The Realm of the Tahuantinsuyu:
Land of the Four Quarters
The Inca empire probably surpassed Ming China and the Ottoman Empire as the largest nation on earth. Stretching down the Andean backbone of south American for more than 5,500 km, it was the larbest native state to arise in the western hemisphere, and the largest ever to develop south of the equator. Marvin Harris labels it the land of the Pharoahs of the Andes. The following is designed to guide you through some basic information on the Inca Empire. As you explore this Inca world, try to compare it with American civilization as it exists today. What is different and what is similar about the Inca state and how they politically economically structured their society? How do you feel about these differences and similarities? Are there some advantages in how Incan or American cultures operated or operate?
Time and space
Long ago people observed that changes in terrestrial conditions correlated with changes in celestial conditions and the movement of heavenly bodies. Western calendars have proceeded from the movement of close heavenly bodies, the sun in particular. Andean societies proceeded from a different starting point - the largest of heavenly bodies - the Milky Way. This celestial body is called Mayu, or 'celestial river', by Quechua speakers and its use in organizing time and space by a traditional community 25 km from Cuzco has been investigated by the ethnographer Gary Urton of Colgate University. To observe the Milky Way is to observe the course of galactic rotation. Urton notes that this provides a very encompassing way to organize change in celestial and terrestrial conditions. The plane of galactic rotation is noticeably inclined from the plane of the earth's rotation by 26 to 30 degrees. Observed from the southern hemisphere the vast star - stream not only divides the heavens, but also and more importantly pursues a wobbly course slanting left to right half the year, and right to left the other half. During the 24 hours that it crosses zenith, Mayu forms two intersecting, intercardinal axes (NE - SW and SE - NW). These great luminous axial lines create a grid for the entire celestial sphere, dividing it into four quarters, called sayu. All other astronomical phenomena can then be plotted and characterized by the quarters in which they occur or travel across.
This galactic systematization allows tracking not only of heavenly luminaries but also of great stellar voids. These voids, called 'dark clouds', are still thought of as animal constellations. They include an adult and a baby llama, a fox, a partridge, a toad, and a serpent. The movement of the dark cloud constellations across the sky is used to predict zoological cycles on earth and to time fauna related activity. The solstices of Mayu coincide with wet and dry seasons, and the celestial river is used to predict water cycles. To predict botanical cycles and schedule flora - related activity, celestial luminaries are employed. Solar movement is central to planning the agricultural cycle, but lunar phases dictate planting, and the Pleiades, other constellations and planets time crop development needs.
Systematizing astronomical observation on the basis of galactic rotation opens the orderly movements of multitudes of heavenly phenomena to potential correlations with multitudes of natural cycles. Keeping track of relevant corollary cycles is not difficult given the saw - tooth skyline of the Cordillera. All that is required are two fixed points. One is where the observer stands (today Urton has found that this point is some agreed - upon station in a community plaza); and the other is a fixed point on the horizon. Many mountain peaks are regularly employed as sighting references for the appearance and disappearance, zenith and antizenith, or equinoxes of relevant heavenly bodies.
Long ago it was realized that keeping track of corollary data was aided by spatial associations, such that a celestial cycle in one area of the night - time skyline corresponded with a terrestrial cycle in the same region of the daytime horizon. In so far as the heavenly landscape was divided into four quadrants' a parallel division of the terrestrial landscape into four aligned quadrants provided an efficient means of systematizing predictive knowledge. Today the settlement and land holdings of certain traditional Quechua ayllu are not simply divided into hanan and hurin moieties. Rather, from some point such as the center of the village plaza, there is a quadrapartite division of the community and of its territory that corresponds to and physically aligns with the four great suyu of Mayu. The very name Tahuantinsuyu implies that the Inca played out these principles on an imperial scale.
Responsibility for scheduling economic tasks probably led local karakas to develop calendars appropriate to local conditions which varied between one ayllu and another. Because karakas held this fundamental knowledge in their heads, the Inca and earlier Andean polities found it incumbent to rule through local lords. Larger parcialidades, senorios, kingdoms, and empires must have had more comprehensive systems for predicting natural cycles in different settings. In addition, although the quarters of the Milky Way structured the Inca cosmos, solar cycles also figured prominently in the calendrics of Cuzco where Inti, the sun, was venerated.
The Inca Heatland - a view of the world