzco as it was organized as a radial center.

This relates to what is termed the “ceque system of Cuzco.”

In brief, the ceque system was an array of 41 lines of orientation going out in 41

different directions from the Korikancha, the most sacred building in Cuzco, to the horizon of

the Cuzco valley. The ceques were not visible lines on the ground. Rather, each was a well-

defined, named and ranked alignment of between 3 to 15 wak’as (“animate, sacred

places/entities”) located both within the city and in the landscape around the city but generally

only out to the horizon. Different groupings of ceques and wak’as were related either to a

deceased Inka king or to specific social and ritual groups, the royal and commoner ayllus (see

Cobo, 1990 [1653]:51-84; Bray, 2015; Brosseder, 2014; D’Altroy, 2015:263-277; Rowe, 1985 and

1992; Sherbondy, 1986). Wak'as took a great variety of forms, as noted by the chronicler

Acosta:

...[I]n regards to the superstition of the Egyptians it is so in effect among the

Indians, the kinds of sacrifices and huacas [wak'as] cannot be counted:

mountains, hills, prominent rocks, useful springs, swiftly running rivers,

high rocky peaks, large mountains of sand, a dark hole opening, a giant

and ancient tree, a metal vein, the odd and elegant form of any little
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stone; ... then instantly they take it for divine and without delay they

worship it. (Acosta 1954 [1580]: Bk. 5, Ch. 10; cited in Bauer, 1997:290).

It has been shown, and argued extensively by Zuidema (2010), that the number and

organization of wak’as in the Cuzco ceque system, of which there were some 328 by one count

(the numbers vary in the sources from 328 to 400), were arrayed and organized in such a way

as to constitute the annual and ritual calendar of the Inka city, state, and empire. I will not go

into any depth in discussing the ceque calendar here as a detailed discussion of that topic

would be quite complex and would take us too far from our central interest in this study –

reconstructing central Andean and Inka cosmology (for discussions of the Inka calendar, see

Zuidema, 2010 and 2015).

The scholar whose name is most intimately associated with the study of the ceque

system is Reiner Tom Zuidema (b.1927 – d.2016). Before I discuss Zuidema’s research, I will

briefly recognize a Cuzco-based scholar whom Zuidema identified as one of his own most

important local mentors in his study of the ceque system (Zuidema, 1964:3); this is Manuel

Chávez Ballón (b. 1919 - d. 2000). Chávez Ballón was the first person I am aware of who

attempted a serious project of mapping out the ceque system of Cuzco on the contours of the

city and valley of Cuzco in a systematic way (Fig. 62).

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Fig. 62 - Manuel Chávez Ballón, at his home, in 1999, pointing to his map of the ceque
system of Cuzco (photo courtesy of Carl A. Hyatt)

Chávez Ballón’s map was based on his research in Cuzco from the 1940s through the

1960s. Although his map emphasizes the cardinal orientation of the ceque system, it will be

seen that he oriented the four quarters as an intercardinal cross (Fig. 63). I never met Chávez

Ballón myself and, as he never published his research on the ceque system in a systematic way,

his reconstruction is now largely inaccessible, at least to me. I will leave the recognition of his

important work on the ceque system with this mention and turn to Zuidema’s research.
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Figure 63 - Chávez Ballón’s map of the ceque system of Cuzco

(photo courtesy of Carl A. Hyatt)

As many scholars of the Andes and the Inkas will attest, Tom Zuidema was an

extraordinary individual and scholar (Fig. 64). Beginning his studies in the 1940s at the

University of Leiden, in his native Netherlands, with a focus on southeast Asian societies and

cultures, he switched his focus to the Andes and the Inkas by the end of that decade (see Urton,

1996b). He began immediately studying the Spanish chronicles, focusing on what they had to

say about the social and ritual organization of the Inka capital city. He took his first Ph.D. with

those studies, at the University of Madrid, in 1953 (Zuidema, 1953). He then went on to

produce his second Ph.D. thesis, at Leiden, in the Netherlands, entitled The Ceque System of

Cuzco: The Social Organization of the Capital of the Inca (1964).

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Figure 64 - R. Tom Zuidema, sitting on a carved Inka throne on the mountain Saqsawaman

As I believe anyone in the field of Inka studies will attest, this is an extremely challenging

book to read and understand completely. I believe that much of the explanation for the

difficulty of understanding the arguments made in this book is due to the fact that, with his

virtually encyclopedic knowledge of the Spanish chronicles of Inka society, Zuidema attempted

to integrate all of what might have pertained to the ceque system into a single, unified model.

However, the different chroniclers who gave their individual accounts of the ceques had relied

on different informants, members of the indigenous elite who among themselves belonged to

different royal ayllus (panacas) and who, therefore, often had competing information about

and perspectives on the system, in its parts and as a whole. As the system had essentially
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collapsed and become all but moribund following the Spanish conquest and by the time

Spaniards began collecting information on the system, it no longer functioned in a way that the

early colonial officials were able to observe and record the fully functioning system (although

several colonial officials and chroniclers did see parts of it in operation; e.g., Juan de Betanzos,

see below).

It should be noted as well that one of our early Spanish chroniclers, Juan Polo de

Ondegardo (1916 [1571]:57), who served for many years as governor (corregidor) of Cuzco,

stated that there were some one-hundred villages or settlements in Tawantinsuyu that had

their own, local ceque systems. As he stated:

In each village the organization was the same; the district was crosscut by

ceques and lines connecting shrines or various consecrations and all the

things which seemed notable: wells and springs and stones, hollows and

valleys and summits which they call apachetas [cairns made of multiple

stones]. To each thing they assigned their people and showed them the

way to follow in sacrificing to each of them and to what end and at what

time and with what kinds of things and assigned people to teach it to them

(Polo de Ondegardo, 1916 [1571]:56-57, as cited in Bauer, 1997:286).

From Ondegardo's account, we can suppose that, however the ceque system of Cuzco

was organized, it would have served as something of a template or prototype for those other

local, provincial systems. Unfortunately, we do not have any systematic, or comprehensive,

information about any one of these other local ceque systems. One question that would be

extremely interesting to investigate, were good sources of information available on this topic,
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which, generally and unfortunately, they are not, would be how the provincial ayllu

organizations were integrated into their local ceque systems in relation to the organization of

ayllus (both royal and commoner ayllus) in the Cuzco ceque system. I suggest in Chapter IX that

the medium for transmitting information on the structure and organization of ceque systems

between Cuzco and the provinces would likely have been the khipus, the knotted-string

recording devices.

Zuidema began his intensive, field-based study of the ceque system in the summer of

1973.9 He returned every summer thereafter, for two or three years, to identify and map the

ceques and wak’as of the ceque system. The map that he ultimately produced, in the mid-

1970s, is shown in Figure 57.

Figure 65 - Zuidema’s map of the ceque system of Cuzco (drawn ca. 1975; see Zuidema, 1977)
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I will have more to say about the notations around the borders of the map in Fig. 65

later. The items that will be most useful to note at this point are, first, that the lines all

converge on the place in the city labeled “1;” this is the building of the Korikancha, the “temple

of the Sun;” and second, the Roman numerals at the beginning of each notation around the

borders of the map identify the four sectors (suyus) of the Inka city and of Tawantinsuyu: I =

Chinchaysuyu; II = Collasuyu; III = Antisuyu; and IV = Cuntisuyu.

It must be said at the beginning of this discussion that the straight lines of the ceques in

the Zuidema map reflect a perspective on the nature of the lines of this radial line center – i.e.,

that they ran perfectly straight from the Korikancha to the horizon – that has become the

subject of some controversy in recent years. Most notably, Brian Bauer (1998) has argued that

the ceques were much more irregular in their courses as they ran through the valley, often

bending and even crossing each other one or more times along their way to the horizon. As I

have suggested elsewhere (2017:145-146), I think that Zuidema and Bauer were probably both

correct. Bauer, in an extraordinary project to map the actual locations of the wak’as based on

extensive field and archival research, showed the actual, on-the-ground locations of the wak’as

and the projections of the ceques along the – often non-aligned – wak’as. Zuidema, on the

other hand, emphasized in his map, as well as in his many publications, an idealized, abstract

representation of the contours and coordinates of the system.

I maintain that the difference between the two perspectives on the (imaginary) “lines”

of the ceque system proposed by Zuidema and Bauer is like that (respectively) between a map

of the subway system in New York City available to you when you ride the subway, on one

hand, as opposed to a map of the actual paths of the trains as they run through that system,
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which is used by people responsible for the operation and maintenance of the system, on the

other hand. Although two such maps refer to the same system, they will appear very different,

are basically non-interchangeable, yet each will be highly useful for the purpose for which it

was designed. When applying this analogy to a map of the ceques, if one wanted a sense of the

overall conceptual structure of the ceque system, Zuidema’s straight line representation would

suit one’s needs quite well; if, however, one wanted actually to walk the lines, perhaps to make

sacrifices at the wak’as along particular ceques, one would indeed want the cartographic

specifics in Bauer’s map.

For my purposes here, I am not, in general, concerned with the precise courses of the

lines themselves; rather, I am interested in the relations among the different social, ritual and

ceremonial groups – especially the ayllus – that were incorporated within the hierarchical array

of groups that resided within the city and that had ritual responsibility for different wak’as and

ceques. Therefore, Zuidema’s representation will suit my purposes.

The Organization of Identity and Status Groups in the Imperial Capital

It is clearest and most straightforward to explain the ceque system by first referring to

an idealized, 36-ceque, version of the system. This appears to have been the number of ceques

in the original system (Zuidema, 1964:3-10). I will later expand the discussion to show the total

41 ceques that made up the system soon after the Spanish conquest, when it was first

described to Spanish officials.

