Manco Cápac
Also known as: Manco Capac, Ayar Manco, Manqu Qhapaq
Mythological Narrative
The chronicles preserve two stories of where Manco Cápac came from. In the version Garcilaso took from royal oral tradition, the sun god Inti pitied humankind and sent down his son Manco Cápac and daughter Mama Ocllo at Lake Titicaca, giving them a golden rod and bidding them travel north until it sank into the earth at a single thrust: there they were to found a city. At the hill of Huanacauri in the valley of Cusco the rod vanished into the ground. The pair gathered the people of the region, Manco teaching the men to farm and Mama Ocllo teaching the women to weave, and Cusco was founded.
Betanzos and Sarmiento record a different beginning at Pacaritambo, south of Cusco, where the mountain Tambo Toco has three openings. From the middle window came four brothers and four sisters: Ayar Manco, Ayar Cachi, Ayar Uchu and Ayar Auca with their sister-wives. On the journey Ayar Cachi proved so strong that a stone from his sling could level a hilltop; his uneasy brothers sent him back into the cave on a pretext and sealed the mouth behind him. Ayar Uchu turned to stone on the summit of Huanacauri and became a venerated huaca; Ayar Auca flew ahead and became a stone marker on the site of Cusco. Ayar Manco alone arrived to found the city as Manco Cápac, raising the Inticancha, the dwelling of the Sun that preceded the Coricancha.
Historians treat him as legendary; reckoned by the king-list, his era falls around the thirteenth century. Every later Inca traced his line back to him, and the indigenous chronicler Guaman Poma drew his portrait in the Nueva corónica: the royal fringe on his brow, a scepter in his hand.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## Two origin traditions
The chroniclers preserve two main accounts of Manco Cápac. Garcilaso de la Vega (1609) says the Sun, pitying humanity's savage state, placed his son and daughter in Lake Titicaca with a golden rod; they were to settle where it sank into the ground at a single thrust, which happened at Huanacauri above the valley of Cusco. Juan de Betanzos (1551) and Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1572) instead tell of four brothers, the Ayars, and four sisters who emerged from a cave called Tambo Toco at Pacaritambo, south of Cusco. On the journey one brother, Ayar Cachi, is tricked back into the cave and sealed in; another, Ayar Uchu, turns to stone on Huanacauri; and Manco, the survivor, founds Cusco.
## Ancestor and huaca
Whatever his historicity, Manco Cápac functioned as the dynasty's founding ancestor, and the Inca kings traced their right to rule to him and through him to the Sun. The ruling lineages of Cusco each claimed descent from a particular king, beginning with Manco's. His stone at Huanacauri and the sites of the Pacaritambo journey were huacas visited in the initiation rites of young Inca nobles, which Molina describes.
## Historicity
Modern historians generally treat the first Inca rulers in the king lists, Manco Cápac among them, as legendary or semi-legendary; firmer chronology begins with Pachacuti in the fifteenth century.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Manco Cápac.
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Inti
Sun god and royal ancestor of the Inca empire, pictured as a golden disk with a human face. The Sapa Inca ruled as his son; Coricancha and the June solstice feast were his.
Viracocha
The Andean creator: he rose from Lake Titicaca in darkness, set sun, moon and stars in the sky, shaped the nations in stone at Tiahuanaco, then walked the land as a staff-bearing wanderer before departing across the sea.
Coricancha
Holiest sun temple of the Inca empire, its walls sheeted in gold, its garden set with golden maize and llamas. The priory of Santo Domingo was built on its walls, which have outlasted two great earthquakes.
The Creation at Lake Titicaca
The world lay in darkness until Viracocha appeared at Lake Titicaca and called the sun up from the sacred rock on the Island of the Sun; moon and stars followed, and the nations were summoned from caves and springs.