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"A veritable encyclopedia of the khipu, this volume pulls together new and groundbreaking work by the foremost experts, attacking the problem from a wide variety of perspectives and integrating analysis from historical, archaeological, and ethnographic perspectives."--Thomas A. Abercrombie, Associate Professor of Anthropology, New York UniversityThe Inka Empire stretched over much of the length and breadth of the South American Andes, encompassed elaborately planned cities linked by a complex network of roads and messengers, and created astonishing works of architecture and artistry and a compelling mythology--all without the aid of a graphic writing system. Instead, the Inkas' records consisted of devices made of knotted and dyed strings--called khipu--on which they recorded information pertaining to the organization and history of their empire. Despite more than a century of research on these remarkable devices, the khipu remain largely undeciphered. In this benchmark book, thirteen international scholars tackle the most vexed question in khipu studies: how did the Inkas record and transmit narrative records by means of knotted strings? The authors approach the problem from a variety of angles. Several essays mine Spanish colonial sources for details about the kinds of narrative encoded in the khipu. Others look at the uses to which khipu were put before and after the Conquest, as well as their current use in some contemporary Andean communities. Still others analyze the formal characteristics of khipu and seek to explain how they encode various kinds of numerical and narrative data. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Knot Words -- Incan Kuipus
Over the past several decades scholars have proven without a doubt that the Mayans had a written language -- and taken great strides in deciphering it.Now, what about the Incas and the other pre-Columbian civilizations of the Andes?

This book consists of 15 essays by a dozen scholars about the Incan quipus (or kuipus if you prefer) -- knotted cords in complex arrangements that, everybody agrees, were used to record numbers and statistics.Did they also convey thought?Or in other words did they comprise a "written" language, albeit a very strange one in that their communications resembled a bird's nest more than a book?Were the quipus a mnemonic device only?Or could a narrative be transmitted from person to person?

These scholarly essays examine different aspects of khipus including their history, construction, mathematical theories of their meanings, and factors which might lead to their decipherment.It seems doubtful that we will learn to "read" khipus unless we have the luck to find one in a context that will suggest its meaning.However, it seems also that they truly did constitute a system of communication akin to writing.

I thought this book was fascinating -- although the essays are written in dry careful scholarly prose that can be forbidding. The Incas are one of the most mysterious of the non-Western civilizations and the study of the khipus is a real-life detective tale.Not the least interesting aspect of this is to realize that the Andean civilizations, isolated from the rest of the world, came up with unique -- often odd to our perception -- inventions and technology that worked for them.The khipu instead of writing is one.

Smallchief ... Read more

Product Description
The Peruvian Indians of the coast, the Andean highlands and the montana have always excelled in textile design, from the early advanced cultures such as the Huari and Tiahuanaco to the Incas and beyond. Here the artist, a devotee of this art, presents the authentic designs that can be applied to contemporary weaving, applique, ceramics, metalwork, woodblocks, and many other crafts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very Useful
I bought this for my daughter who is in college studying textile design.She found the illustrations very useful for this course of study, and she was able to use samples of the designs in her artwork.

... Read more

Product Description
This beautifully written book weaves reflections on anthropological fieldwork together with evocative meditations on a spectacular landscape as it takes us to the remote indigenous villages on the shore of Lake Titicaca, high in the Peruvian Andes. Ben Orlove brings alive the fishermen, reed cutters, boat builders, and families of this isolated region, and describes the role that Lake Titicaca has played in their culture. He describes the landscapes and rhythms of life in the Andean highlands as he considers the intrusions of modern technology and economic demands in the region. Lines in the Water tells a local version of events that are taking place around the world, but with an unusual outcome: people here have found ways to maintain their cultural autonomy and to protect their fragile mountain environment.
The Peruvian highlanders have confronted the pressures of modern culture with remarkable vitality. They use improved boats and gear and sell fish to new markets but have fiercely opposed efforts to strip them of their indigenous traditions. They have retained their customary practice of limiting the amount of fishing and have continued to pass cultural knowledge from one generation to the next--practices that have prevented the ecological crises that have followed commercialization of small-scale fisheries around the world. This book--at once a memoir and an ethnography--is a personal and compelling account of a research experience as well as an elegantly written treatise on themes of global importance. Above all, Orlove reminds us that human relations with the environment, though constantly changing, can be sustainable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Feel-Good Ethnography
This ethnography is quite literary with lots of anecdotes and popular song narratives.However, it also deals quite seriously with contemporary environmental issues like invasive species, biological diversity and the rights of subsistence communities.I recommend taking it to the beach or assigning it in an undergraduate seminar.

