INCA COSMOLOGY AND THE HUMAN BODY

In the Inca Empire, the human body served as a symbol and mediator of cosmic structures and processes through its own structures and processes. The structures of the body with cosmological relevance included the duality of right aLd left and the integrated unity of the body as a whole, while the processes of the body included reproduction, illness and sensory perception. Inca myths and rituals both expressed and enacted this corporeai and cosmic order. With the arrivaI of the Spanish, the Incas were confronted with a radically different image of the body and the cosmos. The clash between the Spanish and Inca orders was experienced by the Incas as a disordering of the human and cosmic bodies. While the Spanish Conquest destroyed the Inca empire and imposed a new culture on its former inhabitants, however, many of the principles which ordered and interrelated the body and the cosmos in Inca cosmology have survived in the Andes to the present day.

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