1.
Sapa Inca
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The Sapa Inca or Sapa Inka, also known as Apu, Inka Qhapaq, or simply Sapa, was the ruler of the Kingdom of Cusco and, later, the Emperor of the Inca Empire and the Neo-Inca State. While the origins of the position are mythical and tied to the foundation of the city of Cusco. The position was hereditary, with son succeeding father, the emperor was viewed as a god. There were two known dynasties, led by the Hurin and Hanan moieties respectively, the latter was in power at the time of Spanish conquest. The last effective Sapa Inca of Inca Empire was Atahualpa, who was executed by Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors in 1533, little is known of the rulers of the first dynasty of Sapa Incas. Evidently, they were affiliated with the Hurin moiety and their rule did not extend beyond the Kingdom of Cusco and their origins are tied to the mythical establishment of Cusco and are shrouded in later foundation myth. The dynasty was founded by Manco Cápac, considered the son of the sun god Inti. As a rough guide to the reputation of the early Sapa Incas, in later years capac meant warlord. The second dynasty was affiliated with the Hanan moiety and was founded under Inca Roca, after Cápac Yupanquis death, another of his sons, Inca Rocas half-brother Quispe Yupanqui, was intended to succeed him. However, the Hanan revolted and installed Inca Roca instead and he had been with Huayna Cápac when he died. The death of Ninan, the heir, led to the Inca Civil War between Huáscar and Atahualpa, a weakness that the Spanish exploited when they conquered the Inca Empire. This last Sapa Inca must not be confused with Túpac Amaru II, pachacutec, a resurrected Sapa Inca king who is over 500 years old, plays a major role in James Rollins novel Excavation. Kingdom of Cusco Inca Empire Neo-Inca State
2.
Inca Empire
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The Inca Empire, also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire, was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America, and possibly the largest empire in the world in the early 16th century. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru, the Inca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century. Its last stronghold was conquered by the Spanish in 1572, from 1438 to 1533, the Incas incorporated a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean Mountains, using conquest and peaceful assimilation, among other methods. The Incas considered their king, the Sapa Inca, to be the son of the sun, the Inca Empire was unique in that it lacked many features associated with civilization in the Old world. In the words of one scholar, The Incas lacked the use of wheeled vehicles, the Incan economy has been described as feudal, slave, socialist. The economy functioned largely without money and without markets, instead, exchange of goods and services was based on reciprocity between individuals and among individuals, groups, and Inca rulers. Taxes consisted of an obligation of a person to the Empire. The Inca rulers reciprocated by granting access to land and goods and providing food, the Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu, the four suyu. The four suyu were, Chinchaysuyu, Antisuyu, Qullasuyu and Kuntisuyu, the name Tawantinsuyu was, therefore, a descriptive term indicating a union of provinces. The Spanish transliterated the name as Tahuatinsuyo or Tahuatinsuyu, the term Inka means ruler or lord in Quechua and was used to refer to the ruling class or the ruling family. The Incas were a small percentage of the total population of the empire, probably numbering only 15,000 to 40,000. The Spanish adopted the term as a term referring to all subjects of the empire rather than simply the ruling class. As such the name Imperio inca referred to the nation that they encountered, the Inca people were a pastoral tribe in the Cusco area around the 12th century. Incan oral history tells a story of three caves. The center cave at Tampu Tuqu was named Qhapaq Tuqu, the other caves were Maras Tuqu and Sutiq Tuqu. Four brothers and four sisters stepped out of the middle cave and they were, Ayar Manco, Ayar Cachi, Ayar Awqa and Ayar Uchu, and Mama Ocllo, Mama Raua, Mama Huaco and Mama Qura. Out of the side caves came the people who were to be the ancestors of all the Inca clans, Ayar Manco carried a magic staff made of the finest gold. Where this staff landed, the people would live and they traveled for a long time
3.