Excellent
(Planeta.com Journal) -- Lines in the Water (University of California Press, 2002), a beautifully written ethnography of rural fishermen and their families. The book's subtitle "Nature and Culture at Lake Titicaca" specifies the center of action, but the scope is much broader and deeper. It's actually hard to find the words to say how delightful this book is. Author Ben Orlove is an environmental science professor at the University of California, Davis, and his book is based on three decades of trips to Peru and Bolivia. The book is a showcase of fresh writing and a major contribution to the literature about South America. Orlove provides a frank account of the role academics themselves play. He includes himself in this story and shares candid observations -- from his reactions to office politics to daydreaming about museums. This book is highly recommended. Eco travelers visiting Lake Titicaca would do well to read this book in advance.

A gem of a cross-disciplinary book
This is a gem, written with great respect for the indigenous people who live aound Lake Titicaca, well-annotated and with wonderful photographs by the author. Orlove has broad interests - anthropology, economics, natural history, environmental issues, to name a few, and a talent for accessing interesting memories. He conveys his astute observations in clear and vivid prose.The book is organized nicely - I especially liked the material in the final chapter, entitled "Paths", which offers an antidote to the sad fact that roads and highways are so often destructive to local people and to biodiversity. Paths, literal or metaphorical, also provide valuable linkages and essential connections among the various components of this remote but very interesting and community with ancient roots. Orlove provides the reader with a sense of having traveled those paths for a short while with him. ... Read more

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Product Description
A study of the first encounters between Spanish explorers and the indigenous tribes of the Americas, this work focuses on the life and times of Francisco Pizarro and his quest to locate the legendary wealth of a region the Spaniards called Peru. Chapters devoted to Inca history provide an overview of the vast empire that the conquistadors forged. ... Read more

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The idea of a family level society, discussed and disputed by anthropologists for nearly half a century, assumes moving, breathing form in Families of the Forest. According to Allen Johnson's deft ethnography, the Matsigenka people of southeastern Peru cannot be understood or appreciated except as a family level society; the family level of sociocultural integration is for them a lived reality. Under ordinary circumstances, the largest social units are individual households or small extended-family hamlets. In the absence of such "tribal" features as villages, territorial defense and warfare, local or regional leaders, and public ceremonials, these people put a premium on economic self-reliance, control of aggression within intimate family settings, and freedom to believe and act in their own perceived self-interest.

Johnson shows how the Matsigenka, whose home is the Amazon rainforest, are able to meet virtually all their material needs with the skills and labor available to the individual household. They try to raise their children to be independent and self-reliant, yet in control of their emotional, impulsive natures, so that they can get along in intimate, cooperative living groups. Their belief that self-centered impulsiveness is dangerous and self-control is fulfilling anchors their moral framework, which is expressed in abundant stories and myths. Although, as Johnson points out, such people are often described in negative terms as lacking in features of social and cultural complexity, he finds their small-community lifestyle efficient, rewarding, and very well adapted to their environment. ... Read more

Product Description
The pricipal story of the book is the Mystery of the Long Heads, the history around this ancient culture, how and why they begin the religious ritual of human skull stretching, technique's and tools used around 6,000 years ago, how we Found Out about them, how they appear and how they disappear, their descendants, achievement, the location, how to get to the Long Heads site Museum in Paracas-Pisco-Ica-Perú.
The history of the Nazca hieroglyphics were built around 2,500 years ago, can be better appreciated from an altitude of 1,500 feet, by flying over 400 square miles in a Cessna airplane, Guide how to get there from Lima-Perú and Paracas- Pisco-Ica-Perú.
Brief history of Perú, Callao main seaport and the Colonial Royal Philip Castle built in 1,747, Lima, maps and Recommendations how to get around Lima-Perú.
16 poems from author English and Spanish.
Book Presented and 2 languages English-Spanish. ... Read more

