empire. The faint remains of other terraces marked every mountain-side. The entire landscape had been transformed, a stunning engineering feat for a people who knew nothing of the wheel and had no iron tools. As I sat in the Temple of the Moon, surrounded by some of the finest Inca masonry in existence, I recorded these notes in my journal and later incorporated them into the book One River :
For the people of the Andes, matter is fluid. Bones are not death but life crystallized, and thus potent sources of energy, like a stone charged by lightning or a plant brought into being by the sun. Water is vapor, a miasma of disease and mystery, but in its purest state it is ice, the shape of snowfields on the flanks of mountains, the glaciers that are the highest and most sacred destination of the pilgrims. When an Inca mason placed his hands on rock, he did not feel cold granite; he sensed life, the power and resonance of the Earth within the stone. Transforming it into a perfect ashlar or a block of polygonal masonry was service to the Inca, and thus a gesture to the gods, and for such a task, time had no meaning. This attitude, once harnessed by an imperial system capable of recruiting workers by the thousand, made almost anything possible.
If stones are dynamic, it is only because they are part of the land, of Pachamama. For the people of the Andes, the Earth is alive, and every wrinkle on the landscape, every hill and outcrop, every mountain and stream has a name and is imbued with ritual significance. The high peaks are addressed as Apu, meaning âlord.â Together, the mountains are known as the Tayakuna, the fathers, and some are so powerful that it can be dangerous even to look at them. Other sacred places, a cave or mountain pass, a waterfall where the rushing water speaks as an oracle, are honored as the Tirakuna. These are not spirits dwelling within landmarks. Rather, the reverence is for the actual place itself.
A mountain is an ancestor, a protective being, and all those living within the shadow of a high peak share in its benevolence or wrath. The rivers are the open veins of the Earth, the Milky Way their heavenly counterpart. Rainbows are double-headed serpents which emerge from hallowed springs, arch across the sky and bury themselves again in the earth. Shooting stars are bolts of silver. Behind them lie all the heavens, including the dark patches of cosmic dust, the negative constellations which to the highland Indians are as meaningful as the clusters of stars that form animals in the sky.
These notions of the sanctity of land were ancient in the Andes. The Spanish did everything in their power to crush the spirit of the people, destroying the temples, tearing asunder the sanctuaries, violating the offerings to the sun. But it was not a shrine that the Indians worshipped, it was the land itself: the rivers and waterfalls, the rocky outcrops and mountain peaks, the rainbows and stars. Every time a Catholic priest planted a cross on top of an ancient site, he merely confirmed in the eyes of the people the inherent sacredness of the place. In the wake of the Spanish Conquest, when the last of the temples lay in ruins, the Earth endured, the one religious icon that even the Spaniards could not destroy. Through the centuries, the character of the relationship between the people and their land has changed, but not its fundamental importance.
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ONE AFTERNOON NOT long ago, in the small Andean town of Chinchero just outside of Cusco, I sat on a rock throne carved from granite. At my back was the sacred mountain Antakillqa, lost in dark clouds yet illuminated in a mysterious way by a rainbow that arched across its flank. Below me, the terraces of Chinchero fell away to an emerald plain, the floor of an ancient seabed, beyond which rose the ridges of the distant Vilcabamba, the last redoubt of the Inca, a landscape of holy shrines and lost dreams where
Tupac Amarú waged war and the spirit of the Sun
For the people of the Andes, matter is fluid. Bones are not death but life crystallized, and thus potent sources of energy, like a stone charged by lightning or a plant brought into being by the sun. Water is vapor, a miasma of disease and mystery, but in its purest state it is ice, the shape of snowfields on the flanks of mountains, the glaciers that are the highest and most sacred destination of the pilgrims. When an Inca mason placed his hands on rock, he did not feel cold granite; he sensed life, the power and resonance of the Earth within the stone. Transforming it into a perfect ashlar or a block of polygonal masonry was service to the Inca, and thus a gesture to the gods, and for such a task, time had no meaning. This attitude, once harnessed by an imperial system capable of recruiting workers by the thousand, made almost anything possible.
If stones are dynamic, it is only because they are part of the land, of Pachamama. For the people of the Andes, the Earth is alive, and every wrinkle on the landscape, every hill and outcrop, every mountain and stream has a name and is imbued with ritual significance. The high peaks are addressed as Apu, meaning âlord.â Together, the mountains are known as the Tayakuna, the fathers, and some are so powerful that it can be dangerous even to look at them. Other sacred places, a cave or mountain pass, a waterfall where the rushing water speaks as an oracle, are honored as the Tirakuna. These are not spirits dwelling within landmarks. Rather, the reverence is for the actual place itself.
A mountain is an ancestor, a protective being, and all those living within the shadow of a high peak share in its benevolence or wrath. The rivers are the open veins of the Earth, the Milky Way their heavenly counterpart. Rainbows are double-headed serpents which emerge from hallowed springs, arch across the sky and bury themselves again in the earth. Shooting stars are bolts of silver. Behind them lie all the heavens, including the dark patches of cosmic dust, the negative constellations which to the highland Indians are as meaningful as the clusters of stars that form animals in the sky.
These notions of the sanctity of land were ancient in the Andes. The Spanish did everything in their power to crush the spirit of the people, destroying the temples, tearing asunder the sanctuaries, violating the offerings to the sun. But it was not a shrine that the Indians worshipped, it was the land itself: the rivers and waterfalls, the rocky outcrops and mountain peaks, the rainbows and stars. Every time a Catholic priest planted a cross on top of an ancient site, he merely confirmed in the eyes of the people the inherent sacredness of the place. In the wake of the Spanish Conquest, when the last of the temples lay in ruins, the Earth endured, the one religious icon that even the Spaniards could not destroy. Through the centuries, the character of the relationship between the people and their land has changed, but not its fundamental importance.
Â
ONE AFTERNOON NOT long ago, in the small Andean town of Chinchero just outside of Cusco, I sat on a rock throne carved from granite. At my back was the sacred mountain Antakillqa, lost in dark clouds yet illuminated in a mysterious way by a rainbow that arched across its flank. Below me, the terraces of Chinchero fell away to an emerald plain, the floor of an ancient seabed, beyond which rose the ridges of the distant Vilcabamba, the last redoubt of the Inca, a landscape of holy shrines and lost dreams where
Tupac Amarú waged war and the spirit of the Sun
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