Back in Cusco
“After our early mornings and exertions we had a relaxing morning in the hotel. Some shopping was done by the very keen, others read or watched movies. In this very tourist oriented town touts stand outside almost every restaurant inviting tourists to experience 'authentic dishes’; llama and guinea pig at inflated prices.
Actually the food here can be very good and we found several pubs (Irish and English) as well as a couple of nice restaurants, typically upstairs or with inconspicuous entrances, where excellent meals: local trout, llama, pork, beef and so on, as well as various varieties of potato and fresh salads - always with tomato and avocado; are to be had. Coffee varies from excellent to 'Americano' filter coffee that is not made with hot enough water due to the low boiling point at this altitude; around 80 degrees C. Tea is equally insipid for the same reason. Chilean and Argentine wines are excellent value; and the local cocktail 'pisco sour' is often 2 for 1 during the evening 'happy hour'. Pisco is a local distilled alcohol; originally produced by the monks from rejected wine. It's mixed with lemon and/or lime and egg whites, to make the cocktail. We can recommend it.”
The afternoon was spent in various museums and in the original Inca central palace complex, now an archaeological site within a convent that the Spanish, as usual, built on top of it. It still functions as a convent (confusingly for monks not nuns) and the two religions, and two building styles, are seen cheek by jowl. In the last major earthquake in 1950 part of the convent was destroyed revealing the earthquake resistant Inca structures that had been incorporated, or concealed by being plastered over, within and below. The local Inca revivalists, like our guide, saw this as evidence of, and a metaphor for, the corrupt nature of the Spanish; but not perhaps of the religion?
All the guides we have encountered have been somewhat cynical about religion. One asked me if I believed in God; maybe a foolish thing to ask me. I gave my standard answer that this is a definitional issue: if by God you mean the observed structure and behaviour of the universe then I imagine everyone does. But if you mean a supernatural being that created the Universe; in whose image we are made; who sent his Son to suffer in proxy for our sins; so that we might enjoy a imaginary and implausible everlasting life; or any one of the hypothetical deities that speaks particularly to humanity (above other animals) through prophets; or angels; or signs; or who will respond to prayer; or favours the faithful; I don’t.
While such deities may once have been a plausible explanation for the twists of fate; the mystery of life; good fortune or more often bad: earthquakes; tsunami; plagues; and other acts of mass annihilation; in the light of contemporary knowledge it seems more likely that these are the consequence of the ebb and flow of natural forces and their complex interactions. We now know that individual humans are a recently evolved colony of cells, in common with all the organisms on earth that we call animals, and it seems very likely that we are an accidental evolutionary oddity of no consequence to the universe. The Earth on which we have so briefly existed is itself a short lived infinitesimal speck circling an insignificant star among thousands of billions of others. The current universe is thought to be young, yet already around 13.7 billion years old.
Human civilisation, together with its complex religions and gods, has existed for less than a millionth of this time. But humans are the victims and beneficiaries of recently emergent intelligence; suddenly capable of formulating questions about our existence. The briefest acquaintance with early human beliefs and religions makes it transparently obvious that they were conceived or concocted by seekers after an explanation who had inadequate access to verifiable information; these hypotheses were then elaborated by self-serving priests and politicians; and very often contributed to by the deluded or mentally ill, whose ravings or visions were thought to be a connection with the unseen or unknown.
While I find religion extremely interesting from a historical and anthropological perspective and admire the human effort and creativity evident in the many works that have been inspired by it, I find no personal value in a religion that is clearly descended from, and inherits ill-informed ancient superstitions and beliefs. He then ‘sotto voce’ declared that he didn’t either. Clearly he felt that this was confidential between us. If you come to doubt one religion all others are called into question.
In the there is a lot of effort put into showing that the Inca and Christian religions are in some way equivalent, including large colourful tables in Spanish and a complex diagrammatic representation seen in several places. This seems to play down the virgin sacrifices, ritual murder and slavery. But then under the Spanish maybe these differences were hard to discern.
We have seen quite a bit of nostalgia for the lost Inca culture that blends with a latter-day hippie/green sentiment that the Inca were closer to the earth. This is in sympathy with the widespread use of coca and other ‘natural’ drugs. 'Noble savage' sentiment runs strong and the primitive barbaric nature of the Inca civilisation, all too evident in the sheer scale and complexity of slave-class-built Inca structures and their warlike nature and barbaric practices, including ritual decapitation, is overlooked.