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This book investigates three Indian revolts in the Americas: the 1680 uprising of the Pueblo Indians against the Spanish; the Great Rebellion in Bolivia, 1780–82; and the Caste War of Yucatan that began in 1849 and was not finally crushed until 1903. Nicholas A. Robins examines their causes, course, nature, leadership, and goals. He finds common features: they were revitalization movements that were both millenarian and exterminatory in their means and objectives; they sought to restore native rule and traditions to their societies; and they were movements born of despair and oppression that were sustained by the belief that they would witness the dawning of a new age. His work underscores the link that may be found, but is not inherent, between genocide, millennialism, and revitalization movements in Latin America during the colonial and early national periods. ... Read more

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Winner of the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize and the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize. At the heart of this book is the controversy over whether Inca history can and should be read as history. Did the Incas narrate a true refiection of their past, and did the Spaniards capture these narratives in a way that can be meaningfully reconstructed? In Reading Inca History,Catherine Julien finds that the Incas did indeed create detectable life histories.

The two historical genres that contributed most to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish narratives about the Incas were an official account of Inca dynastic genealogy and a series of life histories of Inca rulers. Rather than take for granted that there was an Inca historical consciousness, Julien begins by establishing an Inca purpose for keeping this dynastic genealogy. She then compares Spanish narratives of the Inca past to identify the structure of underlying Inca genres and establish the dependency on oral sources. Once the genealogical genre can be identified, the life histories can also be detected.

By carefully studying the composition of Spanish narratives and their underlying sources, Julien provides an informed and convincing reading of these complex texts. By disentangling the sources of their meaning, she reaches across time, language, and cultural barriers to achieve a rewarding understanding of the dynamics of Inca and colonial political history. ... Read more

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In 1532, the fifty-four-year-old Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to the shores of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had defeated his brother Huascar. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with Atahualpa and a huge force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca. Despite being outnumbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards prevailed -- due largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and their tactic of surprise. They captured and imprisoned Atahualpa. Although the Inca emperor paid an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed him anyway. The following year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of Cuzco, completing their conquest of the largest native empire the New World has ever known. Peru was now a Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

But the Incas did not submit willingly. A young Inca emperor, the brother of Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards, inflicting heavy casualties and nearly wiping out the conquerors. Eventually, however, Pizarro and his men forced the emperor to abandon the Andes and flee to the Amazon. There, he established a hidden capital, called Vilcabamba. Although the Incas fought a deadly, thirty-six-year-long guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and vanquished the native resistance.

Kim MacQuarrie lived in Peru for five years and became fascinated by the Incas and the history of the Spanish conquest. Drawing on both native and Spanish chronicles, he vividly describes the dramatic story of the conquest, with all its savagery and suspense. MacQuarrie also relates the story of the modern search for Vilcabamba, of how Machu Picchu was discovered, and of how a trio of colorful American explorers only recently discovered the lost Inca capital of Vilcabamba, hidden for centuries in the Amazon.

This authoritative, exciting history is among the most powerful and important accounts of the culture of the South American Indians and the Spanish Conquest. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (84)

THE perfect book to take to Peru...
We recently took a trip to Machu Picchu and other Inca sites within Peru, and this is absolutely THE perfect book to take with you if you want to understand the broader picture of the Inca demise and the Spanish conquest.Literate, well-written, and very readable, this book is a treasure trove of information, and greatly enhanced our trip.

History that often goes overlooked
(+)'s
--Well detailed historical account of the Incan empire and it's downfall
--I shook my head in amazement at the accounts of the Spanish conquest of the native population and it's resistance.

(-)
--Not really a minus but a comment about the entertainment value of the book.Most of us read for the enjoyment but all 522 pages of this book presents such dispair and hopelessness that I put it at par with Schindler's List for the disturbing nature on what man can inflict on man. It is packed with accounts of inconceivable atrocities, torture, hypocrisy, unimaginable cruelty, insatiable greed, and the list goes on and on.I enjoyed it but had to read it interspersed with other books

must-read before you visit Peru!
one of the easiest to read non-fiction books I have ever read!very informative and eye-opening.

Exciting read, but not historically accurate
Kim MacQuarrie has created a great book depicting, well, the Last Days of the Incas for a popular audience.This book is perfect for anyone not too familiar with the history of the Conquest.The book is well-written, packed with action, and artistic license is conscientiously used where needed in terms of action elements.It deserves five stars in meeting the demands of its target audience, maybe some tourist who has visited Machu Picchu a couple of times.