Peru
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Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the west by the Pacific Ocean. Peruvian territory was home to ancient cultures spanning from the Norte Chico civilization in Caral, one of the oldest in the world, to the Inca Empire, the largest state in Pre-Columbian America. The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and established a Viceroyalty with its capital in Lima, ideas of political autonomy later spread throughout Spanish America and Peru gained its independence, which was formally proclaimed in 1821. After the battle of Ayacucho, three years after proclamation, Peru ensured its independence, subsequently, the country has undergone changes in government from oligarchic to democratic systems. Peru has gone through periods of political unrest and internal conflict as well as periods of stability, Peru is a representative democratic republic divided into 25 regions. It is a country with a high Human Development Index score. Its main economic activities include mining, manufacturing, agriculture and fishing, the Peruvian population, estimated at 31.2 million in 2015, is multiethnic, including Amerindians, Europeans, Africans and Asians. The main spoken language is Spanish, although a significant number of Peruvians speak Quechua or other native languages and this mixture of cultural traditions has resulted in a wide diversity of expressions in fields such as art, cuisine, literature, and music. The name of the country may be derived from Birú, the name of a ruler who lived near the Bay of San Miguel, Panama. When his possessions were visited by Spanish explorers in 1522, they were the southernmost part of the New World yet known to Europeans, thus, when Francisco Pizarro explored the regions farther south, they came to be designated Birú or Perú. An alternative history is provided by the contemporary writer Inca Garcilasco de la Vega, son of an Inca princess, the Spanish Crown gave the name legal status with the 1529 Capitulación de Toledo, which designated the newly encountered Inca Empire as the province of Peru. Under Spanish rule, the country adopted the denomination Viceroyalty of Peru, the earliest evidences of human presence in Peruvian territory have been dated to approximately 9,000 BC. Andean societies were based on agriculture, using such as irrigation and terracing, camelid husbandry. Organization relied on reciprocity and redistribution because these societies had no notion of market or money, the oldest known complex society in Peru, the Norte Chico civilization, flourished along the coast of the Pacific Ocean between 3,000 and 1,800 BC. These early developments were followed by archaeological cultures that developed mostly around the coastal, the Cupisnique culture which flourished from around 1000 to 200 BC along what is now Perus Pacific Coast was an example of early pre-Incan culture. The Chavín culture that developed from 1500 to 300 BC was probably more of a religious than a political phenomenon, on the coast, these included the civilizations of the Paracas, Nazca, Wari, and the more outstanding Chimu and Mochica. Their capital was at Chan Chan outside of modern-day Trujillo, in the 15th century, the Incas emerged as a powerful state which, in the span of a century, formed the largest empire in pre-Columbian America with their capital in Cusco
4.
Aymara people
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The Aymara or Aimara people are an indigenous nation in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America, about 1 million live in Bolivia, Peru and Chile. Their ancestors lived in the region for centuries before becoming a subject people of the Inca in the late 15th or early 16th century. With the Spanish American Wars of Independence, the Aymaras became subjects of the new nations of Bolivia, after the War of the Pacific, Chile acquired territory occupied by the Aymaras. Archeologists have found evidence that the Aymaras have occupied the Andes, in what is now western Bolivia, southern Peru and northern Chile and their origin is a matter of scientific dispute. The region where Tiwanaku and the modern Aymaras are located, the Altiplano, was conquered by the Incas under Huayna Capac and it is most likely that the Inca had a strong influence over the Aymara region for some time. Though conquered by the Inca, the Aymaras retained some degree of autonomy under the empire, the Spanish later classified a number of ethnic groups as Aymara in their effort to identify the native peoples. These were identified by chieftainties and included the following, the Charqa, Qharaqhara, Quillaca, Asanaqui, Carangas, SivTaroyos, Haracapi, Pacajes, Lupacas, Soras, at the time of Spanish encounter, these groups were living throughout the territory now included in Bolivia. Linguists have learned that Aymara was once spoken much further north, most Andean linguists believe that it is likely that the Aymara originated or coalesced as a people in this area. The Aymaras overran and displaced the Uru, a population from the Lake Titicaca. The Uru lived in area as recently as the 1930s. Most present-day Aymara-speakers live in the Lake Titicaca basin, a territory from Lake Titicaca through the Desaguadero River and they are concentrated south of the lake. The capital of the ancient Aymara civilization is unknown, according to research by Cornell University anthropologist John Murra, there were at least seven different kingdoms. The capital of the Lupaqa Kingdom may be the city of Chucuito, the present urban center of the Aymara region may be El Alto, a 750, 000-person city near the Bolivian capital, La Paz. For most of the 20th century, the center of cosmopolitan Aymara culture mightve been Chuquiago Marka, Bolivias capital mightve had moved from Sucre to La Paz during the government of General Pando and during the Bolivian Civil War. The Aymara flag is known as the Wiphala, it consists of seven colors quilted together with diagonal stripes, the native language of the Aymaras is Aymara. Many of Aymaras speak Spanish as a language, when it is the predominant language in the areas where they live. The Aymara language has one surviving relative, spoken by a small and this language, whose two varieties are known as Jaqaru and Kawki, is of the same family as Aymara. Some linguists refer to language as Central Aymara
5.
