05-14-2017 Reading Reflections The Great Inka Road

05-14-2017 Reading Reflections

The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire

I had thought to start with the other two books, but as a treat for Mothers’ Day early this morning I sat on my porch with a cup of fresh coffee and this wonderful book about the Qhapaq Ñan—the great Inka road.

My reflections are only on the first 10 pages so far, but I hope they give you an idea of how incredibly rich this book is! It is also accessible a multiple levels. I pulled in my son in 3rd grade to read along with me on certain parts.

The book introduces overarching concepts that will carry over to all of our other readings and experiences in the Andes. Two of them are the emphasis on networks and the belief system that undergirds all production and life in Inka culture and contemporary Andean cultures.

The amazing feats of engineering along with the social, political and economic organization of the Inka Empire and cultures before them raise interesting questions about how we think of ancient cultures and also about indigenous people, descendants of these great civilizations, today.

1. There is a Western tendency to think of historical development along a linear trajectory of progress whereby ancient cultures are perceived as less evolved and modern cultures as more advanced. In what ways does Inka engineering challenge this idea? How does this change the way we think about development, human history? What does it do to definitions of modern/contemporary and ancient/past? In what ways does the greatness of the Inka Empire call into question the general omission of this information in school curricula? (Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s short piece from Silencing the Past helps to contextualize and understand these historical omissions).

2. Even more problematically, within a single timeframe of colonization (and others), cultural categorizations have cast indigenous people as inferior to Europeans. Nonetheless, colonial chroniclers consistently comment on how impressed Europeans were with the magnificent roads, system of aqueducts, redistribution of goods to the most remote corners of the Empire, even things like regulation of market prices and coordination of trash pickup in an empire of 10 million people with cities larger than any European city at the time.

Today, depictions of indigenous people as “remnants” of an underdeveloped past persist in some circles. In what ways does this assertion of temporal distance enable the practice of “othering”? As this association unfolds it potentially leads to portrayals of indigenous people as “backward.” (From here, you can ascertain the slippery slope of prejudice and construction of stereotypes…) In what ways did this temporal and cultural distancing justify acts of conquest and colonialism? To what extent do these practices and ideas remain operational today? In what ways do they justify continuing practices of exploitation?

The authors suggest that there are lessons to be learned from these ancient civilizations. One caveat, however, might be to discern between learning about other cultures (including ancient cultures) with an eye toward application/applicability of this knowledge for our own cultural development and appreciating/understanding other cultures on their own terms…

This book also provides a nice (not overwhelming) introduction to Quechua language. How do we introduce students to foreign terms and familiarize them with foreign concepts? How might we guide them not to gloss over Quechua or Spanish terms because they look and sound different, but instead engage the language and appreciate that certain concepts like minka, ayni, ayllu are both difficult to translate and absolutely integral to an understanding of Andean cultures.

It also alerts us to Quechua orthography (thanks Diane for bringing this up). Many of you have seen Inka written as Inca, and even Quechua written as Kechwa. Quechua orthography is variable because Quechua was originally an oral language. As people started writing it down they did so based on European alphabetic writing that in many ways was deficient in capturing nuances of the language and required stretching or reinterpreting European writing to fit. We’ll talk more about “universal Quechua” and what might be at stake in giving up orthographic variability and diversity.

It is significant that the book introduces, via the photo in the overleaf, a depiction of a man and a woman at the very beginning of the volume. It is a suggestion of the importance of concepts of gendered duality, binary complementarity, reciprocity and balance in Andean belief systems. You will see reiteration after reiteration of these concepts throughout the readings and in the culture. It also introduces us to very different definitions of gender and gender roles in the Andes. We might consider how these conceptions of gender, gender relations and gender roles cause us to rethink our own ideas about gender.

Introduction
As I read through the introduction I thought about the relation between legend, memory and history. Perhaps in relation to my own book, the distinction between myth and history as well, with an emphasis on historiography and the very different ways in which the past can be narrated and represented. Further on in the chapter, the section on Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo (something we all learned in elementary school in the Andes) brought up some reflection about the importance of origin myths in any period and across cultures and about the power of collective narratives in relation to our emerging discussion on the public sphere.

Another concept that captured my attention was the discussion of “energy” and the introduction of the term “sacred” to describe the Inka road and the landscape. It behooves us to try to understand over the course of our travels why Nazaria and others say that walking on the Qhapaq Ñan makes them feel “strong in their hearts,” why women often say that washing clothes in the sacred springs “energizes” the clothes, why people avoid certain formations in the landscape or certain places due to their “negative or harmful energy.” (Rachel Corr, author of Ritual and Remembrance in the Andes (not on our reading list) writes more about sacred sites and sites of energy).

Aside from the magnificence of the landscape, what are other reasons indigenous Andean people refer to the landscape, and beyond that to some of human construction embedded in the landscape, as “sacred”?

The chapter describes the “fractured geography” of the Inka Empire, which posed an engineering challenge to connect all parts of the empire across varied terrain. John Murra (not in our reading list) wrote about the “vertical archipelago” model of Andean economics and organization. He presents production micro niches as a central feature of Andean cultures and an asset that allowed Andean societies to thrive based on a system of exchange. The various production zones underscore the broad-ranging agricultural expertise of the Inka and of contemporary Andean farmers who continue to operate on this system. It also points to the assertion that Andean people worked with nature, not against it, and that they did so in varying terrains and environments. In other words, it highlights the notion of working with nature as a principle that applies across circumstances. We’ll see this again in Manos sabias para criar la vida. Finally, an important observation is that Inka networks didn’t only run along the Andean corridor but also cut across it to the western coastal areas and the eastern tropical lowlands with implications for networks and systems of exchange.

How did the Inka achieve these amazing feats of engineering with no wheel, no iron, no writing system (supposedly), no stock animals? One of the technologies that most impressed and intrigued me upon my first visit to the Sacred Valley was water management and Inka methods for not only channeling water downhill but also pumping water uphill! Attempting to answer questions about Inka engineering compels us to really think outside the box and pushes us to consider different approaches to inquiry.

The Inka Empire was expansionist. In some cases incorporated the technologies and even belief systems of cultures they conquered and in other cases completely obliterated conquered peoples, their cultures and their languages. It gives us an interesting point of comparison vis-à-vis European conquest.

By way of the Inka road we are introduced to other cultures in the Andes, including peoples who forcefully resisted Inka expansion and endure today—like the Mapuche in Chile.

How did such a powerful empire come to be vanquished by a band of Spanish conquistadores? The story of Huayna Capac, the last Inka, and the turmoil the empire was thrown into with the arrival of the small pox epidemic provides part of the answer. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (not on our reading list) delves further into this question.

Finally, we’re hoping to show a film of the last Inka bridge builders during the pre-departure orientation. The Introduction of our book references the deeply complex weaving technology deployed by masters. It made me think of a video a colleague recently forwarded to me about Andean weaving technologies in medical advancements.