For anyone who has studied the Inca, this book is far less useful.Maybe MacQuarrie believes Inca culture is too complex for laypeople to understand, and thus Americanizes many aspects of this ancient civilization.For example, the term "brother" is used to refer to Huascar's relationship with Atahualpa, Manco Inca, Tupac Huallpa, etc, over a hundred times in this book, yet, this usage is very misleading.Sure, Huascar and Atahualpa may have been half brothers biologically speaking, but this biological link did not have any importance for the Inca.I suggest that MacQuarrie delete any mention of Inca family relationships in a second edition, and instead spend more time describing the Andean concepts of ayllu and panaca to better describe the Inca civil war.

Another important concept of the Pre-Columbian Andes is duality.Instead of viewing the Inca through the eyes of the conquistadores, MacQuarrie should try to paint an alien world, with dual emperors serving different functions (i.e. Villac Umu).

On a lesser note, the Index definitely needs a work through, pages are mixed up and even people are confused, e.g. the Alvarados.

By the way, I do applaud MacQuarrie for painting Savoy for the fraud he is.

A well written narrative of a largely unknown story
As a child, I lived in what was once part of the Inca kingdom.In school, I learned about the Spanish conquest of the Incas and the death of Atahualpa.The story didn't end there.The Incas continued to fight the Spaniards long after Atahualpa's death.This is the story of that struggle, starting with Atahualpa's capture and murder, and ending with the eventual defeat of the Incas.

Until now, this story was contained primarily in hard to read texts hundreds of years old and difficult or impossible for most people to access.Finally, the story is told in an easy to read format.MacQuarrie has done his homework.He tells both sides of the story, that of the Spaniards and that of the Incas.

For anyone interested in the history of western South America, this is a 'must read' book. ... Read more

Product Description
In the same era as the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, a powerful anticolonial movement swept across the highland Andes in 1780-1781. Initially unified around Túpac Amaru, a descendant of Inka royalty from Cuzco, it reached its most radical and violent phase in the region of La Paz (present-day Bolivia) where Aymara-speaking Indians waged war against Europeans under the peasant commander Túpaj Katari. The great Andean insurrection has received scant attention by historians of the "Age of Revolution," but in this book Sinclair Thomson reveals the connections between ongoing local struggles over Indian community government and a larger anticolonial movement.

Living in Latin America, Robert M. Levine, Series Editor ... Read more

Product Description
Step by step, Sullivan pieces together the hidden esoteric tradition of the Andes to uncover the tragic secret of the Incas, a tribe who believed that, if events in the heavens could influence those on earth, perhaps the reverse could be true. Anyone who reads this book will never look at the ruins of the Incas, or at the night sky, the same way again. Illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

One of the worst books ever written
If you want to know something about the Incas, forget this book. He spends time on the Aztecs, the Greeks even the Romans, but other than spelling out Inca words with no translation for them, forget it.

There are extensive endnotes, some that last more than a page which are equally obscure.The author is very insistent about never getting to the point and avoiding logical conclusions.

If you have insomnia, you might want to invest in this waste of space.

A rambling, biased, tome
The author examines Inka and Mayan myths using a variety of tools, and many, many words.To the first myth he applies the theories in Hamlets Mill to explain why the Foxes tail is black and pinpoint AD 650 as the rise of warfare in the Andes.From here it's mostly downhill.

The author then drags us through his own internal mental processes of doubt and disbelief as he looks at other myths.Through this long process he forcefully and unnecessarily brings up many biases such as there is no proof that a matriarchal society ever existed anywhere in the world.Period.He returns to the subject of matriarchal disbelief many times calling it a big 'red flag'.He leads us through his admitted internal stubborness of this and many other issues.

Although I believe the author is correct in his assocation with the Fox's tail being black being a celestial event ala Hamlets Mills, he spends so many words looking at other myths from a plethora of angles that you are forced into a single conclusion.That no one outside of a culture has any clue at what a given myth really means.The entire book is like running naked through the forest yelling out conclusions about myths which rightly are interpreted only by their creators.

At one point in the discussion of 'finding father' he claims that the Andean man lacked a true heart with the ability to love while he was primarily a hunter within a matrilinear horticultural society.Andean man only gained his heart and full ability to love when the culture changed to fully agriculture and he had to stay at home with the wife and kids.Give me a break.To any Andean person alive this is rubbish.What kinds of conclusions and judgements can we make living outside the cultural box.It is this kind of subtle talk that is a jaguars hair short of prejudice and racism.

