Greetings to everyone on this Monday morning. I'm offering a collage today that was built upon @shaka's template photo in this week's LMAC Collage Contest, #133.
Here is the template photo presented by @shaka
The first thing that caught my eye was the terraced farming in the background. From that I thought of Peru and then, of course the Incas. So the theme of my collage deals with Inca culture.
Fire
Incas believed that fire was sacred. They thought they could contact spirits through fire. An intermediary, a yacarca, would chew cocoa leaves, blow into the flame with tubes, and wait for the voices to speak through him. Also, priests would examine the remains of a sacrificed llama to get instructions about how to proceed in affairs of state. (Derived from Britannica online)
Sun
Incas worshipped Inti, who was the sun god and ruled above other gods. Inti's sister was the moon. The brother was depicted as a human face with sun rays spreading out and the sister was depicted on a silver disc. Inti was considered the ancestor of all Incas and was beloved by farmers because of his life-giving rays. (Derived from Britannica online)
Credit: Anonymous. Public domain.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice was incorporated into the daily routine of the Incas. They sacrificed humans and animals. Each day a fire would be lit and corn toasted as an offering to the rising sun. Many llamas (white) would be sacrificed... a hundred each month. And the largest sacrifice of human children ever found was unearthed at the Peruvian city of Huanchaco.
My Collage
Once I decided on a theme that would focus on Inca culture, I began to look for appropriate images. Of course I would need a brilliant sun, and an eye-catching fire. Where to look but in the LMAC Gallery, LIL.
There I found @onyechi's golden orb
Now I needed artifacts and background from the Incas and Peru.
A terraced mountain scene
Văn Ngọc Tăng on Unsplash
Ruins from the Sacred Valley of the Incas
Sylvia Fang on Unsplash
Ornaments (stone/stucco?) from Inca culture
JustinKello0 on Pixabay
Gold Ornaments (Gold was precious to the Incas)
webtcr on Pixabay
Carving of a face (perhaps the god Viracocha) in the city of Huanchaco.
LorettaLynn on Pixabay
And the Inca King Pachacutec
Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash
I added color to the (stone/stucco?) ornament and the carving from Huanchaco. Also added color to one of the stone artifacts from the Sacred Valley ruins. I used GIMP, Paint and Paint 3D to achieve different effects.
Here is a still of how it all came together:
I don't compete in the LMAC contest, although I try to make a collage every week. Being part of the community that @shaka created, and leads today, is a source of great satisfaction to me. Please take a look at the community page and view the amazing collages that have come in for this round of the contest.
The LIL library is an outgrowth of @shaka's vision. Of course Lily, our librarian/bot, owes her personality and facility to our master coder/developer, @quantumg. And, the community would sputter without the attention of our bilingual moderator/curator, @mballesteros.
All of Hive is welcome to borrow from LIL and everyone may contribute to the image library. Rules and procedures may be found here. Also, we invite everyone on Hive to join in our contest, when the next round (#133!) begins on Thursday.
Thanks for your contribution to the STEMsocial community. Feel free to join us on discord to get to know the rest of us!
Please consider delegating to the @stemsocial account (85% of the curation rewards are returned).
You may also include @stemsocial as a beneficiary of the rewards of this post to get a stronger support.
Thank you, my friends at StemStocial. It is so nice to see you here. Just before I go bed I see this friendly notice on my blog. 😇
What a wonderful narrative work of art. You have once again done a fantastic animated collage and a great illustration at the same time. 👍
Very well done!
I am very interested in the Mayan topic and loved to read a lot about it.
As bad and evil as it is that they sacrificed children, I was never surprised they did.
Because they were not the only culture that practiced this kind of cruelty and the Mayans have existed long enough to start it once. It's quite possible that it was also their downfall.
Rather, we can find traces of cannibalism all over the world, in all cultures, by all kinds of people, in all times. For many cultures, it even was not long ago.
I think our "common consensus" about the evilness of such behavior is only a very thin and very fragile layer in our current moral codes.
The past teaches us again and again how important it is to cultivate and protect ethical values.
I hope that this will always be the case and not that the past will someday serve as a template for solutions.
Folks start doing evil things by conviction. Convictions can also be cultivated. Fear is often the key.
Let's imagine that some kind of end-time cult would arise and came to the conclusion that there were too many people on this planet and that we would all die if we did not reduce the world's population. It could spread quickly via the social media. Many a politicians might even smell votes in it.
