17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review by Greg Hobbs of The Incas, July 5, 2006
This review is from: The Incas: New Perspectives (Understanding Ancient Civilizations) (Hardcover)
Review of Gordon F. McEwan, The Incas, New Perspectives (ABC-CLIO, Inc, Santa Barbara 2006).
By Justice Greg Hobbs, Colorado Supreme Court, Denver.
Here's a book about the Incas written by a scholar who has spent twenty-six years working with Peruvian archeologists in the Cusco Valley to unearth the secrets of Pikillacta and Chokepukio.
The archeology of these two sites reveals a two-thousand year history of the Andean people's adaptation to a stunning and often harsh environment.
The Incas built their civilization on the cultural foundations of the Wari, Tiwanaku, and Pukara civilizations of the Lake Titcaca region, dating back as early as 200 B.C.
As McEwan documented in a 2002 National Geographic article, the Wari (500-1100 A.D.) operated Pikillacta as a ceremonial and administrative center. (Virginia Morell, "Empires Across The Andes," National Geographic at 123 (June 2002)).
At Pikillacta, you can see portions of the aqueduct the Wari built to convey water a great distance from the surrounding mountains. You can also see beehive-looking structures in which the Wari housed mummies of Andean ancestors. The nearby Chokepukio excavations have revealed a temple containing burials and artifacts documenting Inca religious rituals.
McEwan's important highly readable book about the Incas explains that the Andean people revered their ancestors. In life, the mummies had been political authorities. Their preservation was important to the continuation of land tenure and water rights in local communities. "Mummified ancestors were believed to bridge the gap between the natural and supernatural worlds . . . The mummy's most important function was to intervene in the spirit world in order to maintain the flow and abundance of water."
The Incas believed that springs and rivers harbored living spirits. They spread the ashes of fine-woven cloth and llamas upon the waters as a sacrifice. They built magnificent ceremonial and drinking water fountains at such places as Tipon (high above the Cusco Valley) and Machu Picchu (high above the Urubamba River). They harnessed stream and spring water for irrigation on ingeniously-constructed terraces that still hang in seemingly impossible ravines and mountain sides like Tipon, Moray, Pisac, and Machu Picchu.
The Incas built many granaries to feed the people in times of scarcity. These were carefully situated on slopes in dry areas with good drainage. They contained dried corn, quinoa, freeze-dried potatoes, beans, other vegetables, and seeds. The Incas also built large storehouses for holding cloth, tents, agricultural tools, and weapons. "The capacity of the storage system was staggering . . . Careful records were kept on the knotted cords of the quipu that could tell an Inca official at any time exactly how much of what commodity was stored in each of the storehouses."
When a new region was incorporated into the Inca empire, its lands were carefully surveyed and catalogued. The lands were divided into three sections, one part in service to the state religion, one part for the emperor, and the remaining part for sustenance of the local population. Herds of llamas and alpacas, and the pasturage for them, were also divided into thirds on the same basis.
The Incas exacted a labor tax for producing food and cloth and building the roads, agricultural terraces, water systems, palaces, temples, and administrative centers. Great care was taken to equally distribute the labor tax burden. Only a few men were taken out of each administrative unit for labor elsewhere. By keeping sufficient labor at home, the administrative units of the empire "could maintain agricultural output and not disrupt the economy. . . The underlying ideology was that of a reciprocal exchange. The state provided for the worker in exchange for the labor the worker gave the state."
McEwan explains that, when the ruling Inca died, his lands were reserved to him as a separate estate maintained by a cadre of attendants. This meant that the new Inca had to conquer more lands to obtain wealth for himself. As the empire expanded, those who were the greatest warriors among the ruling class became the Inca in succession. They often spent long periods of time on the frontier away from the capitol of Cusco. This led to unrest and rival factions that played directly into the Spanish conquest.
This book is highly readable because McEwan progresses from an overview of Inca civilization into chapters that deal with the environmental setting; historical setting; origins, growth and decline of Inca civilization; economic structure of the Inca state; social organization and structure; political structure; religion and ideology; material culture; and intellectual accomplishments.
The chapters contain many interesting subheadings, photographs, and illustrations. McEwan carefully cites the bibliography of Andean cultural research with endnotes to the chapters. He finishes the book with an assessment of major controversies and future directions in Inca studies.
McEwan knows from on-the-ground work what he writes about. In 2002, he was kind enough to lead me through the Pikillacta and Chokepukio sites. At the invitation of the Peruvian crew he hires from the local community, I witnessed a pago. On page 144 of his book, there's a photograph of a shaman preparing the about-to-be-burned offering to Pachamama (mother earth). The bundle I saw burned contained a lama fetus, an octopus tentacle, grain, candy, cookies, bits of yarn, coca leaves, and sea shells. I will never forget the sight and smell of smoke from this offering curling into the highlands.
As McEwan so aptly relates in this book, the Andean people still revere the earth, the mountains, the waters, and the sky.
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12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Concise and Complete, April 4, 2006
This review is from: The Incas: New Perspectives (Understanding Ancient Civilizations) (Hardcover)
Hooray for Gordon McEwan and his fine book, "The Incas!" He tells us about the Inca and their cultural heritage in down-to-earth, easy-to-read language. McEwan covers the subject in 201 concise pages that provide a level of depth and breadth that should appeal to scholars, but contain enough background to orient someone new to the topic.
McEwan's extensive glossary is a terrific reference piece, and the index is very complete. Probably what I like the most about "The Incas," however, it its careful, scientific approach; the information is dependably well researched and devoid of speculation.
I would recommend "The Inca" to anyone interested in the Inca Empire, arm-chair travellers, and persons planning to travel to any part of the former Inca Empire, including Machu Picchu. The book will double your understanding, and consequently, your enjoyment, of the Inca culture.
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Could have been organized more effectively, June 5, 2009
All the basic information for an introduction to the Incas is there, which is good, but it is presented in a much jumbled manner. For instance, you get an overview of the Incas (on chapter 1), then the story of the conquest first (on chapter 3), followed by a sketch of a long history of the Andes up to and including the Incas (on the same chapter 3), then a survey of Inca rulers (on chapter 4, overlapping with parts of what's been said already). Some of the specific issues (the Inca highway system, for instance) discussed in the first chapters come back in the rest of the book, sometimes with slight alterations (and no explanation as to the slight differences; compare the number of kilometers recorded on pages 3 and 115), sometimes with word-for-word repetitions of sentences used in the first chapters. You get the sense that the author was at odds to try to assemble and condense a wealth of information on the Incas.
On a different note, the book looks bulkier than it should: it really ends on page 200, and the following 69 pages are a (useful) glossary, an annotated bibliography, and an index; with changes to spacing and font size, the number of those pages could have been drastically reduced. Despite the lengthy bibliography at the end, the end-of-chapter bibliographies are not significant at all (with the exception of chapter 10), and long passages refer solely to work from the forties (which is curious for a book presenting "New Perspectives").
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