Learning and Knowledge in the Inca World

From the fifteenth century until the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth, the Inca state expanded across the central Andes of present-day Peru and neighboring countries, with its court at Cusco. Sixteenth-century colonial chronicler Pedro de Cieza de León describes several ways people learned: children joined household work, selected girls received institutional training, provincial leaders’ sons spent time at court, and specialists preserved accounts and political histories. These practices formed part of the broader Inca Culture and Arts.

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Learning through household work

Historian John Howland Rowe’s synthesis of colonial accounts describes children joining family work from early childhood. Depending on their region, tasks included cultivating crops, tending herds, preparing food and making clothing. Textile work shows a sequence of practiced actions. Rowe describes spinners holding wool on a short distaff, a stick for holding unspun fibers. They drew out and formed thread with one hand, then turned the hanging spindle to spin it. The thread was usually spun clockwise and doubled and twisted counterclockwise to prepare it for weaving. Rowe also reports that girls aged nine to twelve gathered plants used for dyes.

These tasks fitted different environments. Highland households might raise camelids and cultivate potatoes, while warmer irrigated valleys supported other crops. Work taught both the craft steps and when or where they were useful.

Provincial leaders at the Cusco court

Cieza says that sons of provincial lords were required to stay at court in Cusco, the Inca capital, throughout the year. When one group departed, sons from another province arrived. Cieza links this attendance to learning imperial ceremony and witnessing the ruler’s authority. He also says that obedience and service were tied to inheriting a father’s lordship.

This arrangement joined instruction with political service. A future local ruler learned the forms of the imperial court while living among its officials and other provincial leaders. Rowe’s synthesis of later colonial accounts describes more formal instruction for sons of provincial officials, including Quechua, religion, history, arms and record keeping. Rowe attributes the often-cited four-year sequence to later accounts by Garcilaso, quoting Blas Valera, and Morúa.

Training selected women

Rowe says an imperial official visited villages and classified girls at about age ten. Those selected as aqllakuna, or “chosen women,” went to institutions in provincial capitals for roughly four years of instruction in spinning, weaving, cooking and making maize beer. They were then assigned different roles: some served the Sun and shrines, preparing food and drink for offerings and festivals; others entered the ruler’s household or were given as wives to nobles and warriors. Girls not selected remained in their villages. Rowe draws this account from several colonial chroniclers, including Cobo, Poma and Garcilaso.

Songs and political memory

Cieza describes another form of instruction: the teaching of songs about rulers and past events. He reports that each ruler selected three or four older men known for intelligence and memory to retain provincial events and compose songs. During that ruler’s reign, the appointed elders could make the songs public only in the ruler’s presence, and they were forbidden to speak about him. After his death, they recited the events of his reign to the successor. Cieza says the new ruler then appointed other elders to learn the inherited songs and prepare accounts of his own reign.

The songs had set occasions. Cieza places their performance at solemn gatherings, meetings of leading lords and drinking assemblies before the Inca. The remembered past was therefore taught as a performed repertoire, connected to particular audiences and political occasions. Cieza also says that accounts praised rulers regarded as effective and gave little space to those judged failures. Song transmission carried history forward while shaping which deeds received public remembrance.

Keeping and explaining accounts

Khipukamayuq, specialists who maintained records on knotted cords, learned to use the numerical groupings and categories required by their office. Cieza describes provincial officials and accountants keeping track of tribute, provisions in storehouses, and goods issued to travelers or armies. A record keeper had to connect quantities on the cords with the goods and transactions being counted.

Cieza recounts a demonstration at Marcavillca in Xauxa, near modern Jauja in Peru, after the Spanish conquest. A local lord, Guacarapora, brought out records and showed accounts of what he had delivered since the Spanish expedition led by Francisco Pizarro arrived in the valley. The listed goods included gold, silver, clothing, maize and sheep. The episode shows a local lord explaining how recorded quantities matched particular deliveries.