Cuenca Part IV: Ingapirca

Sunday the 4th was our last day on the Cuenca trip, and we spent it at the Ingapirca ruins. On the way, we stopped to walk through an old church (Iglesia de la Virgen del Rocio) which was built right into the rock of a hillside. One has to be in pretty good shape to attend, because there were probably 200 steps to the sanctuary due to the incline of the hill. The architecture is incredible, and once inside we could actually see the original rocky walls.


View from the pews of the Virgin del Rocio and the rocks.


From outside, the surrounding town.


View of the church as we drove away.

From there, we drove to Ingapirca! A bit of history: these ruins are part of the long process of expansion and exploration of the Incas, and are said to be like a mini replica of the Machu Picchu ruins in Cusco, Peru. The interesting part, for me, is that they are a actually a mix of Incan and Cañari architecture and history. As a sort of peace offering and a way to gain more power, the elites from both cultures arranged marriages and incorporated each others' traditions to create a pretty unique history. The relationship only lasted about 50 years, and then Spanish came to colonize the entire area. The majority of what we saw was only uncovered in the last half century. Until then, people thought the Temple of the Sun was all that remained.


Said to be shaped like an iguana, one of the most important animals of the time for the Incans, here is an outline of the Ingapirca ruins.


This was our first view of the ruins.


The round cavities toward the bottom were used as storage caches, and beyond that are the remnants of houses and other out buildings. The sphere of smooth rocks in the middle is the tomb of a wealthy and apparently important Cañari woman.


Her tomb, again. Huanca means "tomb" in Quechua. Her bones show that she was about 40ish, and she was buried with 11 other bodies, all adolescents. For this, historians think she is an example of the tradition of sacrificing servants when a member of royalty was buried. One incredible, and incredibly sad, thing is that her bones are actually there in the museum, visible to all. Very, very small person in comparison to today's standards. She and all of the other bodies were buried in the fetal position, facing North. The large rock, they think, was used to determine the time of the winter solstice, because the sun shone through the U-shaped divot in the top. Also, it might have been like a clock, using the perfectly flat sides to read the shadow from the sun throughout the day.


The main road, always built as soon as the Incas reached a new area in the journey North and South.

Some Inca/Cañari information: The Incas built straight lines, and buildings with square/rectangle foundations. They also used brick-like rocks, while the Cañaris used smooth, round river rocks. Their architecture uses spheres and elipses, and this is part of the reason they are sure the tomb is of a Cañari woman. Knowing this, it's interesting to look around the ruins and notice where there are spherical structures built right on top of the original Incan pieces. Another way to decipher an Incan from a Cañari is to look at the bone structure of the skull. Wealthy Incan babies were strapped to a table for the first 4 years of their lives, a flat board pressing down on their foreheads to flatten the profile from the crown of the head to the tip of the nose. The Incan artwork clearly shows this bone structure as a demonstration of beauty.


There is only one mostly intact building left in the site, but it shows the use of trapezoidal architecture to strengthen the edifice against earthquakes and other hazards. I didn't get a good picture of it from inside, but we could tell from the inside that the walls sloped toward the center. Also, there were 3 trapezoidal wells in each wall. One for the sun, one for the moon, and one for what I translated to be like the night sky.


This is from the inside of a recently constructed replica of what the buildings would have looked like. People, slept, ate, worked, and lived with all of their animals inside these buildings.


These are the community baths. Rarely used, and only for the wealthy.


The main road, lined with an aqueduct to protect the lower buildings from runoff.


Various theories about this: Could have been used as a place to sacrifice animals, a place to sacrifice humans, or a place to balance goods. Ingapirca had three main purposes: a central market, a sacred religious site, and the home of politically powerful and wealthy members of the community. Trying to appreciate the culture, we sacrificed Emilio, asking for a safe trip home.


And finally... the Temple of the Sun. On either side of the main structure there are two spherical platfroms, indicating a Cañari tradition, from which they observed the sun.


This is a picture of the ruins, standing on the platform. It's a good place to view the mix of Cañari and Incan structures.


I am so excited for Machu Picchu!!