[music playing] NARRATOR: 500 years
ago, a powerful people called the Incas ruled
over the largest empire in all the Americas. Then Spanish
conquistadors invaded, discovering the
magnificent riches and splendor of
the Incas, as well as a bizarre cult of death. GORDON MCEWAN: I know of no
other major society in which the dead were actually
kept with the living and treated as if
they were still alive. They were seen
as living beings that had to be tended for,
that had to be dressed every day, that had to be fed. They had to go to the
bathroom, they had to have sex. NARRATOR: The Incas
held lavish banquets for their mummified ancestors,
where corpses were dressed in fine clothes and
exquisite jewelry, and offered the
choicest food and drink. Loyal subjects
held conversations with the mummies of
deceased emperors, seeking advice and
guidance from them. In their mountainous world
where land was scarce, why did the Incas
give their mummies vast estates, where
hundreds of laborers toiled to grow
food for the dead? Join us as we travel
to the high Andes and transcend the
centuries to enter the domain of the most
mysterious death cult the world has ever known. [music playing] [flute] It is the year 1532,
a time of tragedy and sorrow in the
ancient land of Peru. The mighty Inca empire
has been vanquished by a tiny band of
ruthless adventurers from across the sea. Once the powerful lords of
their mountainous domain, the proud Inca people now
toil under the bitter yoke of new masters from Spain. The leader of the Spaniards,
Francisco Pizarro, makes his triumphant entry
into the Inca capital, of the holy city of Cusco. As he establishes
his rule, Pizarro decides to reward
an Indian ally who wishes to wed an Inca princess. He sends his cousin Pedro
to ask the patriarch of the young woman's family
to approve the marriage. It is a mission that Pedro
Pizarro will never forget. Believing that he
will be taken to meet the living head
of the household, Pizarro is shocked
at what he finds. He discovers that the
patriarch who has the power to govern the entire
family's affairs is a shriveled,
mummified corpse. In stunned fascination,
the Spaniard waits for those who attend the
mummy to announce its decision. After some time, he's informed
that the dead patriarch has given his permission. The marriage may take place. The conquering
Spaniards are horrified at the power that the dead
command over the Incas. Coming to Peru in search
of gold and riches, the conquistadors have stumbled
upon an eerie death cult, centuries old. For here in the
land of the Incas, the living and the dead
share one of history's most bizarre relationships. The living treat the deceased
as though they have not died, laboring for them, eating
and drinking with them, even building them
splendid palaces and granting them vast estates. The living believe that
in return, the dead will guarantee their survival. After witnessing
this cult of death, one awestruck Spaniard would
write that such unfathomable rights existed among
the Incas that only God could comprehend them. But the Incas were not alone. At the dawn of human history in
far-flung parts of the world, other civilizations once
worshipped the dead. About 3,000 years before
the birth of Jesus, the Egyptians conceived
the cult of immortality, developing their secret
art of preserving human bodies for eternity. Yet even at the time
of the pharaohs, Peruvians in South
America had already been mummifying their dead
for nearly 4,000 years. GORDON MCEWAN: Ancient Peru
has the world's oldest mummies. We know that mummification
began in Chile 7000 BC. Long before the Egyptians,
we know that a simple fishing people, the Chinchorro
on the coast of Chile, were mummifying ordinary
people in the community, and they were bringing them
gifts of food and drink as if they were still alive. NARRATOR: What made Peru the
birthplace of mummification? In addition to its
hot, dry climate, its towering mountains may
have provided ideal conditions for preserving the dead. The idea of the mummy
probably came from the fact that mummies were accidentally
formed by burying people in high and very dry
places where they were essentially freeze dried. And from this came the
notion that the body could be preserved indefinitely. NARRATOR: Peru's worship
of ancestors was not only far older than Egypt's. It surpassed anything
practiced anywhere else in the ancient world. The Egyptians believed
that after death, souls journeyed to a faraway
land beyond the setting sun. But in Peruvian
belief, the dead never left the world of the living. GORDON MCEWAN: I know of no
other major society in which the dead were actually