We have seen above that the system was an arrangement of sacred places, wak’as,

aligned along the imaginary line ceques. The important thing about that system for
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understanding its social and political features is that each one of the lines was associated with

either: a) one or another of the 10 deceased Inka kings; or b) one or another of 10 royal ayllus

(called panacas), each of which was composed of the descendants of one or another of the first

10 Inka kings with the exception of the deceased king’s successor, or c) one or another of 10

commoner ayllus, the ancestors of each of which came to Cuzco with the Inka ancestors at the

time of its founding. The distribution of these identities and/or groups within the idealized

model of the ceque system of Cuzco composed of 36 lines is shown in Figure 66. The repeated

notations a, b, c in Figure 66 are to the respective identities outlined above. As will be seen, not

every one of the ceques in the original system had a relation to one or the other of the three

classes, or status groups/individuals, identified above.

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Fig. 66 – The idealized ceque system with panaca and ayllu assignments to ceques
(Zuidema, 1964:9)

I have noted on several occasions above that the ceque system as it was eventually

described in a Spanish document was composed of 41 ceques. The 41 ceque version resulted

from an expansion and reduplication of certain of the ceques, especially within the quadrant of

Cuntisuyu, in a process that was more complicated than what we need to pursue here (see

Figure 67). Pärssinen has argued that while the other three suyus were governed by the Inkas,

Cuntisuyu was governed by non-Inka peoples who lived outside of the city, on the near-

periphery. These were the “Inkas by privilege,” people who lived within two leagues around the

city and who had special privileges and reduced tribute obligations to the Inka state (Kosiba,

2015a; Pärssinen, 1992:226; see also Zuidema, 1964).

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Fig. 67 - The ceque system composed of 41 ceques (the upper left quadrant, Cuntisuyu, has an
expanded number of ceques from that shown in Fig. 58; from Zuidema, 1964:2)

The question of whether or not the ceque system grew over time – that is, whether it

was a product of history, or if it had its full and complete structure from the beginning – was

the subject of a long-standing controversy in the field of Andean studies. John H. Rowe (1985)

essentially argued the former position, while Zuidema (1982a and b) favored the latter. In my

earlier discussion of this controversy, I took a position between these two extremes, suggesting

that we can recognize elements of both history and structure in the chroniclers’ descriptions.

More specifically, I suggested that certain elements of the structure and organization of the

ceque system (e.g., moieties, quadripartition, and hierarchy) may have owed much to the

structure of the place from where the Inkas were said to have originated, the community of

Pacariqtambo, south of Cuzco (Urton, 1990b).

As I have noted, the 36-ceque version (Fig. 66) is the idealized representation of the

system, and it is this model that I will focus on here in describing the major structural and

organizational features and principles by which different groups in the city were assigned to

different classes of ceques. In the 36-ceque version, the ceques lines were ranked in a

repeating, three-tier hierarchy of categories labeled a, b, and c in Fig. 66. The a’s were the

highest category, ranked as collana (“supreme, superior”); the b’s were ranked as payan (the

second, or middle), the mid-ranked category; and the c’s were ranked as cayao (the last), the

lowest category. Ten of the a’s (collana ceques) were associated with ten of the deceased kings;

ten of the b’s (payan ceques) were associated with ten royal ayllus (panacas); and ten

commoner ayllus were associated with ten of the c’s (cayao ceques). Each of the three sets of
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10 were divided between the moieties – half in Hanan Cuzco, half in Hurin Cuzco. Thus, as we

see, there was not only a strong principle of hierarchy organizing the system, but also a strong

decimal (base-10) principle in the assignment of different identity groups to the different

classes of ceques.

When a particular group was assigned to one or more ceques, the members of that

group were responsible for making sacrifices to the wak’as composing the ceque(s). The

offering of sacrifices – which ranged from feathers to sea shells to coca leaves and even

children – to the wak’as was the core ritual act maintaining and continuously reproducing the

system over time, in that the sacrifices “fed” the sacred, spiritual entities that were the essence

of each wak’a. It was only by being continuously fed that the powerful spiritual forces of the

wak’as would continue to protect and bring benefits to the population of the city. This bargain,

however, would all change following the Spanish conquest when people were prohibited from

sacrificing to the wak’as (not just in Cuzco but throughout the central Andes). The illness and

devastation associated with the conquest was often attributed by local people to the “hunger”

of the wak’as for their traditional offerings (Stern, 1986 [1982]:52-62)

Returning to the structure of the system, the three groups of three ceques in each

quadrant were also ranked hierarchically; these rankings are shown in the illustration (Fig. 66)

by the cardinal numbers: 1 = collana group of three ceques, 2 = payan group of three ceques,

and 3 = cayao group of three ceques. These rankings of ceques instantiated the differentiation,

and hierarchization, of the social groups associated with any given group of three ceques vis à

vis the other groups within that suyu (quadrant). These rankings were important in the

sequence and timing of sacrifices at the wak’as along the 36/41 ceques in the ritual calendar.
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Finally, as I have stated, the roman numerals (I, II, III, IV) in the model in Figure 66 accord with

the hierarchical ranking of the four quarters (suyus) of the city and Tawantinsuyu as a whole: I =

Chinchaysuyu; II = Collasuyu; III = Antisuyu; IV = Cuntisuyu.

As for the moieties of Inka Cuzco, which we saw above were divided between Hanan

(upper Cuzco) to the northwest and Hurin (lower Cuzco) to the southeast, the suyu composition

of the moieties was: I/Chinchaysuyu + III/Antisuyu made up the Upper (Hanan) moiety of Cuzco,

while II/Collasuyu + IV/Cuntisuyu made up the Lower (Hurin) moiety.

What was at issue, and what found its solution, in the social aspects of the ceque system

was an incredibly dense, imbricated system of socio-political classifications and the ranking of

identities among different groups resident within the capital, as well as divisions of land and

irrigation resources within the valley (see below). These classifications and rankings were

critical for the organization of public, ceremonial and ritual life in the city and empire. In

addition, as noted above, the ceque system provided the framework for organizing sacrifices at

wak’as throughout the city and within the valley, including the celebration of state rituals in the

central plazas each month over the course of the year. During many of these celebrations, the

mummies of the Inka kings were brought out of the Korikancha and set up in the plazas where

attendants would drink and eat on behalf of the deceased kings along with the living

celebrants. Such ritual actions were central to continually displaying and reproducing the

identities, organizational rankings, and structures that made up the system. In this sense, the

ceque system was also the framework for the Inka ritual and annual calendars, a subject that I

will not go into in any detail here (see Zuidema, 1977, 2010, 2015).
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In summary, the ceque system was the motor humming away at the heart of the

empire. It was like a black hole in that it drew all identities, values and ritual acts defining the

empire into the heart of the city; however, unlike a black hole, from which no matter escapes,

certain things did escape the Cuzco ceque system’s gravity, at least for a time. For instance, the

four roads going out to the ends of the four quarters of the empire left from the center of

Cuzco, and various state officials would periodically go out from and come back into the city

along these roads. However, for the most part and from a Cuzco-centric perspective, we can

consider that the system was turned in on itself, churning away with its classifications and its

geographical, social and ritual alignments until the whole mechanism was brought to an abrupt

end by the arrival of Spaniards in the city, in 1534.

Astronomical Observations that Support the Importance of the Milky Way in Cuzco

In previous chapters, I stated that the basic framework for the ceque system was

formed by the inter-cardinal axes of the Milky Way crossing the zenith and their association

(ideally) with the four roads going out of Cuzco to the four quarters (suyus) of the empire. This

would extend as well to the places where the two arms of the Milky Way intersected with the

horizon at the times when they pass through the zenith. The question is: Do we have any

evidence that the Inkas may have observed the two axes when they alternately stood in the

zenith? As it turns out, although we do not have explicit testimony in the chronicles of such

observations, they would have been important events in connection with the times and places

of the solstices.
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In Zuidema’s study of astronomical observations made in relation to certain of the

ceques, which he sighted and measured with the cultural astronomer Anthony Aveni, they

determined that the Inkas made observations of the following solar events: (1) the sunset of

the December solstice was observed from the central temple of the Sun, the Korikancha; (2)

sunset of the June solstice was observed from a temple of the sun, Chuquimarca, north of

Cuzco; and (3) sunrise of the December solstice was made from a temple, Puquincancha, south

of Cuzco (Aveni, 1981a; and Zuidema, 1982c:63-65). Gullberg has recently confirmed these

solar observations at sites in and around Cuzco and has shown that the Inkas also observed the

lunar extremes (just beyond the solstice rise and set points) as well as the heliacal rise point of

the Pleiades in Cuzco and at Machu Picchu (Gullberg, 2020; see also Bauer & Dearborn, 1995).

The latter observation, of the Pleiades, was critical to the regulation of the ritual calendar.

I have noted earlier (Chapter III; see Fig. 8) that the two axes of the Milky Way were

associated with the solstices – that is, the June solstice rise was associated with the NE-SW axis,

and the December solstice rise with the NW-SE axis. Thus, the Inkas would have been able to

observe the critical events of the alternating axes of the Milky Way in the zenith, which defined

the four-part organization of the empire and the ceque system of Cuzco, in relation to the two

critical events of the solar passage through the sky – the June and December solstices. These

latter dates were the times of the two major ritual celebrations in the Inka calendar – Inti Raymi

(at the June solstice) and Hatun Inti Raymi (at the December solstice).

Expanding the Radial Lines within the Four-Part Cuzco Valley Spatial Structure

I have explained how the four roads going out from Cuzco formed the original four-part

framework for the radial structure of the ceque system. That is, the roads (i.e., the suyu
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boundaries) were conceptually, ideally, linked to the points on the horizon coincidental with

the intersection of the two intercardinal Milky Way axes crossing the zenith. But how did this

four-line/road system evolve into the 36- and eventually the 41-line ceque systems? For this

explanation, we have to turn to social, agricultural, hydrological and conceptual/ideological

factors that were at work within the Cuzco Valley to sub-divide the space into strips, or

segments. Each of the latter was assigned to, or adopted by, a segment of the population

residing within, committed to, or otherwise defined by, the wak’as within the space bounded

by any two ceques. From our various sources, it is clear that the latter came about primarily,

although not exclusively, by the creation of sectors of land and water use within the valley.