Many of the Inca structures are religious. Their finest stonework is often used here. The best masons were not actually Inca but indentured labour from subjected tribes mainly from around Lake Titicaca. The Inca were the managers and overlords of this process; like the British in India.
This masonry work, as I have already remarked, is amazing and is seen in some two dozen distinct styles. Stones are often shaped to fit together in complex patterns of apparently random polygons within hundredths of a millimetre, no mortar being used. Often the surface was glass smooth as can still be felt today in places protected from the weather. These walls were then often gilded using gold leaf or even gold plate (soon knocked-off by the Spaniards).
Elsewhere walls were rendered, employing animal gelatine, cactus juice and hair as binding agents, as in one bath we visited, where virgins were taken to be washed before sacrifice at the spring festival. It is said they went willingly, like cheerleaders given the ‘privilege’ of consecrating the tournaments of their male counterparts, as it was a great honour and they would soon be reincarnated. I didn't notice any enthusiasm to emulate this among the tourists; but then I suppose few met the first qualification.
Temples often incorporate special terraced gardens where crops were grown as offering to the gods. Niches into the rock housed the mummified bodies of the ancestors, in foetal position. The skulls of lesser mortals were used as decoration. These were moved about according to the season, offered food and so on. We saw several in museums, sometimes moved about in baskets or large jars.
Important festivals were marked by the sun's position casting shadows in temple structures. The time of day was marked in the usual way, by very primitives 'sundials'. In general while different and possibly more exotic in interpretation, their astronomical knowledge compares less than favourably with Stone Age and Bronze Age Egyptian and European knowledge. Even the great pyramid, built in the Stone Age, has a well known sun shaft built into the structure and by the early Bronze Age Egyptians were well aware of the planets and their cycles.
By the late Bronze Age the Egyptians were toying with monotheism and writing the first of the psalms that are still incorporated within the Jewish/Christian/Islamic tradition.
I speculate that this relative ignorance may be due to being in the tropics where the seasons are really just wet and dry as opposed to the much more obvious seasonal variations in Europe and, possibly, the lack of a stationary southern pole star. In the northern hemisphere the stationary pole star, about which the heavens appear to revolve, is obvious to even the most trivial observation of the heavens. It's the one star that does not move for a stationary observer, relative to trees mountains etc, in the course of the night. It is a small step to noticing that different constellations rotate and disappear during daytime on an annual cycle that corresponds to the seasons. Predicting the seasons is critical to an agricultural economy. Thus the appearance of a heavenly and earthly nexus; and the beginning of more elaborate religious hypotheses: might not the position of the sun, constellations and planets mean something on earth? Similarly these season and cycle dependent societies tend to believe in reincarnation and the ‘great mandala’ (the wheel of life).
The Incas incorporated the Southern Cross into their astronomy as it, obviously, rotates annually but the constellations on the ecliptic are of less importance with just two seasons because the position of the rising and setting sun on the horizon or its position in respect of a mountain is an adequate indicator of the seasons. So the relative positions of the constellations synchronising with earthly events plays a lesser role than it does say in European or Chinese astrology. I have seen no evidence that they discovered the 'wandering stars' - the planets - known to Europeans, Indians and Chinese many hundreds of years BCE.
The following photograph shows an Inca sun dial that also shows the time of year. At the bottom of the structure are a series of notches in the stone into which the shadows fall at different times.
As in all stone and bronze age agrarian cultures, astronomical observations were intertwined with the religion; as the heavens seemed to be determining events on earth: the seasons; water availability and so on. Here earthquakes are relatively frequent and there was a thunder god and god of the rainbow that needed appeasement. This is very similar to the Abrahamic high, or mountain god, which evolved into Yahweh in the Jewish tradition.
As in all agrarian cultures it is important not to consume the entire crop herd or flock; some must be withheld as seed or breeding animals. Again it is a short step to thinking that another portion needs to be set aside for sacrifice; to ensure a good season. If the gods are not satisfied with your initial sacrifice and it still doesn't rain, or the locusts won't leave etc, you need to step up the sacrifices; from the food; to the live animals; to the virgins; to the first born sons. And if this works you have discovered the secret and you need to keep it up in future.