Tiwanaku
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Tiwanaku is a Pre-Columbian archaeological site in western Bolivia. The site was first recorded in history by Spanish conquistador Pedro Cieza de León. He came upon the remains of Tiwanaku in 1549 while searching for the Inca capital in Qullasuyu, the name by which Tiwanaku was known to its inhabitants may have been lost as they had no written language. The ancient inhabitants of Tiwanaku are believed to have spoken the Puquina language, the area around Tiwanaku may have been inhabited as early as 1500 BC as a small agricultural village. During the time period between 300 BC and AD300, Tiwanaku is thought to have been a moral and cosmological center for the Tiwanaku empire, researchers believe it achieved this standing prior to Tiwanaku expanding its powerful empire. In 1945, Arthur Posnansky estimated that Tiwanaku dated to 15,000 BC, in the 21st century, experts concluded Posnanskys dates were invalid and a sorry example of misused archaeoastronomical evidence. These may be visited by the public, the Akapana is an approximately cross-shaped pyramidal structure that is 257 m wide,197 m broad at its maximum, and 16.5 m tall. At its center appears to have been a sunken court and this was nearly destroyed by a deep looters excavation that extends from the center of this structure to its eastern side. Material from the excavation was dumped off the eastern side of the Akapana. A staircase with sculptures is present on its western side, possible residential complexes might have occupied both the northeast and southeast corners of this structure. Originally, the Akapana was thought to have developed from a modified hill. Twenty-first century studies have shown that it is an entirely manmade earthen mound, faced with a mixture of large, the dirt comprising Akapana appears to have been excavated from the moat that surrounds the site. The largest stone block within the Akapana, made of andesite, is estimated to weigh 65.70 metric tons, the structure was possibly for the shaman-puma relationship or transformation through shape shifting. Tenon puma and human heads stud the upper terraces, the Akapana East was built on the eastern side of early Tiwanaku. Later it was considered a boundary between the center and the urban area. It was made of a thick, prepared floor of sand and clay, yellow and red clay were used in different areas for what seems like aesthetic purposes. It was swept clean of all domestic refuse, signaling its great importance to the culture, the Pumapunku is a man-made platform built on an east–west axis like the Akapana. It is a rectangular, terraced earthen mound faced with megalithic blocks and it is 167.36 m wide along its north–south axis and 116.7 m broad along its east–west axis, and is 5 m tall
6.
