inca1
/ˈɪŋkə
/noun
A South American hummingbird having mainly blackish or bronze-coloured plumage with one or two white breast patches.
- Genus Coeligena, family Trochilidae: four species.
Inca2
/ˈɪŋkə/noun
1A member of a South American Indian people living in the central Andes before the Spanish conquest.Archaeological and anthropological evidence suggests that the sun was also deified by other ancient civilizations including the Druids, Aztecs, Incas and American Indians....
- Donning replicas of Inca tunics, rather than contemporary Andean garb, Quechua Indians reenact the Inca sun-worshiping ceremony.
- The Andes, home of the Incas, remain predominantly Indian, the language Quechua spoken more often than Spanish.
The Incas arrived in the Cuzco valley in Peru circa ad 1200. When the Spanish invaded in the early 1530s, the Inca empire covered most of modern Ecuador and Peru, much of Bolivia, and parts of Argentina and Chile. Inca technology and architecture were highly developed despite a lack of wheeled vehicles and of writing. Their descendants, speaking Quechua, still make up about half of Peru’s population.
2The supreme ruler of the Incas.The Inca reigned as absolute monarch, but his will reached the common man only through the local chiefs, whose authority and privileges were maintained, if not reinforced....
- The ordinary judges gave a monthly account of the sentences they imposed to their superiors, and they in turn reported to their immediate superiors, and so on finally to the Inca or those of his Supreme Council.
Derivatives
Incaic
- The soft geometry of that Incaic ‘pillow masonry’ (as it is known) become even more impressive at the giant fortresses of Sacsayhuaman and, further away, at Ollantaytambo.
- Ancient Hebrew temple prostitution is dismissed as a myth; Murray also wishes to cast doubt on the more recent and more detailed Spanish accounts of Incaic temple prostitution, an example of which he quotes.
- The Incaic period, to which most Ecuadorians refer when discussing the indigenous past, began about 1480 and ended fifty years later with the Spanish conquest led by Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro.
Incan
- However, a significant proportion of Ecuador's Andean population speaks the ancient Incan language of Quechua and a variety of related dialects.
- Other ancient and sophisticated calendars are the Athenian, the Egyptian, the Incan, the Aztec and the Mayan.
- Blinded by greed and terrified by the cultural difference they experienced, the Spanish systematically wiped out both the Incan and Aztec cultures, two of the most advanced civilizations that the pre-modern world had ever seen.
Origin
The name in Quechua, literally 'lord, royal person'.