Many Inca myths dealt with the origin of the Inca people. These myths helped support the idea that the gods intended the Incas to be rulers. Other myths dealt with the creation of the world and the arrival of a great flood.
Creation According to one myth, Viracocha’s first creation was a dark world inhabited by giants that he had fashioned from stone. These creatures proved disobedient, however, and Viracocha destroyed them. He may have turned them back to stone, or he may have swept them away in a great flood. Once they were gone, Viracocha made a second race, this time forming people from clay. He equipped them with the clothes, languages, songs, skills, and crops ofdifferent nations. Before the people spread out and populated the world, Viracocha ordered them to sink into the earth and to reappear on the surface again from lakes, caves, and hilltops. They did so, and each group of people built a shrine at the spot where they emerged.
Inca Civilization According to a legend recorded by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, long ago people were ignorant and brutal, living like wild animals, without clothes or houses. The god Inti, known as Our Father the Sun, felt sorry for them and sent one of his sons and one of his daughters to earth to teach them how to live properly. The son was Manco Capac (pronounced MAHN-koh kah-PAHK), whom Inti made the ruler of all the races of people around Lake Titicaca (pronounced tee-tee-KAH-kah) in Bolivia. “I want you to rule these peoples as a father rules his children,” Inti told Manco Capac.
The god gave his son and daughter instructions about how to find the best place for their court. Starting at Lake Titicaca, they were to visit the villages and look for a place where they could drive a gold stake into the ground with one blow. The site became the location of Cuzco, the capital of the Inca empire.
On reaching the earth, Manco Capac and his sister-wife, Mama Ocllo (pronounced MAH-muh oh-KEE-oh), taught the people the arts of farming and weaving. Manco Capac also showed his people how to make and use weapons so that they could enlarge their kingdom. In this way, the sun god himself set the Inca empire on its road to glory. Later generations honored Manco Capac as the legendary first Inca.
The myth establishes some of the rights and customs of the Inca royal class, such as the practice ofbrothers marrying sisters. It also paints a picture of the ancestral Incas as superior to other people and firmly identifies them as descendants of the sun god.
Great Flood Like many peoples, the Incas had a story about a great flood that wiped out a race of wicked and unruly people. The flood myth says
That during ancient times people were cruel and greedy and failed to pay proper attention to the gods. Only in the highlands of the Andes mountains were the people not given over to evil. One day, two worthy shepherd brothers there noticed that their llamas were sad and acting strange. The llamas told the brothers that a great flood was coming. The brothers took their families and herds to high caves, and then rain fell for months, drowning the world below. Finally, the sun god Inti appeared again, and the warmth of his smile dried the waters. The families descended to repopulate the world. Legend says that although people now live everywhere on earth, llamas remember the flood and live only in the highlands.
World History