Mummy
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Some authorities restrict the use of the term to bodies deliberately embalmed with chemicals, but the use of the word to cover accidentally desiccated bodies goes back to at least 1615 CE. Mummies of humans and other animals have found on every continent. Over one million animal mummies have been found in Egypt, many of which are cats, in addition to the well-known mummies of ancient Egypt, deliberate mummification was a feature of several ancient cultures in areas of America and Asia with very dry climates. The Spirit Cave mummies of Fallon, Nevada in North America were accurately dated at more than 9,400 years old. Before this discovery, the oldest known deliberate mummy was a child, one of the Chinchorro mummies found in the Camarones Valley, Chile, which dates around 5050 BCE. The oldest known naturally mummified corpse is a severed head dated as 6,000 years old. These substances were defined as mummia, the OED defines a mummy as the body of a human being or animal embalmed as a preparation for burial, citing sources from 1615 CE onward. However, Chambers Cyclopædia and the Victorian zoologist Francis Trevelyan Buckland define a mummy as follows, also applied to the frozen carcase of an animal imbedded in prehistoric snow. Wasps of the genus Aleiodes are known as mummy wasps because they wrap their prey as mummies. While interest in the study of mummies dates as far back as Ptolemaic Greece, prior to this, many rediscovered mummies were sold as curiosities or for use in pseudoscientific novelties such as mummia. The first modern scientific examinations of mummies began in 1901, conducted by professors at the English-language Government School of Medicine in Cairo, Egypt. The first X-ray of a mummy came in 1903, when professors Grafton Elliot Smith, British chemist Alfred Lucas applied chemical analyses to Egyptian mummies during this same period, which returned many results about the types of substances used in embalming. Lucas also made significant contributions to the analysis of Tutankhamun in 1922, pathological study of mummies saw varying levels of popularity throughout the 20th century. In 1992, the First World Congress on Mummy Studies was held in Puerto de la Cruz on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, more than 300 scientists attended the Congress to share nearly 100 years of collected data on mummies. This was not possible prior to the Congress due to the unique, in more recent years, CT scanning has become an invaluable tool in the study of mummification by allowing researchers to digitally unwrap mummies without risking damage to the body. The level of detail in such scans is so intricate that small linens used in areas such as the nostrils can be digitally reconstructed in 3-D. Such modelling has been utilized to perform autopsies on mummies to determine cause of death and lifestyle. Mummies are typically divided into one of two categories, anthropogenic or spontaneous
7.
Lake Titicaca
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Lake Titicaca is a large, deep lake in the Andes on the border of Bolivia and Peru. By volume of water and by area, it is the largest lake in South America. Lake Maracaibo has a surface area, but it is a tidal bay. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world, although this refers to navigation by large boats, it is generally considered to mean commercial craft. For many years the largest vessel afloat on the lake was the 2, 200-ton, today the largest vessel is most likely the similarly sized, but broader, train barge/float Manco Capac, operated by PeruRail. Numerous smaller bodies of water around the world are at higher elevations, the lake is located at the northern end of the endorheic Altiplano basin high in the Andes on the border of Peru and Bolivia. The western part of the lies within the Puno Region of Peru. The lake is composed of two nearly separate sub-basins connected by the Strait of Tiquina, which is 800 m across at the narrowest point, the larger sub-basin, Lago Grande, has a mean depth of 135 m and a maximum depth of 284 m. The smaller sub-basin, Wiñaymarka, has a depth of 9 m. The overall average depth of the lake is 107 m, five major river systems feed into Lake Titicaca. In order of their flow volumes these are Ramis, Coata, Ilave, Huancané. More than twenty other smaller streams empty into Titicaca, the lake has 41 islands, some of which are densely populated. This only accounts for about 10% of the water balance. Evapotranspiration, caused by winds and intense sunlight at high altitude. It is nearly a closed lake, since 2000 Lake Titicaca has experienced constantly receding water levels. Between April and November 2009 alone the water level dropped by 81 cm and this drop is caused by shortened rainy seasons and the melting of glaciers feeding the tributaries of the lake. Water pollution is also a concern because cities in the Titicaca watershed grow, sometimes outpacing solid waste. According to the Global Nature Fund, Titicacas biodiversity is threatened by water pollution, already in 2012, the GNF nominated the lake Threatened Lake of the Year
8.