Many years ago, Jeanette Sherbondy wrote a seminal doctoral dissertation in which she

demonstrated the importance of irrigation districts within the Cuzco Valley and their relations

to ceque lines and boundaries (1982; see also 1979 and 1993a). Sherbondy found that several

of the canals referenced in colonial documents, which were still known at the time of her

fieldwork, in the 1970s, were related to critical points in the location of ceques associated with

the various commoner ayllus or royal ayllus (Sherbondy, 1986). The sources of irrigation water

included the two rivers running through the city referenced earlier, the Saphy and Tullumayo

(Sherbondy, 1986:49-50). One should be reminded here that in the ideology of Inka Cuzco,

water running across the earth ultimately came from the Milky Way. I have also suggested that

the Saphy and Tullumayo rivers in the Cuzco valley may have been conceived of as local

manifestations of the two great arms, or branches, of the Milky Way (see above; Chap. VII).

As Sherbondy notes, it was a common understanding in Andean communities that water

was associated with the land across which it flowed, and that ayllus were considered to have
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rights over land and water in their residential territories (1986:42). Thus, although no one (to

my knowledge) has worked out a complete map of ayllu landholdings and canal locations for

the valley of Inka Cuzco, there are considerable ethnohistorical data supporting these

connections as critical for determining associations between certain social groups and ceque

and wak’a locations in the ceque system (see Fig. 68 and Fig. 69). These connections, which

have been explained most clearly by Sherbondy (1982, 1993a and b, 1996), would have been

critical elements in the factors taken into account in drawing sub-divisions within the space of

each quadrant of Cuzco to arrive at the 36, and later the 41, line ceque system.

Figure 68 - Irrigation Canals and Districts in the Region to the East of Cuzco
(From Sherbondy, 1979:52)
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Figure 69 - The relation between ceques and irrigation districts in Cuzco

(From Sherbondy, 1979: 55)

In addition to the importance of canals and irrigation districts in the placement,

trajectory and organization of the ceques, the chronicles attest to an act, attributed to the ninth

Inka king, Pachacuti Inka Yupanqui, in which he apportioned the agricultural land within the

valley into segments assigned to the different ayllus and panacas; the land divisions were to be

marked by high boundary markers. These were strip-like land divisions, often running from a

river or canal up to higher lands, which the chronicler Betanzos refers to as “chapas” (Betanzos,

1987 [1551]:57).

In his discussion of the chapa organization in the Cuzco valley, Zuidema likened the

chapas to the “chhiutas” of the town of Pacariqtambo. Chhiutas were strips or segments of

territory and communal infrastructure (e.g., the churchyard walls; the farm-to-market road to

Cuzco; etc.) in Pacariqtambo. Depending on how many segments a certain facility was divided

into (i.e., either nine or ten), this number of ayllus would be assigned one segment each for its
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maintenance, or upkeep (Urton, 1984 and 1988). For instance, the main irrigation canal (called

Punayarqa, “highland canal”) in Pacariqtambo, which begins at a spring called Llaullicancha, is

divided into nine segments (chhiutas), each of which was assigned to one of the nine traditional

ayllus of the community for its annual cleaning and repair (Fig. 70).

Figure 70 - The Chhiutas of Punayarqa (major irrigation canal) in Pacariqtambo and their
assignment to ayllus of the two moieties (from Urton, 1984:34)

The term chhiuta, chuta or chota, is referenced in an early 16th century colonial

document, which was informed by khipu-keepers (knot recorders) who are said to have hailed

from Pacariqtambo (Callapiña et al, 1974 [1542/1608]). The term “chota” as used in that

document referred to distance markers along the Inka roads. Thus, the notion of dividing

territory, roads and other public resources into strips was a common practice in the Cuzco
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region in Inka and early colonial times. I suggest this was the core concept and practice

underlying the division of space in the Cuzco valley; however, in that case, the strips or

segments of territory were organized in a radial pattern – the ceque system.

We also see the idea of dividing territory into chapa- or chhiuta-like segments in other

sites in Tawantinsuyu as well; most notably, this was the case in the division of land into strips –

here termed suyus (“turns”) – in an agricultural installation managed by the Inka state in

Cochabamba, in what is today central Bolivia (Wachtel, 1982; Figure 71).

Figure 71 - Strips of agricultural fields assigned to different ethnic groups in the Inka state farm
in Cochabamba (From Wachtel, 1982)
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In the fields in Cochabamba, each strip or suyu was assigned to a different ethnic/labor

group drawn from the region of what is today southern Peru and northern Bolivia. The different

groups of state laborers (termed mitimaes) worked in their assigned suyus, growing maize for

the Inka state. As I suggested earlier, I think the practice of drawing strip-like segments of

agricultural fields and irrigation districts was akin to the organization of the radial line segments

in the ceque system of Cuzco. I will return below to discuss why the segmentation in Cuzco was

radial.

Pachacuti Inka Yupanqui also had numerous storehouses built throughout the valley of

Cuzco (Betanzos, 1996: 51-52). The land divisions, storehouses and irrigation canals would have

been some of the critical features that would have established connections between different

social groups and specific ceques and wak’as within the valley. In short, these operations and

infrastructural improvements would have accounted for many of the features of the expansion

of subdivisions assigned to different groups within the ceque system.

We must also add to the above explanations what we read in the chronicles about

mythological, or supernatural, occurrences that transpired within the valley and that came to

be associated with certain wak’as and, therefore, that were linked to specific groups in the

ceque system. These included such miraculous events as the appearance to Pachacuti Inka of a

fearsome deity – with snakes protruding from his back and coming to the sides of his head –

who was thought to represent the creator deity (Viracocha) at a spring outside the city, at a

place called Susurpuquio (Bauer, 1998:86-87). Another group of wak’as was identified with

various stones in the valley, called pururaucas, which, on one occasion when the Inkas were

being attacked by their enemies, the Chankas, came to life to aid the Inkas and to help win the
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battle (Betanzos, 1996:19-30). Also, I note that several wak’as in the Cuntisuyu quadrant of the

city and valley were associated with the Inka place of origin (the site of Pacariqtambo), which is

located to the south of the city (Bauer, 1998; Urton, 1990b).

All of the resources and physical and supernatural elements noted above have to be

taken into consideration in order to account for the many processes responsible for the “filling

in” of the ceque system over time. This was the process presumably leading from the original

four quarters to, first, the 36-ceque model of the idealized, balanced ceque system, and, over

time, to the 41-ceque version that was described to the Spaniards soon after their entry into

the valley. Unfortunately, neither the native khipu-keeping accountants who recorded these

resources, events and processes in their strings and knots, nor the Spaniards who translated,

transcribed and recorded the khipu-keepers’ recitation of the information from their cord

accounts, were of the (anthropological) disposition to query their informants as to the

particulars of exactly how things came to be as they were in the ceque system as it was

encountered by the Spaniards. We are left, therefore, with participants’ second and third hand

accounts of the critical, formative processes of the system.

What I will argue was the case, however, was that, first, the striking model of the two

inter-cardinal axes of the brilliant band of the Milky Way passing through the zenith provided

the model for the basic, four-part framework of the empire and the radial line structure of the

ceque system. After that, over time, a variety of natural and supernatural processes transpired

which accounted for the expansion of the bare four-quarter framework, through the (ideal) 36-

ceque version, and on to the gloriously complex, 41-ceque model, complete with its dual
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(moiety), triadic (collana/payan/cayao), and quadripartite (the four suyus), hierarchical classes

and categories that composed the organizational structures of the ceque system of Cuzco.

I would conclude by stating that the reason all of these complex classes, categories, and

divisions and sub-divisions were organized as a radial line center, rather than in parallel line

segments (as in Cochabamba and Pacariqtambo), was because of the over-riding influence of

hierarchy by which the entire system in the capital was organized. That is, Cuzco, the seat of the

Inka and his court, had priority over its periphery, both within the Cuzco Valley, and beyond

(e.g., the territory of the “Inkas-by-privilege”), including what I have hypothesized in the

previous chapter to have been the four “Tambos,” the second-level centers that, together with

Cuzco, made up the galactic polity of the exemplary center, Cuzco.

Furthermore, the most sacred place within Cuzco, the Korikancha, the building where

the mummies of the deceased Inka kings were stored and worshipped, had the status of the

most sacred place in the city and the empire. Therefore, everything descended – radiated out –

from the center point of the Korikancha. It was the principle of the centrality of the Inka in

Cuzco, ideally in the Korikancha, that differentiated the pattern of radial segmentation in Cuzco

from the other examples we have seen, such as the suyus of the agricultural fields in

Cochabamba. In the latter case, there was no universally recognized center point with respect

to which the segments were all organized. However, a central point of orientation was not only

a, but the principal feature of the segmentation and organization of the ceque system of the

exemplary center, Cuzco. Therefore, the latter was organized as a radial system.

I think that the basic hierarchical principles and structures of the organization of the

ceque system were not radically unlike what Heckenberger has described for the center,
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periphery and four-part structures of the “galactic polities” of the Upper Xingu river in the

southern Amazon basin (see above, Chapter V). I suggested in the discussion of the Amazonian

circular settlements and radial systems that those models derived from the same guiding

principles as in Cuzco: the hierarchical centrality of the center vis à vis its subordinate

secondary centers.