Ultimately, although if you like reading from the 'academic' view, this book does lead you through enough alleys to make you feel like the author knows what he is talking about, ultimately it fails from it's biases and from being rooted in a combination of sexism and western scientific dogma.

If the author wanted to really understand the Andean mind then he would have had to undergo a process of breaking open his head and surrendering to the mystery of myth reather than trying to break open the myths using the rational mind.Myth is mythic.A view which ultimately escapes the author.It might be worth it to take this book on if you have a university paper to write.It will certainly scintillate your professor being of the same vocabulary and possibly biases.But if you are looking to expanding your understanding of the Inka or Andean cultures from a spiritual or mythic perspective then look elsewhere.Get yourself to South America, Peru, spend time with the shamans.Then you can learn what myth is really about.And how it lives today.

Werner Herzog: Make this Film
This book is every bit as entertaining as the run-of-the-mill speculative/paranormal UFO-from-Atlantis books with which it is unfortunately cross-listed on Amazon,but the author's scholarly rigor makes it much more satisfying.Sullivan supports his fascinatingly unconventional conclusions with evidence, sound reasoning, and a bit of self-critical skepticism.

But the real charm of this book is the fact that he pursued such a crazy theory in the first place.Behind the scholarship is a "guy-with-a-crazy-dream" human-interest story (e.g. Fitzcarraldo, Field of Dreams).This would make perfect film material for Werner Herzog.To hear the author tell it, he spent several years in the academic wilderness (as well as the Andean wilderness), chasing after the (wholly-unsupported) hypothesis that Incan myth encodes both astronomy and Andean history.To his advisers, this must have sounded a lot like writing a grant to study the pyramids of Mars.For a lesser intellect, this would have been a career-killer and the reader gets the sense that Sullivan knew it.One of the best parts of the book recounts Sullivan's meeting with Owen Gingerich and "the Vatican Astronomer" at the Harvard planetarium.He's clearly terrified that these eminent astronomers will think he's a kook.But when they conclude: "he's done his homework," Sullivan breathes a sigh of relief.

A word of warning: get the hardback.I got the paperback edition and the binding was defective and the first 50 pages fell out the first time I read them.

Cosmic Relations Incas and Stars
The Secret of the Incas : Myth, Astronomy,
and the War Against Time
by WILLIAM SULLIVAN
Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (May 20, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN: 0517888513

COSMIC RELATIONS

'The Secret of the Incas: Myth, Astronomy and the War Against Time' is an incredible collection of research by William Sullivan on ancient myths and their relationship to animals, ancient cultures and astronomical bodies aligned with world events. This book is delightful in knowledge and majorly intense. The following paper was written as an introduction to his work. I am always pleased to bring only the higest quality
research for the reader's enjoyment and education.

Dr. Colette M. Dowell
Circular Times

SECRET OF THE INCAS

By William Sullivan

In 1969 a book was published which figured to revolutionize the study of human history. This was Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time, written by two historians of science, Giorgio de Santillana of MIT and Hertha von Dechend of Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. The startling hypothesis of this book was that myth, on one level, constitutes nothing less than a technical language created to encrypt and pass on very sophisticated astronomical observations related to the precession of the equinoxes.

The precession is a gyroscopic-like wobble of the earth's axis of rotation requiring 26,000 years to complete a single cycle. Two aspects of this work - which the authors themselves styled a "first reconnaissance" into the subject - were pure dynamite. First, if the ideas in the book were true, then those myths which are astronomically encrypted are self-dating, that is they carry a record of a moment in precessional time that is at least as accurate as a radio carbon date. This view renders obsolete the concept of "prehistory" which is defined as "before the written record."

Second the authors found that a very precise and idiosyncratically expressed religious cosmology, linking world ages to the gain or loss (due to precessional motion) of "access" to the Milky Way at solstices and equinoxes is found in cultures all over the world. The clear implication of these ideas was that an unexplored, and highly dramatic history of the human race awaits engagement by students of the human legacy.

I was so bowled over by these ideas when I first encountered them - in 1974 - that I eventually realized I had to know if they were true. The very first thing I learned was that there is no university in world where you can go to learn anything whatsoever about these ideas. The academy, for reasons of its own, has chosen to ignore the profound implications of this work for going on 25 years now.

