Above Misminay, the sky also is so divided by the alternation of the two axes of the Milky Way passing through the zenith. This mirror-image quadri-partition of terrestrial and celestial spheres is such that a point within one of the quarters of the earth is related to a point within the corresponding celestial quarter. The transition between the earth and the sky occurs at the horizon, where sacred mountains are related to topographic and celestial features.Based on fieldwork in Misminay, Peru, Gary Urton details a cosmology in which the Milky Way is central. This is the first study that provides a description and analysis of the astronomical and cosmological system in a contemporary community in the Americas. Separate chapters take up the sun, the moon, meteorological phenomena, the stars, and the planets. Star-to-star constellations, the "animal" dark-cloud constellations that cut through the Milky Way, and certain twilight- and midnight-zenith stars are analyzed in terms of their spatial and temporal integration within an indigenous cosmological framework.Urton breaks new ground by demonstrating the indigenous merging of such forms of "precise knowledge" as astronomy, meteorology, agriculture, and the correlation of astronomical and biological cycles within a single calendar system. More than sixty diagrams clarify this Quechua system of astronomy and relate it to more familiar principles of Western astronomy and cosmology.

At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky: An Andean Cosmology (Latin American Monographs)

Politics & Social Sciences

Urton, Gary

Anthropology

University of Texas Press

Above Misminay, the sky also is so divided by the alternation of the two axes of the Milky Way passing through the zenith. This mirror-image quadri-partition of terrestrial and celestial spheres is such that a point within one of the quarters of the earth is related to a point within the corresponding celestial quarter. The transition between the earth and the sky occurs at the horizon, where sacred mountains are related to topographic and celestial features.
Based on fieldwork in Misminay, Peru, Gary Urton details a cosmology in which the Milky Way is central. This is the first study that provides a description and analysis of the astronomical and cosmological system in a contemporary community in the Americas. Separate chapters take up the sun, the moon, meteorological phenomena, the stars, and the planets. Star-to-star constellations, the "animal" dark-cloud constellations that cut through the Milky Way, and certain twilight- and midnight-zenith stars are analyzed in terms of their spatial and temporal integration within an indigenous cosmological framework.
Urton breaks new ground by demonstrating the indigenous merging of such forms of "precise knowledge" as astronomy, meteorology, agriculture, and the correlation of astronomical and biological cycles within a single calendar system. More than sixty diagrams clarify this Quechua system of astronomy and relate it to more familiar principles of Western astronomy and cosmology.

At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky: An Andean Cosmology (LLILAS Latin American Monograph Series)

Philosophy

The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Inkas

In the year 1572, the Spanish chronicler Sarmiento de Gamboa completed one of the earliest official versions of the history of the Inka empire. In his account, he stated that the ancestors of the Inkas originated from a cave at a place to the south of the imperial city of Cuzco called Pacariqtambo. The History of a Myth explores how and why this version of the origin myth (there were others) came to form the basis of an official history.
Using a legal document from the 1560s, Urton reveals how the Pacariqtambo origin myth allowed remaining members of the Inka nobility to claim descent from the first Inkas and enjoy special status with their Spanish conquerors. This discovery offers new insight into the social and political factors that determine what becomes "the facts" of history. It also emphasizes the ambiguities inherent in history writing when the informants are the conquered subjects of the authors.

History

Americas

Urton reviews the sources of our current knowledge of Inca mythology and recounts various creation myths, including a selection from various ethnic groups and regions around the Inca empire. He also looks at the history and ethnography of the Incas to illuminate the nature and relationships of myth and history.

Inca Myths (Legendary Past)

Literature & Fiction

United States

Unraveling all the mysteries of the khipu—the knotted string device used by the Inka to record both statistical data and narrative accounts of myths, histories, and genealogies—will require an understanding of how number values and relations may have been used to encode information on social, familial, and political relationships and structures. This is the problem Gary Urton tackles in his pathfinding study of the origin, meaning, and significance of numbers and the philosophical principles underlying the practice of arithmetic among Quechua-speaking peoples of the Andes.Based on fieldwork in communities around Sucre, in south-central Bolivia, Urton argues that the origin and meaning of numbers were and are conceived of by Quechua-speaking peoples in ways similar to their ideas about, and formulations of, gender, age, and social relations. He also demonstrates that their practice of arithmetic is based on a well-articulated body of philosophical principles and values that reflects a continuous attempt to maintain balance, harmony, and equilibrium in the material, social, and moral spheres of community life.

