Quechua: the Inca Language

Hiram Bingham, the American explorer who found the ruins of Machu Picchu in 1911, wrote:

Some American archaeologists are prone to shorten the length of time during which the civilization of the Incas was developing. Because the Mayas of Central America used hieroglyphics and invented a calendar it is easy to grant them a couple of thousand years, while the Incas are limited to a few hundred. Technically they are right, if one chooses to restrict the use of the word Inca to the few centuries when the rulers were actually called Incas. But if one uses the term Inca to characterize that remarkable civilization discovered by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, with its advanced agriculture, its magnificent engineering works and its success over centuries in producing from an exceedingly wild ancestor two such distinct domestic and pure-bred animals as the llama and alpaca, it becomes evident that the period covered by the growth of this ancient Peruvian civilization certainly must have lasted for several thousand years.

This theory is also confirmed by the many varieties of both potatoes and corn found in Inca land, and also by the fact that the guinea pigs (cuyes) which they domesticated and bred are as widely different in color and in coat as are the cats of the Mediterranean region which are known to be of extremely ancient lineage.

Unfortunately the ancient Peruvians never developed any form of script or picture writing. It is indeed a great pity that the Incas never had the opportunity, as did the Greeks and Romans, to come in contact with a people like the Phoenicians who were clever enough to invent an alphabet.

The language of the Incas was the Quichua or Quechua tongue. Originally it was used only in a small area around Cuzco where the Inca dynasty originated, possibly in the tenth or eleventh century. During the next five hundred years, when the Incas succeeded in subduing the native races as far north as Ecuador and as far south as Argentina, they carried the Quechua language with them and insisted in its being learned by the conquered peoples so that it had a wide distribution by the end of the sixteenth century.

Today (1911) the total population of Peru is about seven million. A recent census reports that two and one-half million speak Quechua and two-thirds of these speak no other languages. Although there are many different languages spoken by small forest tribes in the Amazon basin, there are only two aboriginal languages numerically important in the Andes, Quechua and Aymara. In the region around Lake Titicaca and in northern Bolivia the Indians speak Aymara which has a phonetic system and grammar similar to Quechua. Neither of these languages is related in any way to those of eastern South America nor to any outside the continent. Philological experts are of the opinion that nearly five million people in South America still speak the language of the Incas. Obviously it is by far the most important native language in either North or South America. That this phonetic system is so widespread is in itself a remarkable tribute to the extraordinary people who were so successful in breeding animals and plans.

There are few words in Quechua to denote abstract qualities. On the other hand, the people obviously were not militaristic for the word meaning "soldier" also means "enemy." The extent of the empire is emphasized by the fact that the word for "foreigner" means "those belonging to a city a great distance off." The importance of agriculture is strikingly demonstrated by the fact that in Quechua there is but one word for "work" or "cultivate." Apparently cultivating the soil was the only thing which rated as work.

An interesting commentary on the habits of the ancient people and a sidelight on their manners and customs is the abundance of expressions in Quechua for all stages of drunkenness. One of their principal activities was the manufacture of beer or chicha. It was brewed from sprouted corn which served the Andean people as an upper mill-stone or pestle. The Indians of Mexico and Central America in grinding their corn use a miller, pushed back and forth on a slab. This is more fatiguing and requires more effort than the rocking stone invented in the Andes. The fact that the most common necessity of the household, a means of grinding corn, was not the same with the Incas as with the Mayas, points to the long period of separate evolution.

The Incas domesticated at least three varieties of dogs but there is no evidence that, like the Polynesians, they used any of them as an article of food.

 Source:

‘Lost City of the Incas, The Story of Machu Picchu and its Builders’ by Hiram Bingham
The American explorer who found the ruins of Machu Picchu in 1911.

Hiram Bingham at Machu Picchu
The inspiration for Indiana Jones?
 

 Glossary of Quechua Words:

Reference: ' The Ancient Civilizations of Peru' by J. Alden Mason, 1957

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