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Disappeared Inca Empire Supremacy CUZCO part 3 September 19, 2008

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Are ceques therefore astronomical? That is part, but only part, of the answer. The chroniclers relate that the Incas had observatories with windows through which they watched points on the horizon, and they also mention sets of towers at various positions along the skyline as viewed from Cuzco, which were used to indicate timings for planting various crops either at Cuzco or at higher elevations up the valley sides at key ceremonial times of year. The Spanish totally destroyed these towers, but years of brilliant archive and field detective work by Zuidema and A. F. Aveni has resulted in the positions of the former towers being identified, and the arrangement of ceques ‘on the ground’ being clarified to a great extent. Some of the towers were huacas on ceques, but the sixteenth-century reports and the modern research actually make it clear that an astronomical sightline did not necessarily coincide with a ceque. Guaman Poma, himself part Quechua, described a tall ‘pillar of well-worked stone’ called the Ushnu standing not in the Coricancha, but in the great plaza 1/4 mile (400m) away (now Plaza de Armas), as the point from where some observations using the towers as solar foresights were made. How a tower group could be on a ceque and simultaneously on a differently-oriented astronomical sightline is shown on this page in an actual example given by Aveni. He and Zuidema traced back one line, carefully calculated, and found the viewing position to be in the Plaza de Armas. ‘This location turned out to correspond to the exact midpoint of the plaza as it was delineated in Inca times,’ Aveni recounted. ‘Furthermore, the plaza center was marked shortly after the Spanish Conquest by a “picote” or pillar surmounted by a Christian cross that was said to have been put in place by Pizarro precisely on the site of the Ushnu.” And their research on other lines threw up more confusions: ‘When we followed the astronomical directions back into Cuzco . . . we were surprised that only one of them led to the Temple of the Sun, the other terminating at a mountaintop station 2km to the north of the plaza. We are forced to conclude that the horizon-based astronomical system of Cuzco consists of at least three different observing stations overlooking three sets of pillars on the western horizon, hardly the simple scheme the chroniclers had suggested.’

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It is now estimated that perhaps about a quarter of the 41 ceques had astronomical associations, but we know from the early Spanish records that they had other functions, one of which was certainly ritual. Children were brought from various parts of the empire and stayed in the service of the sun god at Cuzco. On certain occasions — the ‘crowning’ of a new Inca or at times of exceptional concern — children would be sacrificed at selected huacas. This could be in Cuzco, but often the sacrificial children would be sent back under escort to their respective parts of the empire to be put to death. The ceques and not the normal roads were used for this function. So the ceque system clearly served multiple and complex purposes, and there is no easy definition of them. As Hadingham puts it: ‘An individual ceque line was never dedicated to any single function, such as fertility rites, ancestor worship or sky- watching. . . .” Zuidema’s work has shown that some ceques at least were associated with water in various ways, and indirectly with the ancestors as water comes from underground where the ancestors are.

There has been some disagreement as to whether or not the ceques were simple conceptual lines on which the huacas were laid out like spiritual bustops or physical features. The old chroniclers are quiet about the actual nature of the ceques, yet the impression is that they could have been old straight tracks. Certainly, they fulfill entirely Alfred Watkins’ concept of a ‘ley’, and the markers on them match exactly those type of features the old Englishman had reckoned were on his lines. The matter has now fortunately been settled by brilliant work on the part of the veteran Andean lines researcher, film-maker and author Tony Morrison. Using special infra-red photography techniques, he has been able to photograph some ceques even though invisible to the naked eye. On his false-colour pictures the ceques show up as dark, straight lines marching up the sides of the mountains around Cuzco. As of this writing, these pictures are unpublished.

The chronicler Polo de Ondergardo claimed in 1570 that the ceque system was widely used throughout the Inca empire, and researchers have found other radiating patterns of roads. One has been found at Centinela on the central Peruvian coast, for instance, which John Hyslop has studied closely. He found signs that suggest to him that the complex may date back to pre- Inca times. Such radiating patterns are remarkably like the ’star-centres’ of lines on the pampa around Nazca. (There, some lines run in parallel, and this phenomenon has also been noted in parts of the Inca road system, a feature difficult to account for in strictly utilitarian terms.) Hadingham concludes that ‘the evidence seems to show that the Incas were not the first to develop the concept of radial pathways . . . the Inca rulers probably drew upon existing practices involving straight-line pathways and elaborated on them until the intricately organized network of Cuzco’s huacas and ceques took shape.’ There were roads and there were ceques: lines of communication and lines of spirit.

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