kept with the living and treated as if
they were still alive. This person was-- he
wasn't ceasing to live. He was just transformed into a
more stable state, if you will. And that was a good
thing from their point of view, not something to be
afraid of or horrified by. NARRATOR: Initially,
the worship of the dead was a simple family
affair, performed in isolated farming villages. But as Peruvian
civilization developed, so too did its cult of the dead. Why did it become
such a widespread and elaborate ritual? [music playing] Many have long
pondered ancient Peru's strange religious
rituals of mummy worship. How did they originate, and why? The answers are elusive,
but one intriguing sight provides clues to the possible
evolution of the cult. Deep within the southern Andes,
not far from the modern city Cusco, lies a valley situated
11,000 feet above sea level. Archaeologists have
discovered that it is strewn with strange,
massive constructions of rock. They are the remains of enormous
buildings built over 1,000 years ago, structures
whose original purpose has long been forgotten. Today, local people call
this place Pikillaqta. Archaeologists regard
it as one of Peru's most baffling ancient mysteries. Pikillaqta was
totally an enigma. There are no surface
artifacts suggesting what it might have been. All we knew was that it was
very large and impressive. We have some rough calculations
that indicate to us that we're looking at more
than nine million man days just to build the
central portion alone. Therefore, an enormous
economic investment in terms of providing for that
labor, feeding them, et cetera. NARRATOR: For centuries,
Pikillaqta's purpose was shrouded in obscurity. But in this small
building, its secrets may at last have been revealed. GORDON MCEWAN: As
we began excavating, we uncovered this
wall containing a row of large niches. This captured our attention,
because large niches are usually
associated with temple structures in ancient Peru. We don't know exactly what
would have been in them, but we suppose that
they might have contained images of ancestors. NARRATOR: Further digging
uncovered gruesome artifacts, human remains
purposely concealed within some of
Pikillaqta's walls, and mysterious pits
containing llama bones and other
offerings, all of which suggested ancestor worship. In the 1920s, exquisite
human figurines were found in similar offering pits. Scholars were mystified. Could these have been the
faces of sacred ancestors? Could Pikillaqta
have been a center for worshipping the dead? Perhaps it had an
even stranger purpose. The Wari were a militant people. Some believe that in order
to guarantee the allegiance of those they had
conquered, they may have held the mummified
ancestors of the defeated as hostages. In holding them hostage, we're
not talking about a situation, putting them in prison
and making them miserable. We bring them to very fine
temples that we control. We allow the members
of their lineage who are living to come
in and worship them and to commune with them. But there's always
the implied threat that if you do not
cooperate, something terrible could happen to
your lineage ancestor, who is now a mummy. We believe it was a
mechanism used by the Wari to control large
numbers of people in a very economical way
in terms of not needing huge amounts of
soldiers to come in and force people to cooperate. NARRATOR: In ancient
Peru, the secretive empire may have been this. He who would control the living
must first control the dead. But why were the living so
afraid to lose their dead? What terrible power did the
deceased wield over them? Clues emerged at a
nearby site called Choquepukio, where
archaeologists came upon a grim discovery. When we began excavating
in front of these tombs, we discovered that the
bodies that had been in them were laying in the
dirt directly in front, as if they had just been
yanked out of the tomb and left on the ground. And in addition, we found
artifacts that suggested these were important people. We found a woman's
topo pin, which is a shawl pin made of silver. This is not something
that would be owned by your run-of-the-mill
Andean person. This is not a modern
looting pattern, and suggests to us that it was
done perhaps in ancient times by people who were not
interested in robbing the bodies. They were interested
in defiling them. NARRATOR: Why were the
sacred dead of Choquepukio so savagely desecrated? Perhaps their destruction was
meant to punish the living. GORDON MCEWAN: Removing
their ancestors and destroying the places of
worship of their ancestors was a way of completely
exterminating this group. Not only killing them off,