Fire
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Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition, at a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition point, flames are produced. The flame is the portion of the fire. Flames consist primarily of carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen and nitrogen, if hot enough, the gases may become ionized to produce plasma. Depending on the substances alight, and any impurities outside, the color of the flame, Fire in its most common form can result in conflagration, which has the potential to cause physical damage through burning. Fire is an important process that affects ecological systems around the globe, the positive effects of fire include stimulating growth and maintaining various ecological systems. The negative effects of fire hazard to life and property, atmospheric pollution. If fire removes protective vegetation, heavy rainfall may lead to an increase in soil erosion by water and this is commonly called the fire tetrahedron. Fire cannot exist without all of elements in place and in the right proportions. For example, a liquid will start burning only if the fuel. Some fuel-oxygen mixes may require a catalyst, a substance that is not consumed, when added, in any chemical reaction during combustion, but which enables the reactants to combust more readily. Without gravity, a fire rapidly surrounds itself with its own products and non-oxidizing gases from the air. Because of this, the risk of fire in a spacecraft is small when it is coasting in inertial flight, of course, this does not apply if oxygen is supplied to the fire by some process other than thermal convection. Fire can be extinguished by removing any one of the elements of the fire tetrahedron, consider a natural gas flame, such as from a stovetop burner. In contrast, fire is intensified by increasing the rate of combustion. In many cases, such as the burning of organic matter, for wood, or the incomplete combustion of gas. This light has a continuous spectrum, complete combustion of gas has a dim blue color due to the emission of single-wavelength radiation from various electron transitions in the excited molecules formed in the flame. Usually oxygen is involved, but hydrogen burning in chlorine produces a flame
9.
God
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In monotheism, God is conceived of as the Supreme Being and principal object of faith. The concept of God as described by most theologians includes the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, divine simplicity, many theologians also describe God as being omnibenevolent and all loving. Furthermore, some religions attribute only a purely grammatical gender to God, incorporeity and corporeity of God are related to conceptions of transcendence and immanence of God, with positions of synthesis such as the immanent transcendence of Chinese theology. God has been conceived as personal or impersonal. In theism, God is the creator and sustainer of the universe, while in deism, God is the creator, in pantheism, God is the universe itself. In atheism, God is not believed to exist, while God is deemed unknown or unknowable within the context of agnosticism, God has also been conceived as the source of all moral obligation, and the greatest conceivable existent. Many notable philosophers have developed arguments for and against the existence of God, there are many names for God, and different names are attached to different cultural ideas about Gods identity and attributes. In the ancient Egyptian era of Atenism, possibly the earliest recorded monotheistic religion, this deity was called Aten, premised on being the one true Supreme Being and creator of the universe. In the Hebrew Bible and Judaism, He Who Is, I Am that I Am, in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, God, consubstantial in three persons, is called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In Judaism, it is common to refer to God by the titular names Elohim or Adonai, in Islam, the name Allah is used, while Muslims also have a multitude of titular names for God. In Hinduism, Brahman is often considered a concept of God. In Chinese religion, God is conceived as the progenitor of the universe, intrinsic to it, other religions have names for God, for instance, Baha in the Baháí Faith, Waheguru in Sikhism, and Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism. The earliest written form of the Germanic word God comes from the 6th-century Christian Codex Argenteus, the English word itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic * ǥuđan. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form * ǵhu-tó-m was likely based on the root * ǵhau-, in the English language, the capitalized form of God continues to represent a distinction between monotheistic God and gods in polytheism. The same holds for Hebrew El, but in Judaism, God is also given a proper name, in many translations of the Bible, when the word LORD is in all capitals, it signifies that the word represents the tetragrammaton. Allāh is the Arabic term with no plural used by Muslims and Arabic speaking Christians and Jews meaning The God, Ahura Mazda is the name for God used in Zoroastrianism. Mazda, or rather the Avestan stem-form Mazdā-, nominative Mazdå and it is generally taken to be the proper name of the spirit, and like its Sanskrit cognate medhā, means intelligence or wisdom. Both the Avestan and Sanskrit words reflect Proto-Indo-Iranian *mazdhā-, from Proto-Indo-European mn̩sdʰeh1, literally meaning placing ones mind, Waheguru is a term most often used in Sikhism to refer to God
10.
Earth
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Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
