Couriers in the Inca Empire: Getting Your Message Across
IntroductionThis lesson will show how the Inca
communicated across the vast stretches of their mountain realm, the largest empire
of the pre-industrial world. It will explain how couriers carried messages along
mountain-ridge roads, up and down stone steps, and over chasm-spanning footbridges.
Couriers could pass a message from Quito to Cuzco in 10 days, about the same time
as it takes today's modern postal service to deliver a letter between those two
cities. Guiding Question: How
did the Inca communicate over large distances in an empire without the wheel,
the horse, or the written word? Learning ObjectivesAfter
completing this lesson, students will be able to: - Describe the
Inca as a people who built an empire in the mountains of South America
- Locate
the Inca Empire on a map
- Appreciate the challenges of communicating over
the large distances and difficult terrain of the Inca Empire
- Describe
the role of couriers in the Inca Empire
- Explain the use of quipus,
colored and knotted ropes carried by couriers that tallied numbers of warriors,
amounts of gold, quantities of corn, etc.
This lesson plan consists
of four learning activities that build upon one another and should, therefore,
be used sequentially. The first two activities provide background and context
on the Inca Empire. The second two activities consider the Inca courier system.
The lesson can be extended by examining the Inca use of quipus, the knotted
ropes employed for record-keeping. Much of
what we know about the Inca and their empire comes from the Spanish. However,
in order to keep the focus on the Inca, the lesson makes no reference to the European
conquest of South America. Review the suggested
activities, then download and duplicate any online materials you will need. If
desired, you can bookmark specific web pages so that students can access relevant
online materials directly; print out required pages and duplicate copies as necessary
for student viewing. (See Selected
EDSITEment Websites for a guide to locating online materials.) For
Activity 2, you may wish to have at hand a picture book of South America or Peru
that helps to show the ruggedness of the Andes terrain. Suggested
Activities 1. Who Were the
Inca? 2. Where Were the Inca? 3.
Getting Your Message Across the Mountains 4.
Play a Game of Telephone Extending
the Lesson: Messages in Knots 1.
Who Were the Inca? As far as the Inca
were concerned, theirs was the greatest of all the world's civilizations. They
may have been right. Their empire was the largest of the pre-industrial world;
their golden capital, Cuzco, the richest city in the Americas. Beginning
in the 1300s, the Inca moved down from their Andean homeland to conquer the neighboring
lands and peoples along the Pacific coast of South America. By the time the Spanish
arrived in the early 1500s, the Inca Empire was at the height of its power. It
stretched some 2,500 miles—the approximate distance from Washington, DC, to Los
Angeles, California—and incorporated more than 12 million people speaking 20
different languages. For background on the
empire, consult the EDSITEment-reviewed
site Conquistadors;
read the pages on "Growth of the Inca Empire." Begin
by asking what the students know about the Inca and the Inca Empire. They may
associate the Inca with a number of things, such as the Andes, gold, mummies,
South America, terraced farming, llamas, or Machu Picchu. Explain
that there were several significant things that the Inca did not have: the wheel,
the horse, or the written word, all of which will have significance for this lesson.
Preview for the students some key words: - courier—a
messenger
- quipu—a cord with other (knotted) cords attached, used
to keep records
- empire—a territory inhabited by different people that
is ruled over by a single sovereign, or monarch
- Andes—the mountain range
in South America
- terrain—the physical features of a tract of land
- Peru—the
modern-day country in South America that was the heart of the Inca Empire
Before
proceeding to the next activity, ask the students to write three to four sentences
answering the question, "Who were the Inca?" 2.
Where Were the Inca? Have the students
locate the Inca Empire on a map. Show the empire's geographical context by going
to the map site
on the EDSITEment-reviewed website National
Geographic's Xpeditions. On the world map, click on South America. Explain
that the Inca Empire stretched along the western part of the continent, from what
is now Colombia to northern Chile. Examine
the empire in more detail by clicking on the map in the right-hand margin of this
page from the EDSITEment-reviewed resource Conquistadors.
Explain to the students that one geographical
feature dominates this stretch of land: the Andes mountains. The
Andes run for 4,500 miles along the west coast of South America, making them the
longest mountain range in the world. They rise 20,000 feet into the air—more
than half the height at which a jumbo jet cruises. There's
little oxygen up that high, and it's often bitterly cold. Yet it was there that
the Inca built their empire in the clouds—the largest in the pre-industrial world.
Show the students the rugged terrain that
made up much of the Inca Empire: Use
a picture book of the Andes if you have one. Have
the students write one to two sentences answering the question, "Where were the
Inca?" 3. Getting Your
Message Across the Mountains How do you
think messages were passed across this great mountain empire—in a time before
automobiles and planes and telephones and email? The Inca didn't even have horses
or the wheel or a written language. Yes, they had llamas, but these animals didn't
like to be ridden and were only used to carry supplies. All traveling was done
on foot. How did the Inca pass messages? They used couriers. Explain
that the Inca built a 10,000-mile network of trails, some as wide as 24 feet,
to knit together the parts of their empire. Show the students a section of one
of the trails at the
Virtual Inca Trail, and at the Conquistadors
site (click on the road icon in the right-hand margin). The
Inca used couriers throughout the empire, all along the well-made trails. The
couriers worked as a kind of relay team. Stationed every few miles, they could
carry messages at a speed of 150 miles a day. (They were so fast that the Inca
emperor used them for more than just messages; sometimes he had them deliver to
his kitchen fresh fish from the Pacific Ocean.) How
do you think the couriers passed on their messages? Remember, they had no written
language. They had to pass on memorized messages. So they not only had to have
good legs, they had to have good memories, too. Have
the students write two to three sentences answering the question, "How did the
Inca get their messages across the mountains?" 4.
Play a Game of Telephone Set up a game
of telephone for the class to show how messages that are passed on by word of
mouth can go wrong. Have them communicate a message of four sentences. Then
show the students how mnemonics can help. Have
them write the word INCA down the left side
of a page. Ask them to write out a message using the letters of INCA to spell
a message. For example: I
haven't heard from you in a long time. N
ot much going on here. C
an you send me a message by courier? A
ll I need to know is that you're OK. Have the students memorize
the message, then try to deliver it again. To pass on their
messages, Inca couriers also used quipus. Quipu means knot in Quechua,
the native language of the Andes. The quipu was a useful record-keeping
tool for the Inca government. For background, visit Conquistadors;
click on the right-hand icon "Quipus." Quipus
were special knotted strings that kept track of numbers. Different-colored quipus
stood for different things. Yellow, for example, stood for gold; red stood for
warriors. Different knotted strings were tied together to convey a message. Have
the students make their own quipu to show the year they were born. Ask
them to attach four different colors of yarn to a plain-colored string. Let the
first string stand for thousands, the second for hundreds, the third for tens,
and the fourth for ones. (For example, a student born in 1991 would tie one knot
in the first string, nine knots in the second string, and one knot in the last
string.)
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