Archaeology: A submerged Inca offering hints at Lake Titicaca’s sacred role

Here's a recent archaeological find of the Inca people from Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is a large,
deep, freshwater lake in the Andes on the border of Bolivia and Peru.
    Before you get into the article and the finding, it's helpful to know who the Inca people were. The Inca Empire, also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire, was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The Inca Empire flourished from approximately 1200 to 1533 AD. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in the city of Cusco. The Inca civilization arose from the Peruvian highlands sometime in the early 13th century.


A submerged Inca offering hints at Lake Titicaca’s sacred role

T. SEGUIN/UNIV. LIBRE DE BRUXELLES

By Bruce Bower, Science News
AUGUST 3, 2020 AT 7:01 PM

A stone box fished out of Lake Titicaca contains tiny items that add an intriguing twist to what’s known about the Inca empire’s religious practices and supernatural beliefs about the massive lake.

An Inca ritual offering found submerged in Lake Titicaca included a llama or alpaca figurine carved out of a spiny oyster shell and a rolled gold sheet.  T. SEGUIN/UNIV. LIBRE DE BRUXELLES

Divers exploring an underwater portion of the lake’s K’akaya reef found a ritual offering deposited by the Inca, say archaeologists Christophe Delaere of the University of Oxford and José Capriles of Penn State. The carved stone container holds a miniature llama or alpaca carved from a spiny oyster shell and a gold sheet rolled into a cylinder about the length of a paperclip, the scientists report in the August Antiquity. The meaning of these objects to the Inca are unclear.

(Photo LEFT: Inca offering box
Researchers suspect the Inca placed these two items in this stone box and then used ropes to lower it into the water during a religious ceremony of some kind. 20 Centimeters is 7.8 inches Credit: 
T. SEGUIN/UNIV. LIBRE DE BRUXELLES) 

The location of the K’akaya offering indicates that Inca people regarded all of Lake Titicaca, which straddles the border between Bolivia and Peru, as sacred, not just its fabled Island of the Sun, the researchers say.

Incan people. Credit: http://blog.mountainlodgesofperu.com/

Spanish documents described the Inca, who had no writing system (SN: 6/11/19), as believing that their ancestors had originated on the Island of the Sun, about 30 kilometers south of K’akaya Island. Inca rulers, whose empire lasted from 1400 to 1532, built a ceremonial center there. And until now, it’s the only place on Lake Titicaca where similar submerged stone boxes bearing figurines and gold sheets have been found. Of at least 28 stone boxes found there since 1977, many had been looted; only four had partially preserved or intact contents.

Stone boxes containing figurines and gold items have also been uncovered at sites of Inca child sacrifices in the Andes. A connection may have existed between human sacrificial ceremonies that were intended to appease Inca deities and events held at Lake Titicaca, including the submerging of ritual offerings, the researchers suggest.