Anticipating Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the state of nature in the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” by Madame de Graffigny (1747)

The article deals with the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” (Lettres d'une Péruvienne, 1747) by Madame de Graffigny, which anticipates many ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, including the notion of state of nature. The main character, a young Peruvian woman, who was taken away to France, embodies the concept of the ‟noble savage”. Unlike civilised Europeans she has high moral qualities, critically evaluates the institutions and customs of her time, and she aspires to the state of nature, though knowledge about this world did not make her happy. Madame de Graffigny uses the Peruvian theme according to the general interest in the age of Enlightenment in the Inca Empire, which was considered as idyllic society, organised under the laws of nature. She tries, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to display merits of savages and demerits of civilised Europeans. The intellectual influence of Madame de Graffigny and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on each other is confirmed by their personal contacts. As a result, we claim that the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” was influenced by advanced philosophical ideas of the mid-18thcentury – this text stands at the origins of the concept of the ‟state of nature”, which eventually became one of the main terms of Rousseauism.

Steven R. Gullberg, Astronomy of the Inca Empire: Use and Significance of the Sun and the Night Sky

Steven R. Gullberg, Astronomy of the Inca Empire: Use and Significance of the Sun and the Night Sky Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2020. Hardback, 370 pp., 42 b/w illus., 275 colour illus. ISBN 978-3-030-48365. €135.19.

The Coca Leaf in Bolivian History

Coca is deeply interwoven into the political, economic, and social history of Bolivia from the Inca Empire to the 21st-century rise of President Evo Morales Ayma. As such, generations of Bolivians, from powerful hacendados to peasant farmers, have resisted efforts to destroy the coca leaf. Coca is a mild herbal stimulant cultivated and consumed by indigenous Andeans for centuries, and the primary material for making the potent drug cocaine. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Spanish colonizers promoted coca production on large haciendas to supply mining towns, giving rise to a powerful class of coca hacendados that formed part of Bolivia’s ruling oligarchy after independence. In the early 20th century, the coca hacendados shielded coca from international drug control. Following the 1952 Revolution, agrarian unions replaced hacendados as guardians of the coca leaf. The unions formed a powerful social movement led by Evo Morales Ayma, an indigenous leader and coca farmer, against US-led efforts to forcibly eradicate coca. During the 1990s, Morales and his allies created a political party called the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). In late 2005, Morales was elected president of Bolivia and his new government deployed state power to protect the coca leaf.

A bit closer to the past: the three-dimensionalization of an Inca ceremony in the north Calchaquí Valley (Salta, Argentina)

<p>Like other expansive polities, the expansion of the Inca empire across the highlands and lowlands of South America is not only a history of trade and warfare, but also of mesmerizing public performances that yielded new and memorable experiences. During highly ritualized public celebratory events, the local polities gained first-hand access to the imperial liturgy, which was vital to promote and legitimate the Inca cosmology across the newly acquired lands. Especially in the last 20 years, new technologies, an ever-growing corpus of archaeological data, as well as increasing hardware capacity and software development, make it possible to emulate the scenes that people got to witness during the Inca public events, at a home computer scale and without complex and expensive equipment. Furthermore, it prompts us to test and apply new tools and academic dissemination techniques, perhaps more suitable to current technologies and means of knowledge storage and circulation. This article presents the process of building a three-dimensional (3D) model that, on the one hand, combines historical, ethnographic, and archaeological data with Geographic Information System (GIS) datasets; on the other hand, it uses detailed architectural analysis and astronomical measurements. The objective is to yield renders that accurately display the atmospheric and lighting conditions prevailing when the site was inhabited. We will offer a detailed description of all methods, techniques, equipment, and software used to create the model and the parameters for rendering the images. The authors intend to exemplify how 3D modelling goes well beyond the 3D model as a product in itself; it becomes a fundamental tool that encouraged us to test new variables and discuss new interpretations about this settlement. Results indicate that its builders designed these settlement's Inca compounds to show off the imperial capabilities and constructive proficiency, to convey exceptional, memorable experiences to its residents and visitors, and to stage explicit links between the imperial representatives and some fundamental procreative components of the Andean cosmos. In doing so, Guitián's plaza served to stage and communicate the privileged role the imperial representatives claimed to have in a broader cosmological scheme.</p><p>Highlights:</p><ul><li><p>Inca public performances were finely choreographed so that objects, places, people, landscape, and skyscape features interacted according to the main principles of imperial cosmology.</p></li><li><p>Current mid-range hardware and specialized yet reasonably user-friendly software are suitable to create accurate three-dimensional (3D) models combining historical, archaeological, and astronomical data.</p></li><li><p>Creating such a detailed 3D model contributes to cultural heritage and academic dissemination and prompted us to revise and broaden our interpretations.</p></li></ul>