but removing their rights to the land,
removing their place of centeredness on the Earth. They no longer existed. NARRATOR: Amid the
ruins Pikillaqta, some say they still
hear the solemn prayers of Wari
overlords, honoring their mummified hostages. [non-english speech] NARRATOR: At
Choquepukio, many believe they can hear the
anguished cries of mourners grieving at the
desecration of their dead. From both sites, we
may learn the secret of the mummy's power. For scholars believe
that an ancient Peru, it was the dead ancestors
and not their living descendants who owned the land. Here if ancestral
remains were destroyed, the living may have lost all
rights to their property. And in the harsh world of the
Andes, those without property starved. But land was only one
fragment of the extraordinary relationship that evolved
between the ancient Peruvians and their ancestors. Hundreds of years after
the Wari built Pikillaqta, they would mysteriously die out. And a remarkable new
people, the Incas, would seize control
of the Andes. The Incas would create a
magnificent civilization and forge an even deeper
bond between the living and the dead. [music playing] Why did the Incas lavish
such elaborate ritual on worshipping their dead? No one has yet fathomed
all the answers to this puzzling enigma. But clues may be found
embedded in the long history of these remarkable people. For centuries, while the
powerful Wari ruled Peru, the ancestors of the Incas
were an obscure tribe, living alongside other
people in the southern Andes. The Wari empire
declined around 1000 AD. Then in the early 15th
century, the Incas galvanized themselves
into a fighting force, and began their
meteoric rise to power. Within a few generations,
they forged the largest empire Native America had
ever known, an area as large as the Roman Empire. As they contemplate the Incas'
extraordinary accomplishment, scholars often wonder how
simple Andean farmers could transform themselves
into one of antiquity's most powerful nations. It is a question that may
never be finally answered. But experts agree
that Inca civilization owes an enormous debt to
one extraordinary man, an emperor named Pachacuti. In the Inca language, Pachacuti
meant either cataclysm or he who transforms the world. It is indeed a fitting name
for this towering figure of America's past. GORDON MCEWAN:
Pachacuti is perhaps the greatest political
genius ever produced by the Native American world. He is credited with completely
inventing the Inca state and all of its institutions. He sat down and drew up the
organizational charts and said, this is the way
it's going to be. NARRATOR: Pachacuti's
fertile and imaginative mind reshaped virtually every
aspect of Inca life, even the way his people
venerated their dead. It was Pachacuti who evolved
Peruvian ancestor worship beyond anything the Andean
world had ever known, by creating the official
cult of the royal mummies. He devised a new
religion which celebrated the heroic deeds
of Inca ancestors believed to be divine emperors
who were children of the sun. Pachacuti's motivation in
organizing the mummy cult was to perpetuate Inca rule. He had to set up a
system that legitimized what the Incas were doing. Of course, we're
conquering the world. We're ruling the world. It is our legitimate right. This is the natural
order of things. Our ancestors have
foreordained this. NARRATOR: Pachacuti was
untroubled by the fact that most of his
ancestors' triumphs were more mythological
than real. He built magnificent
palaces whose walls can still be seen in the
ancient Inca capital of Cusco. In these splendid
homes, the royal dead were propped up in
resplendent luxury, attended by a host of living
servants and descendants. [singing] Each year at the great sun
festival called Inti Raymi, the imperial mummies were
carried in solemn procession around Cusco's central square. It is said that as
the mummies passed by, the people bowed
and wept, so moved were they by the mere sight
of their royal ancestors. The dead body of the last Inca
was not seen as some useless, non-living object, but was
seen as infused with the power, with magical power that
flowed through the landscape, that flowed through
the sacred trees, the caves that they venerated. And it was necessary to
feed and clothe the mummy to keep it alive, to
keep its essence alive, in order for power to
flow from the mummy back to the ordinary
lives of the people. NARRATOR: In the
world of the Incas, the boundary between life and
death had ceased to exist. Deceased Inca emperors and
other aristocrats still resided in the
magnificent palaces they had enjoyed when alive. Their mummified bodies were
