Inca (aymara)

The name of the family unit for the Incas is "ayllu." The Incas lived in extended families, which is a group of clans living together. The leader of each clan was called the "Mallcu." The Mallcu was advised by a group of council elders. However, the Mallcu had to bow to the will of the INCA. (When you see INCA spelled in all capital letters, that is telling you that I am talking about the supreme leader of the Incas.) We will talk about the INCA later. Marriage was a necessity in Incan society because a man could not be considered an adult until he was married. Most men were not married until they were around 20. Just like any other society, monogamy was the norm for the lower classes, but concubines were permitted for the upper classes. Women were able to be married when they could reproduce.

Page: 6Search Result: The Inkan extended family as a unit was associated with others into the larger, generally patrilineal, AYLLU, a local kin grouping, frequently identified with the lineage. Service states, however, that "the AYLLU was not a clan of the sort possessed by so many American Indian tribes; it was not unilateral or exogamous or totemic. It was probably much like the genealogical, corporate kin group of the Polynesians, although specific and conclusive information is lacking" (Service 1958, 326).

Although displaying distinctly hierarchical and despotic features, Incan rule also exhibited an unusual measure of flexibility and paternalism. The basic local unit of society was the ayllu, which formed an endogamous nucleus of kinship groups who possessed collectively a specific, although often disconnected, territory. In the ayllu, grazing land was held in common (private property did not exist), whereas arable land was parceled out to families in proportion to their size. Since self-sufficiency was the ideal of Andean society, family units claimed parcels of land in different ecological niches in the rugged Andean terrain. In this way, they achieved what anthropologists have called "vertical complementarity," that is, the ability to produce a wide variety of crops--such as maize, potatoes, and quinoa (a protein-rich grain)--at different altitudes for household consumption.

The principle of complementarity also applied to Andean social relations, as each family head had the right to ask relations, allies, or neighbors for help in cultivating his plot. In return, he was obligated to offer them food and chicha (a fermented corn alcoholic beverage), and to help them on their own plots when asked. Mutual aid formed the ideological and material bedrock of all Andean social and productive relations. This system of reciprocal exchange existed at every level of Andean social organization: members of the ayllus, curacas (local lords) with their subordinate ayllus, and the Inca himself with all his subjects.

Ayllus often formed parts of larger dual organizations with upper and lower divisions called moieties, and then still larger units, until they comprised the entire ethnic group. As it expanded, the Inca state became, historian Nathan Wachtel writes, "the pinnacle of this immense structure of interlocking units. It imposed a political and military apparatus on all of these ethnic groups, while continuing to rely on the hierarchy of curacas, who declared their loyalty to the Inca and ruled in his name." In this sense, the Incas established a system of indirect rule that enabled the incorporated ethnic groups to maintain their distinctiveness and self-awareness within a larger imperial system.