In sum, the radial center of the ceque system, founded on the basis of the crossing of

the inter-cardinal axes of the celestial mayu – the source of water in Cuzco and the empire –

and then “filled in” by the set of practical considerations outlined above (i.e., irrigation districts,

the chapa agricultural fields, and the storehouses), was an expression of the centrality of the

Inka and his ancestors, along with other sacred objects in the Korikancha, within Cuzco – the

whole of which placed the Inka capital as the exemplary center at the center of the universe.
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Chapter IX

A String Theory of the Transmission of Andean and Inka Cosmology

Introduction: A Misunderstanding about "knots" and "strings"

I entitle this chapter with a reference to "string theory," and I do so with a narrow,

singular intention -- and with no small amount of trepidation. Anyone who is familiar with my

research over the past 25 years will recognize that I am referring here to the knotted string

devices -- khipus (Quechua: "knot") -- which were used by the Inkas and their ancestors of the

Middle Horizon period (600 - 1000 C. E.), the Wari, for recordkeeping purposes. Therefore, in

the case of the Inkas, one can speak quite straightforwardly of a high degree of significance of

strings -- i.e., those actual spun and plied linear objects made of cotton or camelid fibers -- in

relation to Andean cosmology. However, I relate below a rather embarrassing anecdote in

which the practical, grounded reality of the "knots" of the Inka knotted-string devices has a very

different meaning and significance from what one might anticipate. For, indeed, this common,

everyday object has been hijacked by physics and quantum theory in a way that can lead an

innocent archaeologist into a misunderstanding, or a mis-apprehension of intentions.

One year, when I was teaching at Colgate University, the Physics and Astronomy

department advertised a lecture by a physicist on "knot theory." Being myself a fellow who at

that time had spent a decade studying the knots of the Inka knotted string khipus, I was excited

at the prospect of hearing a scientific lecture on the objects of my research and of my highest

interest. I recall that I was the first person to enter the lecture hall. I sat down in the middle of

the large hall with great excitement and a considerable amount of enthusiasm, ostentatiously

opening my notebook and clicking my fountain pen, preparing to take copious notes. The
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lecturer -- whose name I do not now recall -- began speaking, and straightaway, the subject

matter of the lecture veered very far from my expectations, entering a realm of mathematical

abstraction that I cannot even pretend to caricature. After about 15 minutes, I slowly closed my

notebook and stowed my pen in my shirt pocket, as I realized that the substance of that lecture

on "knots" was very far afield from the challenges of tying actual knots in actual pieces of string

that I had anticipated. I learned then that "knot theory," as understood by mathematicians and

quantum physicists, is not, in fact, concerned to any significant degree with such practical

challenges and outcomes as tying knots in pieces of string. I am indeed also aware that "string

theory" holds the same promise of disappointment for someone investigating the complex

arrangements of strings or cords composing the khipus as knot theory does for those interested

in actual knots tied into those strings!

Therefore, although I have handled and closely studied (by last count) 56,871 pieces of

string into which Inka recordkeepers tied 120,331 knots on 631 khipus found today in museums

from Berlin to Santiago de Chile, I am not, in fact, a specialist in either "knot theory" nor "string

theory" -- at least not as those topics are scientifically understood! That said, I nonetheless

claim a greater-than-average involvement with and knowledge of actual knots tied into actual

strings, at least as those phenomena have been preserved and have come down to us from the

recordkeeping administrators – the khipukamayuqs ("knot makers/organizers/animators") – of

Tawantinsuyu.

What I am concerned with in this chapter is to examine the matter of the great deal of

attention Inka bureaucrats, in the capacity of some of those individuals as khipukamayuqs,

were regularly and vitally concerned with in manipulating the strings, knots and colors of khipus
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in recording information pertaining to the Inka state. My interest with respect to these

practices is whether or not, and if so how, the daily habitus of manipulating strings played a

role in formulating, or perhaps re-inforcing, the principles (especially the cross and radial line

center) of central Andean cosmology developed to this point. I begin with a general, brief

introduction to the Inka khipus for any reader who is not familiar with these extraordinarily

recording devices.

Khipus: Structure and Function

What is a khipu, and how might these objects give us insights into Inka cosmology and

the ceque system of Cuzco (see Figures 72 & 73)? First, a bit of explanatory background for any

reader who has not followed the burgeoning literature on this topic over the past few decades.

Figure 72 - Inka khipu (Herrett Museum, Southern Idaho University)

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Figure 73 – Inka khipu from Laguna de los Cóndores, Chachapoyas, Amazonas, Peru
(Centro Mallqui, Leymebamba, Peru; INC-LDC-108 (LC1-497); UR01)

The Inka khipus (Quechua: “knot”) have been the subject of a considerable number of

recent contributions in Andean archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic research and

publications (see Ascher and Ascher, 1997; Brokaw, 2010; Chirinos Rivera, 2010; Clindaniel,

2018; Clindaniel and Urton, 2017; Hyland, 2014; Hyland et al, 2014; Locke, 1923; Medrano and

Urton, 2018; Pereyra, 2006; Salomon, 2004; Urton 2003, 2017; Urton and Brezine, 2011; Urton

and Chu, 2015, 2019). I refer the reader who is not familiar with the structures and functions of

khipus, as well as the wide range of information recorded in these devices, to any selection of

these sources.

The important points to bear in mind for our purposes here are that the khipus were the

most important instruments used by Inka state administrators in the recording, storage, and

transmission of a wide range of data pertaining to life and society in Tawantinsuyu, from

administrative records (e.g., censuses, tribute records, etc.) to indigenous histories of the Inka

kings and queens (Quilter and Urton, 2002; Urton, 2017).

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The basic structural features of khipus are shown in Figure 74. The majority of khipu

cords are made of spun and plied cotton, although some 2-3% are of camelid (llama or alpaca)

fibers and a smaller percentage are of vegetal fibers. To date, we have inventoried some 1,045

extant khipu samples in museums in Europe and North and South America (see the inventory in

Urton, 2017:261-264).

Figure 74 – The Structural Components of Khipus

What we could term the “backbone,” or “spine” of the khipu is the element labeled

“primary cord” in Figure 74. This is usually the thickest and structurally most complex cord

composing a khipu, as it is made up of multiple spun, plied and re-plied cords and is often

wrapped with additional cords in complex and colorful patterns. To the primary cord are

attached a variable number of other cords, so that when the primary cord is extended,

horizontally (as in Figure 74), some cords fall down (pendant cords), while others (top cords),

leave the primary cord upward, in the opposite direction from the pendant cords. Both pendant

and top cords may have one or more levels of secondary (subsidiary) cords attached to them.
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In sum, the khipu is all about strings, or lines – horizontal lines, vertical lines, lines that

can be arrayed obliquely from either pendant or top cords, or (as we will see below) that can be

turned to mimic the radial line center of the ceque system of Cuzco.

Although the majority of khipus display color only within the range from white to

medium brown, many are quite colorful, either from construction in the wide range of natural

hues of cotton and camelid fibers, or from the application of vegetal dyes, especially to the

latter. It has become clear from recent studies (esp. Clindaniel, 2018) that certain color patterns

were important techniques in the encoding of meaning, or of categorical values, in these

devices. This included the use of color banding (sets of cords of different colors) for the

recording of lower numerical valued data (e.g., individual work accomplishments), while what is

termed color seriation (repeating a sequence of colors – e.g., white, light brown, medium

brown, mixed color; repeat…) was used for higher valued, aggregate-level numerical data.

Central to the recording of numerical data – for censuses, storehouse contents,

numbers of troops or laborers on public works projects, etc. – was a system of knotting cords

with numerical values by means of tiered knots organized in a place-value, base-10 decimal

system (Ascher & Ascher, 1997; Locke, 1923). The three basic types of knots included: figure-8

knots signifying 1s; “long” knots signifying the values 2-9; and single, or overhand, knots

signifying full decimal values (10s, 100s, 1000s, etc.). The tiered clusters of knots signified the

increasing powers of the decimal place system of quantitative values (see Fig. 75). The system

included zero, not by making a particular sign but by the absence of knots in places of value.
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Figure 75 – The Hierarchical, Decimal Arrangement of Knots on a khipu

(Ethnologische Museum, Berlin, # VA47083. Illustration by J.L. Meyerson)

The above are the technical specifications of how khipus are built up, out of knotted

strings, and some of the core features of what researchers have come to understand about how

they were inscribed, given color patterns, and manipulated in three-dimensional space, to

display different meanings and values. This would have been the core knowledge about these

devices known to and manipulated by the khipu-keeping administrators of Tawantinsuyu.

What does the khipu have to do with Andean and Inka cosmology and the structure and

properties of the ceque system, which lay at the heart of Tawantinsuyu? I suggest that the

khipus had certain basic properties that appear as though they were modeled as portable

ceque systems. Recall that the ceque system was an ordered arrangement of lines within the

Cuzco valley onto or within which were embedded an array of differently ordered objects – the

wak’as – representing an array of categories of social, political and ritual elements, or identities.
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We could say, without stretching the analogy too far, that this could serve equally as a

definition of the basic structural properties of khipus. As we have seen, khipus were composed

of multiple lines – i.e., spun and plied strings – onto which were arranged by a variety of means

(e.g., spacing, color, knotting) arrays of units of information, especially pertaining to identities

and statuses, of numerous circumstances that were of interest to state administrators (e.g.,

village censuses, goods deposited in state storehouses, the timing and entailments of ritual

performances, etc.). The khipus, with their arrays of colorful, linear, knotted pendant and top

strings, were perfectly formed for imposing, or transferring, a ceque system-like organization

on data inscribed within the strings of these devices. The structural analogy I am making

between the ceque system and khipus is illustrated in Figure 76.

Figure 76 – (Upper) An Array of Lines each Linking Multiple Wak’as in the Cuzco ceque system,
and (Lower) Khipu Cords Composed of an Array of Knotted Strings
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In fact, there was a much more direct relationship between khipus and the ceque

system than structural and organizational similarities. For we are told explicitly by early Spanish

chroniclers that the ceque system of Cuzco was recorded on a khipu.10 It was from a reading of

those data by an Inka khipu keeper for colonial officials that the description of the Cuzco ceque

system contained in the chronicle of Bernabé Cobo (1990 [1653]:51-84) has come down to us.