attired in magnificent finery and adorned with
jewels, surrounded by devoted priests and
servants who attended to their every need. In solemn reverence, the
living carried their dead to public festivals, to social
visits with other mummies, or to living relatives, and
even to sumptuous banquets where they were
offered food and drink. At these bizarre festivities,
the living attendants of the mummies ate their
meals and drank their toasts, believing that
the dead ancestors were also enjoying themselves. Attendants placed large
pitchers of corn beer in front of the corpses,
offering toasts and good wishes to both the living and the dead. In the imperial mummy cult,
the lives of the living became a strange theater of
the dead, an acting out of all of life's pleasures and
necessities for the holy ones who had never really died. EVAN HADINGHAM:
The royal mummies was seen as living beings. They had to be dressed every
day, they had to be fed. They had to go to the
bathroom, they had to have sex. NARRATOR: Whenever
a crisis arose, the living, speaking through
priestly interpreters, begged the mummies
for their advice. When war erupted, the dead
charged into battle side by side with the living. [speaking spanish] INTERPRETER: When there
were military expeditions, the mummies of their ancestors
would go with the armies. This seems to have been a
common practice in the Andes, because when the city of
Cusco was attacked by a group from the north known
as the Chankas, they were also carrying
their ancestors. And the Inca
victory was won when they were able to
carry off the mummies from this group of Chankas. NARRATOR: In more
peaceful times, people asked the
mummies for permission to plant their fields, to marry,
even to engage in business. In the world of
the Incas, the dead held the fate of the living
in their lifeless hands. The superstitious Incas were
convinced that if the ancestors were displeased with
them, they would be doomed to suffer disease,
ill fortune, and death. They firmly believed
that the mummies kept them alive by controlling
the forces of nature. BERNABE COBO: When there
was a need for water for the cultivated fields,
they usually brought out the emperor's body,
carrying it in a procession through the field. And they were convinced
this was largely responsible for bringing rain. Father Bernab Cobo, 1609. GORDON MCEWAN: Mummies
also had a role in being able to help
people answer questions that were unknowable to humans. They could predict
the future, they could help people
interpret current events in terms of
forecasting what they should do in response to them. They could be asked to
intercede with the supernatural and to bring the world
back into balance. NARRATOR: Perhaps
it is no wonder that fearing for the
future, the Incas willingly served their departed
ancestors in the fervent belief that they would be
protected by the all-knowing, all-powerful dead. When Pachacuti
decided to enforce the cult of the royal
mummies, he cleverly blended practical politics
with the age-old reverence that his people held
for their ancestors. But he may have unwittingly sown
the seeds of his empire's fall. [music playing] In 1471, the legendary
emperor Pachacuti, creator of the mighty
Inca empire, died. His grieving people prepared
their beloved emperor for his new abode
among the dead. After removing his
internal organs and packing the empty chest
cavity with preservative herbs, they carried his body
high into the Andes. Among the lofty peaks,
the heat of the sun and the cold, dry winds of
night soon turned his corpse into a hard, resilient husk. His mummy was
dressed and decorated with finery worthy
of an emperor, then returned to his
palace to begin his sojourn among the living dead. Pachacuti left behind
the imperial mummy cult that he had established. But in the years that followed,
so much time and effort were devoted to
caring for the mummies that the cult severely strained
the empire's resources. Yet the elaborate worship
of the ancestors continued. Why? The answer lies in the
intensely deep and powerful bond that existed between the
living Incas and their dead. After Pachacuti died, the
cult of the royal ancestors was continued by groups of royal
descendants called panakas, special groups that Pachacuti
himself had established to serve the imperial mummies. The panakas administered the
mummy's lands and estates, all of which remained
a deceased emperor's property, even after death. On the estates,
hundreds of laborers worked tirelessly, growing
food for banquets and feasts to be attended by the mummies. For the privileged panaka