The Social Life of Numbers: A Quechua Ontology of Numbers and Philosophy of Arithmetic

Social Sciences

Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)

In an age when computers process immense amounts of information by the manipulation of sequences of 1s and 0s, it remains a frustrating mystery how prehistoric Inka recordkeepers encoded a tremendous variety and quantity of data using only knotted and dyed strings. Yet the comparison between computers and khipu may hold an important clue to deciphering the Inka records. In this book, Gary Urton sets forth a pathbreaking theory that the manipulation of fibers in the construction of khipu created physical features that constitute binary-coded sequences which store units of information in a system of binary recordkeeping that was used throughout the Inka empire.Urton begins his theory with the making of khipu, showing how at each step of the process binary, either/or choices were made. He then investigates the symbolic components of the binary coding system, the amount of information that could have been encoded, procedures that may have been used for reading the khipu, the nature of the khipu signs, and, finally, the nature of the khipu recording system itself—emphasizing relations of markedness and semantic coupling. This research constitutes a major step forward in building a unified theory of the khipu system of information storage and communication based on the sum total of construction features making up these extraordinary objects.

Archaeology

In an age when computers process immense amounts of information by the manipulation of sequences of 1s and 0s, it remains a frustrating mystery how prehistoric Inka recordkeepers encoded a tremendous variety and quantity of data using only knotted and dyed strings. Yet the comparison between computers and khipu may hold an important clue to deciphering the Inka records. In this book, Gary Urton sets forth a pathbreaking theory that the manipulation of fibers in the construction of khipu created physical features that constitute binary-coded sequences which store units of information in a system of binary recordkeeping that was used throughout the Inka empire.
Urton begins his theory with the making of khipu, showing how at each step of the process binary, either/or choices were made. He then investigates the symbolic components of the binary coding system, the amount of information that could have been encoded, procedures that may have been used for reading the khipu, the nature of the khipu signs, and, finally, the nature of the khipu recording system itself—emphasizing relations of markedness and semantic coupling. This research constitutes a major step forward in building a unified theory of the khipu system of information storage and communication based on the sum total of construction features making up these extraordinary objects.

Inka History in Knots: Reading Khipus as Primary Sources (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art Culture)

Winner, PROSE Award, Biological Anthropology, Ancient History, &amp; Archaeology, Association of American Publishers (AAP), 2018
Inka khipus—spun and plied cords that record information through intricate patterns of knots and colors—constitute the only available primary sources on the Inka empire not mediated by the hands, minds, and motives of the conquering Europeans. As such, they offer direct insight into the worldview of the Inka—a view that differs from European thought as much as khipus differ from alphabetic writing, which the Inka did not possess. Scholars have spent decades attempting to decipher the Inka khipus, and Gary Urton has become the world's leading authority on these artifacts.
In Inka History in Knots, Urton marshals a lifetime of study to offer a grand overview of the types of quantative information recorded in khipus and to show how these records can be used as primary sources for an Inka history of the empire that focuses on statistics, demography, and the "longue durée" social processes that characterize a civilization continuously adapting to and exploiting its environment. Whether the Inka khipu keepers were registering census data, recording tribute, or performing many other administrative tasks, Urton asserts that they were key players in the organization and control of subject populations throughout the empire and that khipu record-keeping vitally contributed to the emergence of political complexity in the Andes. This new view of the importance of khipus promises to fundamentally reorient our understanding of the development of the Inka state and the possibilities for writing its history.

Inka History in Knots: Reading Khipus as Primary Sources

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Urton, Gary. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Urton, Gary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Urton, Gary. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky: An Andean Cosmology (Latin American Monographs)

At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky: An Andean Cosmology (LLILAS Latin American Monograph Series)

The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Inkas

The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Inkas

Inca Myths (Legendary Past)

The Social Life of Numbers: A Quechua Ontology of Numbers and Philosophy of Arithmetic

Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)

Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)

Inka History in Knots: Reading Khipus as Primary Sources (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art Culture)

Inka History in Knots: Reading Khipus as Primary Sources