The Spaniard who appears to have first made a serious study of the ceque system, and who

noted its recording in a khipu, was the lawyer and Corregidor (governor) Polo de Ondegardo. In

one document (1940 [1561]:183-4), Polo states that within one and one-half leagues of the city

of Cuzco there were some 400 sacred places (i.e., wak’as) where sacrifices were made;

furthermore, he says that he made a map (carta) of the system (cited in Bauer, 1997:285). Polo

refers to his map of the ceque system of Cuzco in a later document, from 1571 (1916).

Moreover, it is clear from his reporting that there were many other ceque systems around

Tawantinsuyu and that maps were made of each such system:

…although nowhere were there so many shrines as at Cuzco, the organization

was the same and seeing the map of the huacas [wak’as] of Cuzco in every

village no matter how small, they drew it in the same way and showed the

ceques and the permanent huacas and shrines…I have tested this matter in

more than a hundred towns, and the Lord Bishop of the Charcas, doubting

that the matter was so universal…was shown it [a/the map] in Pocona, and the

Indians themselves drew there the same map and there is no doubt about

it because they were found there, as I say, without error…[Polo de

Ondegardo, 1916 [1571]:56-7; cited in Bauer, 1997:286).

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As for the connection between these other ceque systems and their recording on

khipus, the Licenciado (lawyer) Juan de Matienzo noted that as a part of the process of

destroying the indigenous, Inka sacred places and objects, Polo de Ondegardo had obtained

information on these local ceque and wak’a systems from khipukamayuqs in those various

places:

…first take from them the huacas and shrines that they have, and idols that

they worship, something that until now has not been done, although the

Licenciado Polo de Ondegardo…being Corregidor in Cuzco, investigated all

the huacas and idols that the Indians have, to which they worshipped,

according to quipus [khipus] of the Incas and superstitions they used, which

is written down. (Matienzo, 1967 [1567]:119; cited in Bauer, 1997:289).

From the various citations on these matters in Polo’s writings, it seems clear that he is

describing a tradition in which the ceque systems of all these other villages were drawn on the

same model as the ceque system in Cuzco. This is stated explicitly by Cobo, who says: “…anyone

who is familiar with the guacas [wak’as] of Cuzco will easily understand what the Indians had in

other places. Everywhere the arrangement of the guacas was the same as in Cuzco (Cobo, 1990

[1653]:48; my emphasis). Thus, once one had learned the ceque organization of this or that

place, one could move to another locale and orient one’s self quite concretely to the entire

organization within that new landscape based on the knowledge and memory of how they were

organized elsewhere. This tradition of producing likenesses of the ceque system of Cuzco in

provincial towns constituted mimetic productions – copies of the prototype. But of even more

importance is the fact that, when an Inka administrator went out to the provinces (see below),
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he (i.e., our data suggest that the administrators were male off-spring of minor-to-mid-level

nobility) would not be adrift in orienting himself to the local landscape or to the principles of

their social and ritual organizations.

This mimetic, recursive aspect of the Andean ceque systems calls to mind the kind of

nesting of hierarchically arrayed sites in the “galactic polities” of the southern Amazon basin

(see above, Fig. 45). As we saw in our discussion of the Amazonian galactic polities (Chapter V),

a central place had arrayed around it secondary central places, around each of which were

third-level central places and so on. As indicated by Polo’s and Cobo’s accounts, each central

place would have had the same overall internal structure of wak’as and ceques as all other

higher and lower level central places.

How could such an array of central, secondary, tertiary, etc., places in the landscape

have been modeled on a khipu? It would probably have required a complex, hierarchically

organized alignment of pendant cords to each of which would have been attached an array of

subsidiary cords. Such a khipu would have been as complex as that shown in Figure 77, a very

complex khipu in the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino (MCAP), in Santiago de Chile.
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Figure 77 – Khipu in the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino (#780), Santiago de Chile

Figure 78 – Detail of Khipu in Fig. 77 with multiple, hierarchical subsidiary cords on each
pendant cord(MCAP #780, Santiago de Chile, [UR35]; photo by Gary Urton)

The khipu in Figures 77 and 78 carries a total of 88 pendant cords. Each pendant, in turn,

has attached to it a large number (up to 6) of first-order subsidiary cords, which may carry their

own subsidiary cords, arrayed along the pendant cord in a branching, hierarchical fashion

(Figure 79). Figure 79 shows the complex branches from just a single pendant cord on the
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MCAP khipu. The pendant cord protrudes upwards, from the center of the photograph, and

from that one cord, there are appended multiple levels of secondary, tertiary, etc., cords.

Figure 79 – The branching, hierarchical arrangement of subsidiary cords on one pendant

cord of khipu MCAP #780 (photo by Gary Urton)

What I conclude from these observations is that the khipukamayuqs were the masters

of lines pulled and knotted in highly complex hierarchical arrays. The world of these individuals

would have been pervaded by experiences of holding, stretching, turning, and teasing apart

very dense arrays of spun threads. I think that for such individuals, the translation between

such complex khipus and arrays of lines of ceque systems connecting multiple sacred wak’as

spread across a landscape would have been quite straightforward conceptual challenges. But

this raises the question: Who were the khipukamayuqs? What training did they undergo? And

what role did they play in constructing (in string models) information arrays in strings, knots,

and colors and, thereby, (re-)producing models of the Andean cosmos?

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In fact, we told by one Spanish chronicler that the khipukamayuqs were subjected to a

rigorous, four-year education before they were sent out to the hinterland. The chronicler,

Martín de Murúa, describes the school set up by the Inka in Cuzco for educating the young

people who were destined to become provincial administrators:

“The Inca … established in his house a school, in which there presided

an old man, one of the most discrete members of the nobility, over four

teachers who were there to teach different matters at different times

in the discipline. The first teacher taught the principles of the Language

of the Incas [i.e., Quechua]…finishing this period of study, and leaving with

the facility to speak and understand, they entered under the order and

doctrine of another teacher, who taught them to adore the idols and

huacas [wak’as]…In the third year they entered with another teacher,

who instructed them through his quipus [khipus] the things of business

[negocios] pertaining to good governance and authority, and the laws

and obedience that the Inca and his governors demanded…The fourth

and final year with another teacher they learned with the same cords

and quipus many histories and ancient happenings and the difficulties of

wars in times past and the shrewdness of the Incas and the captains…and

of all the notable things that had transpired, [and] they put these things to

memory and they conversed about them, and among themselves and

the teachers they recounted these things and spoke about them from

memory…. (Murúa, 2004 [1590]:364 [my translation])11

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The above represented the highest level of education – like a combined business school

and an Inka state indoctrination program – for the sons of the elites in Cuzco who would take

the knowledge, ideology and practices of the Inkas from the center out to the provinces. It

should be said that some modern authors (e.g., Murra, 1980 [1956]:161) have noted, in

commenting on the above passage, that the idea of a four-year curriculum sounds suspiciously

European. While I agree that the curriculum described by Murúa has the ring of a European

(not to mention present-day U.S.!) four-year curriculum, I do not think we can totally discard

the idea of the possible existence of an organized, concerted, multi-year program on the part of

the Inka elite in Cuzco to introduce a degree of standardization into the training of the state

officials who would be sent out to govern the provinces.

I suggest that the young individuals trained in such a program of studies in Cuzco would

have been the critical voices and operators serving as intermediaries between the center and

the periphery. Therefore, if we are seeking an answer as to how the esoterica of the ceque

system of Cuzco would have been integrated with other ceque systems around Tawantinsuyu in

order to produce and perhaps to innovatively re-create in provincial settings a broader, central

Andean cosmology, I think the young administrators trained in Cuzco would have been central

characters in that process of interaction, exchange, and cosmography-making.

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Chapter X

Dreams of a Unified Central Andean/Inka Cosmogram

Having now described and explained the central elements that must be taken account of

in order to contemplate the construction of a cosmographic rendering of Tawantinsuyu –

including Cuzco, the ceque system, water and agricultural resources, and all the way to the

Milky Way – we may now move to consider how the whole of the Andean cosmos may be or

has been represented in cosmographic form. We have already seen one such image, in Guaman

Poma’s “mapa mundi” rendering of the whole of Tawantinsuyu, from the Pacific coastal desert

to the high Andes, and with its intercardinal cross at the center of the landscape (see Fig. 24).

There is another Colonial image that is explicitly said to have represented the whole of

what was most sacred in Tawantinsuyu, that is, of Inka cosmology. This is a drawing on a page

in a seventeenth century chronicle by Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua (2019

[ca. 1615?]; see Fig. 80).

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Fig. 80 – The Inka Cosmos According to Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua (2019 [ca. 1615?]:276-7)

The Image in Fig. 80 is said by Pachacuti Yamqui to have been drawn on a wall of the

Korikancha, the principal sacred building and center of the ceque system in Inka Cuzco. I will

not give a complete reading and analysis of all the elements of this cosmological drawing, as I

and others have published descriptions and analyses of this image elsewhere (Isbell, 1978;

Sharon, 1978; Szeminski, 2019; Urton, 1981:132-133 and 202-204).

The various elements of the image are drawn as inside the confines of a building with a

peaked roof. The image contains, along the center line, two crosses shown as constellations of
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stars, one in the apex of the building and the other in the center of the drawing. It is extremely

interesting to note that these two crosses are strikingly reminescent of the two crosses

discussed earlier from Garcilaso de la Vega’s account of a cross he saw in the Korikancha (see

Figures 26 and 27). Figure 26 is the reconstruction of the inter-cardinal, oblique axes cross

which de la Vega said he saw hanging in the cathedral in Cuzco, but which he claimed was once

kept in a “huaca” (i.e., a wak’a, a sacred house) in the Korikancha. The shape of that cross is

similar to the oblique cross of stars in the center of Pachacuti Yamqui’s drawing (Fig. 80). The

comparison of the cross at the apex of the house drawing in Fig. 80 to the cross shown in Figure

27 relates to the image I suggested may have been that of the re-aligned (i.e., Latin-like) cross

as de la Vega said he saw the cross hanging in the Cuzco cathedral.

