Catherine Julien. 2000. Reading Inca History. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City. 302 pp; end notes, a bibliography and an index.
During the 16th and 17th centuries AD, Spanish conquistadors and their associated spiritual leaders conspired to stamp out the heresy of the Inca religion of Peru and Ecuador. In so doing, many of them recorded detailed genealogical and mythical data from the Inca people themselves, in an attempt to teach themselves how to better convert the pagans, as they saw them. All of these texts are biased, in one way or another, by cultural blinders or personal intent.
This very interesting text by Catherine Julien, a member of the history faculty at Western Michigan University, takes an unusual run at addressing the issue of the historical Inca, examining the reports from 16th and 17th Spanish narratives with an eye toward finding the hidden similarities in the texts, to ascertain their reliability and squeeze out what may just be a representation of the Inca way of life. Like a literary detective, Julien seeks similarities of form and content, to provide the reader with a coherent if not clear image of what Inca life must have been like. She also addresses what must have been the role of the quipu, the knotted string writing system of the Inca, in recording events and places for the Inca people.
This very interesting text by Catherine Julien, a member of the history faculty at Western Michigan University, takes an unusual run at addressing the issue of the historical Inca, examining the reports from 16th and 17th Spanish narratives with an eye toward finding the hidden similarities in the texts, to ascertain their reliability and squeeze out what may just be a representation of the Inca way of life. Like a literary detective, Julien seeks similarities of form and content, to provide the reader with a coherent if not clear image of what Inca life must have been like. She also addresses what must have been the role of the quipu, the knotted string writing system of the Inca, in recording events and places for the Inca people.
Julien's ascribed purpose for the book is to identify Inca sources that transmit a memory of the past; she arrives at these sources by using the flawed lens of the Spanish chroniclers; a dim and fractured lens, but a lens none the less.
This book is probably primarily for academic readers of Inca history and prehistory; but the stories received are compelling for anyone interested in the Incan empire and how it ruled and maintained control by ritual and ceremony.
This book is probably primarily for academic readers of Inca history and prehistory; but the stories received are compelling for anyone interested in the Incan empire and how it ruled and maintained control by ritual and ceremony.
