Why the Incas offered up child sacrifices, by Kim MacQuarrie, The Observer, Sunday 4 August 2013:
It starts talking about the Inca Empire, an ethnic group that is estimated to have reached close to 100.000 individuals, becoming the largest native empire in America. The article also notes that it is an accomplishment, because they lived in a pretty harsh environment with cold temperatures and bad weather owing to the heights of Andes, a very large chain of mountains that for example reach even 8.000 ft. of altitude in Machu Pichu.
It's also said in the article that the Incas built an empire, and makes a parallel between them and the Romans, because they imposed their language to the other etnies that were part of them, also they borrowed a lot of things from previous cultures.
Because of have been a powerful and big empire, it makes sense questioning about why they performed sacrifices. According to the author this is explained by the reciprocity principle in which they believed, they had a social system that replied according the situations: if a part of the empire was lacking food and supplies, the other parts of them sent their excedents in order to help them. This was an important principle in their beliefs too, the relations that they established with their gods was based in this, and in order to reach that reciprocity they performed the sacrificial ceremonies, hoping that the gods were more kind and give them better weather and in general better climatic conditions, including the earthquakes that are so common in these lands.
6 comments:
it´s amazing and so interesting how the culture of america´s native peoples were developed
i had the opportunity to see mummyes and is impressive how its preserve on very good conditions, it might be for the extreme wheter of the mountain.
It is always very entertaining and helpful to know about other cultures.
The incas are amazing, their culture is so interesting!
Is quite interesting how some cultures find a way to legitimize something that for other cultures is just something horrid
Interesting new, is a topic I would like to research sometime.
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