Klaipėdos universitetas

Characteristics of Andean huacas are summarized with examples from Urubamba, Machu Picchu, Llactapata, and Chankillo. We identify the pillars on the ridge above the town of Urubamba as a marker of June solstice sunrise to be viewed from the Palace of Huayna Capac. Both ends of the sightline connecting the pillars and the Palace appear to have been huacas. The large carved Intiwatana stone in the Urubamba canyon symbolically ties together Machu Picchu and the nearby ceremonial center of Llactapata. The astronomically complex site of Chankillo includes evidence for ceremonial observations of the solstices and shamanic ritual, set within a large-scale geometry established by June solstice sunset/December solstice sunrise.

Ancient cultures of the northern hemisphere created symbols, myths, and rituals that related deer to certain astronomical phenomena, to cosmological and cosmogonical ideas, and to hunting calendars. From their knowledge of the animal’s appearance, behaviour, and phenology they derived conceptions of power, fertility, creation and renewal, life and death, and psychosomatic transformation during a shamanistic seance.