Thus, we potentially have in these two sets of crosses – one set incorporated in the 17th

century drawing in the chronicle of Pachacuti Yamqui, and the other in a textual description of

the great early 17th century chronicler, Garcilaso de la Vega – a resonance between two

chroniclers who were almost certainly not aware of each other’s testimony to these two cross

forms (see Urton, 1980, on cross forms in Andean astronomy).

The two crosses along the center line of the Pachacuti Yamqui drawing (Fig. 80) are

situated above and below a large ellipse. In the text which is written across the upper part of

the ellipse, Pachacuti Yamqui identified this form, or shape, as (in Quechua): Vira quchan pacha

yachachip (in Spanish): almácigo donador de vida, alma del tiempo espacio; “seedbed giver of

life, soul of Time-Space” (Pachacuti Yamqui, 2019:174-175 ). The text suggests that this element

in the drawing was meant to be understood as a golden disk and that it was associated with the
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creator. As will be recalled, Viracocha was the name, or title, of the great Andean creator deity

(Fig. 58; and Curatola P., 2015).

In my interpretation of this ellipse in an earlier study of Andean astronomy and

cosmology (Urton, 1981:202-204), I suggested that, given the centrality the drawing accords to

Viracocha, the creator deity, I think we can interpret this ellipse as a stylized representation of

the ring of the Milky Way. This interpretation places the Milky Way (Mayu, or “river”) in the

center of the image, with crosses of stars above and below the image. In addition, we see in the

drawing the sun (to our left) and the moon (to our right), as well as Venus of the morning

(below the sun), Venus of the evening (below the moon), and a cluster of stars below Venus of

the morning labeled suchu (“bloody”), which was probably meant to represent the cluster of

stars of the Pleiades (Zuidema, 1982c). Below the central cross in Pachacuti Yamqui’s drawing

(Fig. 80) is a human couple, similar to the couple at the center of Guaman Poma’s “mapa

mundi” cosmogram (Fig. 24). At a certain level, both of these maps are highly social and

emphasize cosmic and human reproduction.

Additional elements to those mentioned above in Pachacuti Yamqui’s drawing include

lightening, the rainbow, the cosmic ocean (Mama Cocha, “mother sea”), a black cat (possibly a

“dark cloud” constellation in the Milky Way), a sapling, identified with the ancestor (Mallqui),

and a storehouse (Collca) at the base of the image. Pachacuti Yamqui’s image of the Inka

universe, drawn on a wall of the most sacred building in Cuzco, provides a figural, list-like

accounting of the essential elements of an Inka cosmology. Thus, while I don’t regard Pachacuti

Yamqui’s drawing technically as a cosmogram of the entire Inka universe, I do think it contains a

great many of the elements that would have been considered as central to an Inka cosmology.
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Modern Cosmograms of the Inka Universe

I provide in this section two modern attempts to render an Inka cosmogram. One of

these is from what I can only term a quixotic effort I undertook several years ago, in response

to a request from the National Geographic Society, to consult on the production of a single

image that would encapsulate all of what was essential to represent in an Inka cosmogram. The

image that I helped the artists draw for the National Geographic magazine ( ) is shown in

Figure 81.

Figure 81 – Inka Cosmology (National Geographic….)

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As one can perhaps make out in this image, or cosmogram, I placed Cuzco and the

ceque system at the center of the drawing, around which was the circle of mountains of the

valley of Cuzco; then, a bit to the south (in the foreground of the circular disk of the earth), the

origin place of the Inkas at the hill known as Pacariqtambo, in the side of which were three

windows, known as Tambo T’oco, out of which the ancestors of the Inkas emerged. Beyond

these elements, there was a ring of high Andean mountains, through which courses the

Vilcanota/Urubamba river; and finally, at the outermost level of the local, Cuzco cosmology was

the Milky Way – the Mayu (“river”) – with its “dark cloud” (yana phuyu) animal constellations

lying along the central course of the river. Just below the Milky Way was the sun and the moon,

rendered in a way reminiscent of the style of the drawing of these celestial bodies by the

indigenous chronicler, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala.

I have characterized my effort in helping to produce the image in Figure 81 as “quixotic,”

because I don’t think this image captures anything like what an Andean/Inka person of pre-

conquest times would have recognized as the world centering on Inka Cuzco, much less its

ceque system (recall that the ceques were imaginary lines). That said, this is one attempt to

represent, in a single cosmographic image, Cuzco and the ceque system at the heart of an Inka

cosmology. How else might an Inka cosmogram be represented?

I will introduce the second modern cosmogram by noting that, while carrying out

fieldwork in Cuzco and Pacariqtambo, Peru, over some two and a half years in the 1980s, with

my wife, Julia Meyerson, a good friend and colleague of ours was a German anthropologist

named Richard Bielefeldt. Bielefeldt was studying Quechua divination practices, especially

those undertaken by stacking coca leaves in differently numbered and configured

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arrangements, known as kintus. People in the countryside construct such arrangements of coca

leaves, blow across them, offering invocations to the mountain spirits and to other powerful

telluric forces (see Allen, 1988). Bielefeldt was an extremely creative and thoughtful person;

but, unfortunately, he published little from his research. He passed away, in 2020.

What Bielefeldt did do, on one occasion and out of considerable frustration with what I

believe he perceived as my lack of imagination in conceiving of Inka cosmology and the ceque

system as he understood them, was to draw an image and affix to it a seemingly crumpled-up,

but, in fact, a carefully folded, piece of paper on which he had written some (now illegible)

signs, composing what he referred to as a cosmogram of Tawantinsuyu, with Cuzco in the

center (Figure 82).

Figure 82 – “Tawantinsuyu” [with Cuzco and the ceque system at the center]
(by R. Bielefeldt, ca. 1982; permission to use granted by Maria Gaida)
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Now, I must say that today (and this was true at the time), I find Bielefeldt’s rendition of

“Tawantinsuyu” a much more satisfactory and productive image with which to think in trying to

conceive of how an Andean/Inka person might have imagined a central Andean/Inka cosmology

of Tawantinsuyu, centering on Cuzco and the ceque system, all brought together into a single

construction. That said, I am not certain that I could tease apart and annotate the different

elements of the drawing and its central folded paper construction in order to provide a

satisfactory exposition of how each of the three entities – Tawantinsuyu, Cuzco, and the ceque

system – is incorporated in this image.

They are all together there, however, in a bundle; and that perhaps is the message, or

rather, the most productive way, from where we stand today, some five centuries from the last

iteration of the reproduction of these entities by the Inkas themselves, to think of them – as a

bundle, of energy, identities, vector pathways, all centering on an intense, topologically

complexly folded and annotated piece of paper projecting upward (toward the zenith) and

separated from the ground by a shadow (Maria Gaida, personal communication, 2021).

I think of the knot of crumpled, annotated paper at the center of this image as

somewhat the opposite of the metaphor I have used earlier for the status of Cuzco as a place in

the landscape: a black hole. For the image in Fig. 82 appears as quite the opposite of the light

and energy sucking node of a black hole. Rather, what we see in Fig. 82 is more like a dynamo, a

center where lines enter, get re-energized and spin off furiously in some other direction,

moving across the landscape, thereby continually redefining the territory within the valley of

Cuzco.
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Finally, in truth, I would say that the most satisfying image of Inka cosmology would

perhaps be a hypothetical cosmogram drawn from among the images in Figures 80, 81 and 82 –

less literal and mundane than the former two images, yet more “readable” than the latter. I

don’t know of the existence of such an image.

Reflections on Andean/Inka Cosmograms

In reflecting on the project of attempting to construct a central Andean cosmogram, it is

instructive to be reminded (see Chapter II) of what the highly knowledgeable Jesuit priest

Bernabé Cobo had to say about Inka ideas concerning the celestial sphere, the heavenly image

of Thunder, the Milky Way, and the place of the latter in replenishing the earth with water:

…[T]hey [the Inkas] say that he [Thunder] passed across a

very large river in the middle of the sky. They indicated that this

river was the white band that we see down here called the Milky

Way [Sp. Via lactea]. Regarding this matter, they made up a great

deal of foolishness that would be too detailed to include here.

Anyway, they believed that from this river the Thunder drew the

water that he would let fall down upon the earth (Cobo, 1990

[1653]:32).

Now, Cobo was a very learned man who was highly knowledgeable about the Andes. He

had lived for a half a century (from 1599 till around 1657, with a decade or so away in Mexico)

in the Andes, and he was generally sympathetic to things Andean and to the accomplishments

of the Inkas. Therefore, we must wonder at his reticence, or perhaps it was a lack of curiosity, in
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explaining the details of Inka ideas about the Milky Way and its relationship to the earth – as he

dismissed it all as “a great deal of foolishness.” For whatever reason, something prevented him

from taking the time to explain to his readers how the Heavens/Earth // Milky Way/

Tawantinsuyu equation was structured and how it all operated together, as a unity.

Perhaps Cobo truly thought it was all “foolishness,” as he says; but perhaps he had two

major doubts about attempting an explanation of these matters: first, he may himself have felt

a lack of clarity, even skepticism, about the scope and complexity of Inka cosmology; and/or

second, he may have been skeptical that his lettered and learned European readers would

believe that these New World “savages” could have conceived of a cosmology as complex as

what we have sketched out in this study.