members, worshipping the dead had its rewards. As the mummies were exposed
to the good things in life, so too were their
living attendants. After all, the goods that
are produced for the dead are not produced to be wasted. They're produced to be shared. The occasions when people
went to feast the dead were also occasions
to feast themselves. NARRATOR: But this arrangement
between the living and the dead was fatally flawed. Since no one could inherit
a dead ruler's property, a new emperor was penniless
when he came to the throne. To fill the royal
coffers, he had to rely on the spoils
of war, won by fighting battles in distant lands. Yet no matter how much
wealth was accumulated, vast amounts of the
empire's choicest farmland remained the
property of the dead. Generations of living
Incas continued devoting themselves to raising
crops for their ancestors. GORDON MCEWAN: They certainly
had a lot of costs involved in maintaining this cult. And
principally, they would do it because they genuinely
believed this person was still alive and participating
in their society. Therefore, they could not
take their material goods away from them. The problem is that
in doing so, they removed a tremendous amount of
very arable, productive land from the royal academy. NARRATOR: By 1527,
half a century after Pachacuti's death,
the wealthy panakas had grown into a powerful
political factions, capable of challenging
the emperor's authority. A new emperor named Hu scar
now ascended the throne. Determined to break the
power of the panakas, Hu scar boldly decreed an end
to the cult of the mummies. PEDRO PIZARRO: It is said
that one day, becoming angry with these dead people, he said
that he was going to have them all buried, and was going
to take away from them all that they possessed,
for the dead had all that was best in his kingdom. Pedro Pizarro. GORDON MCEWAN: By the time
that the emperor Hu scar came to the throne, he found himself
in a situation where he needed to begin to suppress
these cults of the mummy, because they were
controlling way too much of the empire's resources,
and were very influential in decisions that
he thought that he alone as the [inaudible]
Inca should be making. We know very little about the
particulars of what he did, but the Spanish
accounts record the fact that he alienated large
numbers of the nobles of Cusco through this attempt. NARRATOR: Unwilling to
accept the loss of the wealth and privilege they enjoyed
as servants of the royal ancestors, many of the great
lords of Cusco abandoned their allegiance to Hu scar. Dissent soon split the nation. At the end of a long and bloody
civil war between Hu scar and his half brother
Atahualpa, Hu scar was taken prisoner
and eventually killed by Atahualpa's forces. Atahualpa declared himself
emperor and continued the cult of mummy worship. But Hu scar's body
was never mummified. A contemptuous
Atahualpa burned it. Hu scar's grim fate had shown
what would happen to those who dared to
question the ancient authority of the living dead. But within a year, the mighty
Inca empire itself lay in ruin. It is February 1532. After a perilous 800-mile
voyage from Panama, the Spanish adventure
Francisco Pizarro lands on the coast of Peru. With him are 168 men, driven
by the dream of discovering a fabled land of
gold and of seizing its riches for themselves. Facing them are the invincible
armies of the Inca emperor Atahualpa, some 200,000
seasoned warriors. At first, the Spaniards
are terrified. But they soon discover
that the Inca empire is not as formidable as it seems. Smallpox, a new disease
transmitted to Peru from the Spanish settlements
in Mexico and Panama, is ravaging the native people. And Atahualpa has
seriously underestimated the steely will and ruthless
coming of Francisco Pizarro. [cannons] Laying a clever ambush,
the Spaniards capture Atahualpa and massacre his
troops by sword and firearm. The Incas flee in terror. In one of history's
most stunning defeats, Pizarro and his
small band of men bring the greatest empire in
the Americas to its knees. Atahualpa offers Pizarro
a king's ransom in gold to spare his life. Pizarro agrees. But as soon as the
gold is delivered, Pizarro strangles Atahualpa. Yet Pizarro and his
men soon discover that killing a living Inca
emperor is not enough. To rule Peru, they must
also conquer the dead. They could not
comprehend the influence that a former and dead emperor
could have on the living. It was something totally alien
to Western thought at the time. So they viewed it as
something quite frightening in the sense of
perhaps something akin to devil worship. NARRATOR: Some of Pizarro's
battle-hardened men were deeply touched by the