Inca human sacrifices from the Ampato and Pichu Pichu volcanoes, Peru: new results from a bio-anthropological analysis

One of the most important rituals in the Inca Empire was the capacocha. It required the most prestigious sacrificial offering of male and female children and young women who were characterized by their beauty and purity. The aim of this paper is to present the results of a bio-anthropological analysis of the remains of five individuals sacrificed on the summits of Ampato and Pichu Pichu during this ritual. Various methods (bone analysis and radiography) were applied in the investigation due to the diverse states of preservation of the remains. Four individuals were in the same age category: 6–7 years old. The individual Pichu Pichu #2 was sacrificed at age 3.5 years, which makes him the youngest capacocha sacrifice currently known. Results show proper development of the victims’ bodies, the presence of stress markers related to the early childhood period, and, in the case of the Ampato boy, malformation of the cervical vertebrae. The studies of the Pichu Pichu and Ampato sacrifices confirm their widespread origins, privileged position, and high social status. They show that the victims were well-nourished and had proper body growth compared to juveniles from the lower social strata in different cemeteries in the region.

The Inca Empire

This chapter reviews the power and developmental trajectory of the Inca Empire, which dominated Andean South America from ca. 1400 until the 1530s. Opening with an overview of Spanish colonial chronicles, Andean environmental diversity, and the archaeological evidence for pre-Inca states, the discussion uses Michael Mann’s “IEMP” formulation of social power to describe Inca power in the Andean world. Inca military power evolved from the earliest imperial campaigns to the frontier wars that were underway at the time of the European invasions. Inca economic and political power demonstrates the articulation of provincial strategies that were implemented to varying degrees on diverse Andean landscapes. Inca ideological power—meaning, norms, aesthetics, and ritual practices—promoted specific beliefs and rituals, while accommodating a wide range of local practices. These variations in provincial rule reflect Andean diversity, as well as the ways that Inca imperial strategies evolved over several generations of expansion and consolidation.

The “Inca Utopia” in the Novel “Letters from a Peruvian Woman” by F. De Graffigny

The article considers the French novel “Letters from a Peruvian Woman&amp;8j1; (Lettres d’une Péruvienne, 1747) by Françoise de Graffigny, as well as the “Historical introduction…&amp;8j1; (Introduction historique aux lettres péruviennes), which was included into the novel in 1752, and where the Inca Empire is described in an idealized way. The main source of information for F. de Graffigny was “The Royal commentaries of the Incas&amp;8j1; by Garcilaso de la Vega (1609) and other philosophical, critical and fictional publications on American natives: Michel de Montaigne’s essays, the tragedy “Alzira, or the Americans&amp;8j1; by Voltaire, etc. The “Historical introduction...&amp;8j1; praises the wealth and wisdom of the Incas, the merits of their state organization. This article claims that the “Historical introduction…&amp;8j1; plays an important ideological and compositional role in F. de Graffigny’s book: a utopian description of the Inca Empire serves as a specific philosophical frame for the novel with a love story. Ideas concerning the empire of the ancient Incas, as reflected in the fictional “Letters from a Peruvian Woman&amp;8j1;, are congenial with the Age of Enlightenment.