In fact, it is clear that the Inka savants had a more sophisticated understanding of the

motions of the galaxy than what existed in Europe in Cobo’s time (i.e., in the mid-17th century).

European ideas about the Milky Way at that time had essentially come down over the centuries

from Aristotle. At the heart of these ideas was Aristotle’s notion that this brilliant line of stars

through the sky was composed essentially of “swamp gas,” raised to the level of the heavens,

and coursing directly below the sphere of the fixed stars (Wright, 1995:110-120).

In fact, nowhere in European astronomy through the Middle Ages and into the early

Renaissance am I aware of the recognition on the part of European astronomers of the twin

facts, keys to central Andean and Inka cosmology, of the intersecting arms of the Milky Way

forming a cross in the zenith (recall that northern Europeans could not actually see the

brightest portion of the galaxy), nor of the relationship between the Milky Way and the ecliptic.

The latter involved a union of the positions of the Milky Way at dawn on the mornings of the
 238

June and December solstice sun rises (see Urton, 1981:61-63, and above, Figure 8). Indeed, I

suspect that had he been aware of these indigenous understandings of astronomy and celestial

motions, they would have taxed both Cobo’s powers of description (thus, he chose to dismiss

them as “foolishness”), as well as his hopes for the credulity of his European readers that these

New World “savages” could have had such a complex cosmology.

To say this all in another way, and to move this discussion on to the conclusions, can

anyone who has even scratched the surface of the ceque system, much less one who has

plumbed the depths of that complex array of categories, identities, statuses, and topographical

trajectories really doubt that these people were capable of conceiving of and formulating the

structures and motions of a highly complex cosmological system? I think not. And still, we await

a satisfactory construction of a central Andean/Inka cosmogram…This would require the

creativity, skill and talent of a highly accomplished artist, as well as the knowledge of the Inka

cosmological tradition of a Guaman Poma de Ayala, or a Pachacuti Yamqui, or an R. Tom

Zuidema.
 239

Chapter XI

Conclusions

My principal thesis in this study has been that the cosmological tradition centering on

the cross formed by the intercardinal axes of the Milky Way in the zenith and projected to earth

to create a four-part division of space, on one hand, and settlements either structured or

conceived as radial centers, which were found in both the Andes and Amazonia, associated with

hierarchy and inequality, on the other hand, were core features of the cultural and intellectual

history of central Andean peoples from very early in the pre-Inka past to the time of the Inkas

and, in some circumstances, down to the present day. As I have argued, I think these two

elements of central Andean cosmologies developed within different time scales and periods.

It is important to add here that the institution of the ayllu played a vital and critical role

in the cosmology we have developed here. Not only were ayllus central elements of the

organization of the Inka capital and its ceque system, but every subject of the Inka in the some

80 provinces around Tawantinsuyu belonged to one or another of these entities. Every action of

the “commoners” – referred to as hatunruna (“the great people”) – in the empire carried on

their day-to-day activities from within their position as a member of a particular ayllu, but also

as a member of his/her group vis à vis other ayllus in that region. Relations within and between

ayllus were characterized by hierarchical relations. These relations and positionalities weighted,

and oriented, every activity undertaken by people in the countryside, from the management of

agricultural and pasture lands, to the maintaining of irrigation canals and other local

infrastructure, to the celebration of local ancestors, and finally, to the conception and

integration of one’s self in a particular place in the landscape and under the heavens. The ayllu
 240

was a vital factor of local, regional, and imperial identities – and, therefore, within Andean

cosmology, writ large.

It should be noted that, unlike the Milky Way, which is ubiquitous, its two great, fan-like

axes relentlessly replacing each other in the night sky, radial structures are not always in

evidence. We only see them when and where they have been created, lived in, walked over and

reproduced by human effort. So, in a very real sense, radial systems are the opposite of the

Milky Way, at least in terms of their visibility in the archaeological record. Nonetheless, when

both of these elements come together as elements of central Andean settlements, we need to

account for their origin(s), their meaning and significance for the people who created them,

lived within them, and reproduced them over long time periods – which is what I have

attempted to do here.

I think the celestial cross would have become embedded in the conception of peoples in

these societies from early in the human occupation of this region as something of a, if not the,

prime mover, the exemplary force and model for how their universe was structured – that is, as

a pair of complementary opposite great starry bands passing alternately through the sky, night

after night, for all time. The viewing of these celestial motions would have been a common

event, as people went about their daily and nightly activities, noting where the line of the Mayu

stood at different times of the year in relation to different activities (e.g., planting, harvesting,

pasturing camelids, celebrating festivals and state rituals, and so on).

Much later, and gradually over time, with expanding populations and the emergence of

more complex social and political systems, societies would have become increasingly

hierarchical and unequal. Influential and innovative social, political and religious thinkers and
 241

actors in those societies would have begun to seek ways to structure their societies around

these hierarchical principles. In doing so, they would have drawn on the cosmic model of the

prominent bands of the Milky Way, in their complementary opposition, as a template for the

organization of their societies. This would have included such principles as the all-pervasive

dualism of Andean societies, with asymmetrical moiety pairs (i.e., hanan/upper vs.

hurin/lower), as well as the hierarchical principle of peripherial settlements arrayed around a

dominant, exemplary center.

A celestial model for the center/periphery feature would have been identified (perhaps

post facto) in the crossing of the axes in the zenith, above some politically-designated central

place (i.e., the future “exemplary center”) and of the center radiating its power and prestige

out to its territorial boundaries. I imagine this as somehow built on an analogy of linear

extensions from the zenith crossing down to the horizon points along the four arms of the

intersecting mayu axes, on one hand, compared to the extension of the four quarters of

Tawantinsuyu from Cuzco out to the four parts of the empire, on the other.

The center, or centers, in this hypothetical scenario would have become progressively

sub-divided over time to accommodate the increasing differentiation of ranks, roles, statuses,

and functions of social groups at the center. This progressive expansion would have been in the

direction of the formation of “galactic polity-like” systems, centering on “exemplary centers”

and their subordinate settlements The culmination of this process in the central Andes was the

emergence and consolidation of the state and empire of Tawantinsuyu, with its core institution,

the ceque system, organizing life in the capital, Cuzco, and regulating its relations with the

outside – especially with the secondary centers of the “four Tambos,” as laid out in Chapter VII.
 242

With respect to the salience and phenomenological experience of viewing the crossing

of the axes of the Milky Way in the zenith, the one thing that I am certain of is that the celestial

river (mayu) did, indeed, undergo the motions through the heavens above the central Andes

described in Chapter III (Fig. 6) throughout the eons of time from the Preceramic Period (the

time of Caral), through the Early Horizon (the time of Chavín), and on to the end of the Late

Horizon (the time of Tawantinsuyu of the Inkas), and down to the present day. Almost by

definition, these celestial motions were some of the few things in the universe that did not

change and that were shared by all of the peoples and cultures of the central Andes over this

entire period. That is, while volcanos erupted, earthquakes shook the mountains and coast,

new plants were introduced and adopted into regional economies, new pottery styles and

metallurgical techniques were invented and spread from point A to point B, wars were fought

between group X against group Y, and a succession of states rose and fell over this long span of

time, still, through all of these changes, the two branches of the Milky Way crossed in the

zenith every 24-hours – without fail, without change.

The most surprising thing to some readers may be the claim that central Andean

peoples over the past at least 5,000 years were aware of the celestial motions described above

and that they built their understanding of the cosmos around them. But, why should this be

surprising? This is no more improbable, nor should it be more difficult for moderns to mentally

process, than the proposition that people throughout the Mediterranean region in classical

times imagined a world of characters drawn from their rich mythological traditions and

projected them into fabulous configurations of stars – constellations – which, in fact, the

majority of people today generally find extremely challenging to identify!

 243

In fact, we must ask, how could one suppose that people living under the brilliant sky

and stars of the central Andes, in compounds, settlements and even a few cities across this vast

region, with no electric lights to dim the night skies, would not have noticed what was

transpiring in the heavens above them every day and night? How benighted would we have to

suppose those people to have been in order for them not to have recognized the persistence

and repetition of these objects and celestial motions? And, recognizing that these celestial

motions would have been visible during this long time period, how incurious would we have to

suppose them to have been not to have made efforts to understand, project order into,

explicate, and attribute meaning to these celestial objects, motions, and cycles?

Only if we were to attribute to these people the basest level of intelligence and curiosity

could we suppose that they would not have come up with explanations for these celestial

motions and speculated on their significance and meaning for their own lives and for the fate of

their societies. Nonetheless, many of the conquering Europeans were, indeed, intent on

insisting that indigenous Andeans (and Amazonians) were a benighted race and that they bore

no such overwhelming curiosity about their world or, even if they did, that they would not have

had the intelligence to make much of it. (Recall Cobo’s summary statement of Inka conceptions

of the Milky Way as “a lot of nonsense.”)

However, as surely as the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Cretans, Greeks, Romans,

and other peoples in the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean worlds were aware of what

transpired in the heavens above them and constructed theories to explain those motions, as

well as calendar systems to chart their cycles and periodicities, and philosophical explanations

to explain the relationships between what went on in the heavens and the course and fortunes
 244

of human societies, surely central Andean peoples would have done the same thing, or at least

something similar. The main difference between the peoples and cultures of these two regions

(i.e., the Classical Old World and the central Andes) is that the latter did not invent systems of

writing by which we can read their own words detailing their cosmologies, calendars and

philosophical histories – but surely they must exist, in some form(s), even though they are as

yet largely unrecognized by us today with respect to the non-literate Andeans (and

Amazonians).

A central premise and underlying assumption of my argument has been that central

Andean peoples must have made systematic observations of the celestial and terrestrial

phenomena I have focused on in this study, and that they must have recorded – i.e., produced

mimetic versions of – that information in some form or manner in their material culture. I

propose that the fact that we do not yet entirely understand what they made of this

information is a result of our lack of imagination and our failure to identify what they knew and

thought about their world on the basis of imaginative, informed studies of their material

culture.