My own book, The Secret of the Incas: Myth, Astronomy and the War Against Time (Crown 1996), is an account of my own twenty year journey of exploration into the astronomy of myth, and I am happy to report that this odyssey was not undertaken in vain.

The Gateway God of Tiahuanaco Courtesy: 'Secret of the Incas' copyright 1996 William Sullivan

I am now certain that Hamlet's Mill will, sooner or later, revolutionize our understanding of our past and even who we are as human beings. I have taken rather a long time in setting up a brief discussion of my book because I want to make clear that what I found out about the Incas came as a complete surprise. I didn't set out in search of esoteric prophecies or experiments in geomancy on the scale of empire. I had initially chosen the Incas to study because they had no writing and hence relied largely on oral tradition - myth - for the transmission of information across time.

Furthermore, it seemed to me that if the cosmology described in Hamlet's Mill really was operative in the southern Andes, then truly we must be looking at a world-wide phenomenon. From the beginning of my research, however, I was constantly made aware of the strangeness of the events surrounding the formation and destruction of the Inca Empire.

Few people realize that this empire was less than a century old when it was utterly destroyed by a handful of Spanish conquistadors. In 1532 a Spanish expeditionary force of 175 hardened adventurers, under the command of Francisco Pizarro, ascended the Andean massif in search of a fabled Empire of Gold. Unknown to them as they approached two great Inca armies were engaged in the climactic battle of a great civil war of succession. When, on November 15, the Spanish force reached the ridgeline overlooking the valley of Cajamarca the victorious Inca king Atahuallpa was completing the third day of a fast of thanksgiving for his victory. What the Spanish saw was an encamped army of 40,000 men. That night the Spanish made out their wills and said confession. Yet on the morrow, given the advantage of surprise and horses, they would engage this army, capture the Inca and kill or wound 10,000 men.

Only years later would I realize that the legends that the Inca Empire was born under the shadow of a prophecy were all true. About the year 1432 the father of the first Inca Emperor foretold that after five generations of Kings the Empire and its religion would be utterly destroyed. The fifth and last king to rule the Empire unmolested was Huayna Capac, father of Atahuallpa.

In my research I first found that Inca myths did indeed encrypt precessional information. The first stories which I came to understand concerned a "flood" which destroyed the entire "world" but which was survived by a peasant along with his family and flocks who ascended the "highest mountain in the world" to weather the storm. Applying the "tool kit" of Hamlet's Mill, I regarded mythical animals as representing the constellations named after them; topographic references as analogues for positions of the sun on the celestial sphere; and mythical "gods" as planets.

As a result I learned that these flood myths yielded a date of 650 A.D., which corresponds precisely to the latest archaeological findings in the Andes that a repressive, secular and militaristic empire, known as Wari, suddenly conquered the greater portion of the Andean Highlands beginning in the early 7th Century.

The astronomical, or precessional event which took place at this time was the failure (for the first time in 800 years) of the Milky Way to be visible at sunrise on June solstice. In cosmological terms, this meant that the gates of the land of the gods had slammed shut. Years later I would find the myth - the foundation document of the Inca Empire, really - that formed the theoretical basis for the Inca prophecy.

In 1432 the Inca priest astronomers could see that a predictable precessional event loomed in the future, only this time it was the gates to the land of the dead which were about to slam shut. It was this predictable event which gave rise to prophecy. Since the foundations of Andean religion rested upon ritual interchange with the ancestors at December solstice, the closing of the "gate," if taken literally, would indeed bode the end of everything.

Finally, I learned that the Inca Empire was conceived and formed for the sole purpose of stopping this event from happening. The Inca Empire was an experiment in sympathetic magic, designed to stop time in the sense of precessional motion. The primary means for achieving this end were the ritual uses of warfare and of human sacrifice. Since each tribe in the Empire had from the most ancient times considered itself descended from a particular star or constellation, the Incas offered a yearly sacrifice of a child from every tribe in order to send emissaries back to the stars with a single message: "May the earth not turn over, may the sun and moon stay young, may there be peace." a plea to the creator to keep open the bridgehead to tradition that spanned the Milky Way.