End-timers would start lobbying for political solutions such as birth control. Soon, very enthusiastic end-timers would start promoting forced abortions worldwide. It would not take many weeks for some people to think that this is not enough. Euthanasia of the elderly and a certain number of children would then be just a small step.
Nowadays, all this could also be done in such a way that no one would notice it. Until...
A big hug for you @agmoore. :-)
Thank you my friend, @quantumg for your kind words about my collage. If you like it, I am happy.😇
As you probably know, I am quite comfortable with history. It was once my chosen field of study, so finding these images and creating the blog was an enjoyable exercise for me.
The children.
When I think of the ways that children are sacrificed, even today. So maybe we don't strangle them, or bury them alive, but they are sacrificed for economic necessity. They starve, slow deaths, by the millions. Or the children who are worked to death. The children who are murdered as part of military campaigns.
Were these ancient people so different? No.
You mention euthanasia. How far is that from the eugenics movement, or even the vast numbers of elderly who are confined today against their will in so-called nursing homes.
We have to always be alert to how self-interest, or ideology, will give us permission to do what we believe may be unthinkable.
As always, a thoughtful response from you. I can imagine the interesting conversations you have with your wife.
A hug back my friend.
Hi @Agmoore how interesting is the Inca culture, I was a bit impacted by the sacrifices with the children, you made me remember my art history classes about the Hopi, Siux and other North American tribes, I really enjoyed it, I loved reading about their customs and myths, your collage moved me to dream again with the "condor pasa"
and "the chogui bird" it is really wonderful to learn about different cultures.
What a wonderful interlude you have given me. I love the videos. They were more than music. They were an experience. Thank you very much. Simon and Garfunkel especially took me back to my youth.
I appreciate your visit to my blog and your kind estimation. I wish you a most peaceful day, @edgarafernandezp
Hello friend, a historical collage where it captures the history of the Inca civilization in Peru, its traditions and sacrifices that children suffered at that time, these ancestral cultures of the civilizations that existed on the planet are impressive things.
I am fascinated by history. I see it as a lens through which we can understand ourselves. Child sacrifice is horrible, but then people have been killing children for different reasons across the centuries. It's unfathomable, but true.
Thank you very much for visiting and for appreciating my collage. Enjoy your summer. I like to think of you hiking in the mountains with your children.
Good friend, if that's the way it is during the week I always climb the mountain with my son and the pet Negrito the puppy. Happy day friend to you and your family.
Waw. This is great. The stonewall is just perfect for the position that it's placed on
Thank you very much. It was hard to find these Inca artifacts. I'm glad you like how I used them.
Looking forward to seeing your collage in the next contest!
Yeah, I like it.
Wahoo. My collage was selected among the finalists.
Yeah, I can't wait to see the next announcement today.
Out of all the hairbrained schemes that humans have come up with, human sacrifice is at the top. I can't see the logic of it. How did our ancestors figure that there was a connection between good fortune and killing another person? What's strange is how prevalent this belief is in ancient cultures across the world and across time. Perhaps, it is a primitive (animalistic) superstitious behavior, but I have a hard time thinking of the mechanisms underpinning it.
A recent toxicology analysis revealed that the children were intoxicated with alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs prior to the sacrifice. The use of drugs and alcohol was prevalent in children at the time, but during the ritual the cocktail was used as a sedative. This article discusses the findings.
Great read and excellent collage!
I did see in my readings that narcotics were used. Surely not enough to render unconsciousness. Just enough perhaps to make the victim passive. Buried alive! Strangled!
I didn't want to dwell on the child sacrifices, almost didn't mention them. But they are important and people want to know.
It does seem impossibly cruel and illogical, but then when you think of how cheaply humans have valued life over the centuries, it fits. I remember reading in Ancient China 100 or 1000 (does the number matter?) scholars were buried alive. Look at the Khmer Rouge. Look at Hiroshima. Or Stalin's enforced famine in Ukraine. I can go on and on.
The idea that the deaths would please the gods in a way makes more sense. At least the Incas placed a value on the lives (because they thought the gods would be pleased.
Thanks for stopping by and for making (as always) an interesting comment.
Pre-Columbian people were rather war-like. They committed heinous acts against each other. So adding child sacrifice on top of it takes the cake. The Aztecs were also vicious and sacrificed thousands. I do understand that there are limitations in using the lenses of the present to understand our past history. It's difficult to get in the mind of someone who lived so long ago in such a strange place to discern their motivations and the evolutionary advantage they gained from it.
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