Indeed, archaeologists, art historians and other material and cultural specialists have

understood and explained much of what was produced by ancient Andeans. However, I would

argue that there must still be much to be learned from more intensive studies focusing on such

topics as the structural and mathematical properties of Andean textiles; the material properties

of those fabrics, as well as in the wide range of ceramics, metalwork, etc., produced by

generations of artisans; the architectural features of their buildings; the design and layout of

settlements, terraced mountain-sides, and the landscapes transformed by mounds, irrigation

 245

works, etc.; the structural properties, relations and organizational principles underlying such

socio-political formations as the ceque system of Cuzco; and the knots, colors, numerical

patterns, and spatial properties of their cord-wrapping and cord-keeping traditions. Again,

much has been done by way of study of all of these topics, but I believe that much more awaits

further, even more intensive and detailed studies. The incomplete knowledge we have of those

accomplishments to date is, indeed, a loss to global intellectual history and world heritage.

I have suggested from the beginning of this study that one of the most unique and

extraordinary large-scale, collective cultural artifacts central Andeans created in pre-European

contact times was the ceque system of the Inka city of Cuzco. Now, it must be stated clearly

that central Andeans made many extraordinary things. These included one of the earliest city-

like settlements in the New World (the site of Caral); two of the most powerful and elaborate

pilgrimage centers of their time in the Americas (Chavín de Huantar and Pachacamac); some of

the most exceptional and intricate hand-made weavings in the world (Paracas); non-wheel-

made ceramics of an almost unbelievable degree of complexity, beauty, and sophistication

(Moche, Chorrera, Nazca and Wari); astonishing metalworks using metallurgical methods

known from nowhere else in the pre-industrial world (Moche and Chimu); remarkably complex

and beautiful architectural and stone-working traditions (Tiwanaku and the Inkas); and many

more craftwork and artistic creations. These cultural and technological productions are well

recognized worldwide for their sophistication and fineness of manufacture and their high

aesthetic qualities.

We today have long recognized and celebrated all of these extraordinary productions,

each one of which demanded a wide range of resources and intricate traditions of labor
 246

organization and ingenuity for their production (e.g., Lechtman, 1993). Nonetheless, I argue

that the ceque system of Cuzco was something on an altogether different scale and level of

complexity than any one of the above production traditions. As its full constitution is recounted

in the one account of the transcription of the system that has come down to us, in the chronicle

of Bernabé Cobo (1990 [1563]; see Bauer 1997), the ceque system merged Cuzco society,

politics, ritual, mythohistory, irrigation agriculture, astronomy, the calendar, and more into a

single construct. Certainly it is the case that, coming historically when the Inkas and their ceque

system did – i.e., just before the arrival of literate Europeans into the central Andes – we have

documentation on the structure, operation and socio-cultural significance of this system that

far outstrips our knowledge of the total knowledge system, labor organization, and crafting

tradition associated with any one of the other spectacular forms of production mentioned in

the previous paragraph.

Also, the ceque system was (as I have suggested) the motor running at the heart of the

largest state and empire of the pre-Columbian New World – Tawantinsuyu – far outstripping in

size the many Maya city-states or the empire of the Aztecs. Therefore, I suggest that if we want

to focus on one central cultural production in our quest to identify how a central Andean

cosmological tradition was forged by one or another of the these societies, there is a strong

rationale for focusing our attention, as I have here, on the Inkas and their ceque system in

Cuzco.

The task of interpreting the vast arrays of material productions, including the ceque

system, of central Andean peoples and cultures over the long time span from the Preceramic

period to Tawantinsuyu is a formidable challenge, indeed. However, until we exhaust every

 247

effort to understand their accomplishments in their many complex and difficult-to-decipher

productions, we won’t fully appreciate the unique contributions central Andean peoples have

made to the record of human production and accomplishments.

I suggest that since Andean peoples never invented a system of writing, we should also

continue the long tradition of the study of Andean myths as a source of narrative accounts

about how these cosmologies were formed and what meanings were attributed to their

elements. Except for the rich tradition of studies of Andean myths in the colonial literature

(e.g., The Huarochirí Manuscript, Guaman Poma de Ayala, Garcilaso de la Vega, Pachacuti

Yamqui Salcamaygua, etc.), mythological analysis is a field of studies that is much better

developed to date in Amazonia than in the Andes (for an excellent example of the use of

Andean myths in the analysis of an archaeological site, see Onuki, 2017 on Kotosh Mito phase

sites in the central highlands).

Off and on in this study, I have sought to suggest that a worthy endeavor would be to

see the issues we have dealt with here as a challenge for South American studies, not just of

the central Andes. I have done this explicitly in Chapter V by discussing circular settlements and

radial centers in both the Andes and Amazonia. I noted there Zuidema’s intuition and insistence

from many years ago of perhaps a deep connection between these two regions of South

America in terms of radial centers, hierarchy, age-grades, and other matters.

I will end this study by quoting another giant of the field of South American studies,

although a person who did not himself indulge in much speculation about connections between

the Andes and Amazonia – Claude Lévi-Strauss:

 248

We can no longer doubt that the key to so many heretofore incomprehensible

motifs is directly accessible in myths and tales which are still current…Only

the myths can guide us into the labyrinth of monsters and gods when, in the

absence of writing, the plastic documentation cannot lead us any further. By

reconstructing the connections between distant areas, various historical

periods, and cultures at different stages of development, this kind of research

documents, illuminates – and, perhaps, one day will explain – the vast

syncretism that has persistently frustrated Americanists in their search for

the historical antecedents of specific phenomena. (Lévi-Strauss, 1967 [1953]:

267)
 249

Footnotes

1) (pg. 38) The Inkas, as well as the Waris before them, did invent cord-based systems of

recordkeeping, called khipu (“knot”) for administrative purposes (Brokaw, 2010;

Clindaniel, 2018; Splitstoser, 2014; Urton, 2003 and 2017).

2) (pg. 39) I am grateful to the National Science Foundation for support to investigate khipus in

museum collections in Europe and North and South America, as well as to build the

Khipu Database at Harvard, from 2002-2013. The grants included: BCS 0228038 (2002-

03); BCS 0408324 (2003-04); BCS 0609719 (2006-07); and BCS 111489 (2012-13).

3) (pg. 40) I want to acknowledge at the beginning of discussing my research on khipus the

great influence on me at that time of William (Bill) Conklin. Bill had had a long interest in

Andean textiles and khipus, and we spent one glorious afternoon together in the

American archaeology deposit at the American Museum of Natural History (where Bill’s

wife, Barbara, worked as a curator) examining their fine collection of khipus. It was Bill

who pointed out to me that day the rather remarkable fact that khipu knots were tied in

two different directions (so-called S- and Z-knots). This recognition of what I came to

focus on and to record as a larger set of binary differences in khipu structures led to my

first book on the khipus (Urton, 2003).

4) (pg. 59) As I explain later, the angle of the Milky Way with respect to the plane of rotation of

the Earth (between 26-300 east and west of north-south) is close to the angle of the

ecliptic north and south of the east-west line of the equator (23.50).

5) (pg. 93) The notion of the sun, in its annual movement, weaving the fabric of the world is

made explicitly in the cosmology of the Kogi, of northern Colombia (Reichel-Dolmatoff,

 250

1978).

6) (pg. 133) Eduardo Neves and the author led a field school composed of Harvard

undergraduates to Acre, Brazil, in 2018, to participate in the research described in

Saunaluoma et al, 2021.

7) (pg. 137) I think the Amazonian interest in the cardinal directions was related to the primacy

they accorded to the east/west equinoctial sunrise and sunset directions.

8) (pg. 173) From its source, southeast of Cuzco at the mountain of La Raya, to the town of

Pisac, this river is known as the Vilcanota River; from that point downriver, it is known

as the Urubamba River (see Fig. 47)

9) (pg. 194) Zuidema began this NSF funded fieldwork in Cuzco, in 1973. His field crew that year

consisted of his wife, Louisette, children Paquita, Annegien, and Lucho, as well as

Catherine Allen, Helaine Silverman, and the author (see Fig. 83).

Fig. 83 – Zuidema’s field crew in Cuzco, in 1973 (left-to-right): Catherine Allen, Louisette
Zuidema, Tom Zuidema, Annegien Zuidema, Helaine Silverman, Paquita Zuidema; not shown:
Lucho Zuidema, and the author)
 251

10) (pg. 221) I have suggested that the Cuzco ceque system was more likely recorded on two

khipus, one for the wak’as of Hanan Cuzco, another for those of Hurin Cuzco (Urton,

2017:143-53.

11) (pg. 226) Dijo el Ynga…puso en su casa una escuela, en la cual presidía un viejo anciano,

de los más discretos orejones, sobre cuatro maestros que había para diferentes cosas y

diferentes tiempos de los discípulos. El primer maestro enseñaba al principio la lengua

del Ynga...Acabado el tiempo, que salían en ella fáciles, y la hablaban y entendían,

entraban a la sujeción y doctrina de otro maestro, el cual les enseñaban a adorar los

ídolos y sus huacas...Al tercer año entraban a otro maestro, que les declaraba en sus

quipus los negocios pertenecientes al buen gobierno y autoridad suya, y a las leyes y la

obediencia que se había de tener al Ynga y a sus gobernadores...El cuarto y postrero

año, con otro maestro aprendían en los mismos cordeles y quipus muchas historias y

sucesos antiguos, y trances de guerras acontecidas en tiempos pasados y las astucias de

sus yngas y capitanes...y todas aquellas cosas que notables habían sucedido, para que

las tuviesen de memoria y las refiriesen en conversación; y entre ellos y los maestros se

las hacían contar y decir de memoria... (Murúa, 2004 [1590]:364)

 252

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