reverence the Incas displayed toward their ancestors. Spanish chronicles tell of
conquistadors who respectfully removed their hats when
a procession paraded a royal mummy through
Cusco's streets. But the Catholic church
denounced the mummy cult as pagan idolatry, and
Spanish authorities soon understood that if they
were to truly conquer Peru, they had to eliminate the
last remaining challenge to their rule, the powerful
spell of the ancestors over the living. It was not long before
Peru's Spanish overlords embarked on yet another war,
this time against the dead. FRANK SALOMON: When somebody
was willing to reveal where their ancestors were, then
the clergy and their allies would take out the dead,
bring them into the village, hang them up on ropes, divest
them of their clothing, set them on fire. A dry mummy will go up
in just a puff of smoke. And they knew that as long as
any material trace continued, people would try to be faithful. So even after the dead had
been destroyed by fire, they would gather up the ashes,
and then send secret messengers to go and dump them into rivers
or lakes in faraway places so that not a
trace would remain. NARRATOR: As the church
ruthlessly burned mummies, it forced the Incas to
adopt a strange new ritual which was totally alien
to them, the practice of Christian burial. GORDON MCEWAN: The Incas
were rather perturbed by Christian burial practices. The notion of putting the body
into the ground where it could not be fed or cared for or
brought to visit its relatives or to participate in
ceremonies was totally alien to their way of thought. This was perhaps, one
might describe, a barbarism from their point of view. FRANK SALOMON: Mourners
would come back at night to rescue that person
and try to give them a decent Andean treatment. Well, of course, they had to
do that, because for them, burial was a nightmare. They would think
of their ancestors suffocating and perishing from
hunger underneath the earth all alone. Another thing they
did was to try to gather up the ashes of the
ancestors that had been dead and make them into a new
kind of ancestor shrine. And there even were
special prayers and songs which have been recorded
that were sung in honor of these burned fathers. MAN: Flower of fire,
residue of fire, eat this. Drink this, burned
lord, scorched lord. You who have the water, you who
have the fields, give me water. Give me food from where
you are, so burned. Andean prayer to the
ashes of the dead. [clanging] NARRATOR: In the end,
Catholic zeal and Spanish might proved too
powerful to resist. Reluctantly, the Incas
became Christians. But was the ancient worship
of their ancestors forgotten? [music playing] Every year, Quechua Indians
from throughout the Andes flock to the city of
Cusco to celebrate the great religious festival
known as Corpus Christi. It is a time to commemorate
their ancient culture, which has endured despite
the early Spanish efforts to destroy it. At the festival's
climax, groups of men carry huge images of the
Virgin Mary and Catholic saints from Cusco Cathedral around
the city's main plaza. Each effigy weighs
more than a ton. It is an echo of ancient
times when Inca men carried the mummies of their sacred
dead through Cusco to celebrate the great festival of the sun. GORDON MCEWAN: What we
think the natives are seeing is the old procession
of the mummies being carried around the plaza. The saints have simply
been substituted as another sacred object
that serves the same need. I think they feel
a great continuity when they stand there and
see this parade of images. They know that that particular
aspect of their right is being taken care of, even
though in a Catholic guise, and that the world will
continue to be in order. [speaking spanish] INTERPRETER: Today,
there are still offerings to the dead with
visits to the cemeteries and much drinking,
feasting, and music. The Day of the Dead is a day
of sharing with those we know who are still here with us. [singing and guitar] NARRATOR: The rights of Inca
ancestor worship still live on. And strange as it
seems, the mummies themselves may someday return. But when they
tried to annihilate the cult of the dead, the
Spaniards did not burn all the mummies that they found. Several imperial mummies, among
them the body of Pachacuti himself, were taken from
Cusco to the city of Lima where they mysteriously
disappeared. Perhaps the missing mummies
will be found one day. If so, there will surely be much
rejoicing high in the Andes. After so many sorrowful
years, the beloved ancestors will return to watch
over their people, just as they did for
untold generations past. [music playing]