The creator's response was a terrible one, for he sent the Spanish, who arrived precisely on time. The Incas were never able to regain the edge which they gave up initially on that first day in Cajamarca, and so the prophecy came true. Now, this is a strange story, a story so powerful in fact that it threatens to swamp what I think is the real significance of the research I have done. The Incas were a test case.

By applying the tools of Hamlet's Mill to a single culture, and in depth, the history of a so-called "prehistoric" people has been rewritten. Along the way I found that the Incas shared with peoples all over the world access to a peculiar meta-language - the technical language of myth - which is so distinctive and so idiosyncratic that no mechanism other than seaborne contact appears adequate to explain its wide diffusion. The implications of this finding are staggering. It means that we are all heirs a world-wide civilization of great time-depth of which we have virtually no notion. The histories of the individual peoples who participated in this great tradition lie gathering dust on dark library shelves, classified as "myths."

Meanwhile the academy continues to turn its back on this, the heritage of the human race, a system of thought which gave rise simultaneously to the human scientific tradition and to human religion as well. Indeed all the world's great religions, including Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism, Shamanism and Native American Great Spirit religion, make frequent, respectful reference to this ancient system of thought. From Newgrange in Ireland (ca. 3200 B.C.) to Angkor Wat, from Tiahuanaco to Babylon, from Giza to Hawaii, we live in the ruins of a civilization whose very existence we only dimly suspect.

As the precessional clock ticks onward - a clock whose rhythms the ancients were convinced gave clues to the rhythms of human history - perhaps it is past time that we humans reclaim our history, which is our birthright, and with it perhaps reclaim some of the more sacred aspects of our human nature.

by William Sullivan

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Sullivan is a native New Englander. Educated at Harvard College, he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rajasthan India, and later studied the History of Religion under J.G Bennett at Sherborne House in Gloucestershire, England. In 1988, after several years of fieldwork in Peru and Bolivia, he received a doctorate in American Indian Studies from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He lives in central Massachusetts with his wife Penelope and their children Phoebe and Jonathan. There are bears in the backyard.

DR. Colette M. Dowell

Poor book if you are not an expert in mythology
If you are not educated in mythology and the like, skip this book. I thought it would describe the history of the Inca Empire and mention mythology while doing so, but this book is MAINLY about the mythology itself. Only for experts in the field if you ask me, not for the general public. Written in a boring style. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Truly a Treasure
Revised Review
The editorial reviewer and customer Dave Essery have accurately summarized what awaits one between the covers of this book.I would, however, add the following specifics about its stunning photography.Of its 202 colored photographs, 69 are one- to-two-page spreads; only 55 are smaller than a third of a page.Panoramic views, monumental sites and their architectural details comprise approximately 25% of the photos, which is to say that textiles, ceramics, and metalwork are not slighted.

As for the appeal of the text--Because my interest in pre-Columbian cultures and their artistry/craftsmanship has only recently been sparked, I wanted a book that gave me a basic understanding of them without overwhelming me with voluminous detail.And this is precisely what Jeffrey Quilter does, in well-written, non-academic prose.Yet the text may also appeal to those who are knowledgeable about those cultures. Said one such friend to whom I loaned my book, "I enjoyed reading it because it was like a refresher course that jogged my memory and brought to mind other things I'd read but had forgotten."

TREASURES OF THE ANDES, in other words, is a book that many will treasure.I have, however, detailed the contents of it in Comment #3 so that you will be better able to determine if it is a book you want to purchase.

Excellent - informative and lavishly illustrated
I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Firsly the illustrations are lavish, both in quantity and in clarity and colour, and alone are worth buying the book for. The ancient Andean world was a colourful place and this book does it full justice with wonderful photographs of textiles, ceramics and metal work. There are many photographs of artefacts and sites that I have not seen before which was makes the book refreshingly new. Even when familiar sites are photographed (Machu Picchu for example) the choice has been made to include shots from unusual but interesting angles.
I was also impressed by the written content. I know of Jeffrey Quilter through his work with Gary Urton editing Narrative Threads - a book on the Khipu (Quipu). His account in this volume is very readable and gets across some key points regarding Andean culture well. The difficult balance of providing some detail on each culture whilst avoiding generalisations is successfully achieved. The theme of building from the earliest cultures to the lastest shows both the variety and the continuity of Andean cultures and what a creative place the ancient Andes were.
In short, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in ancient Peru.

Regards, Dave Essery www.ancientdave.com ... Read more