The Andean and Pacific regions of South America are home to a remarkable variety of languages and language families, with a range of typological differences. This linguistic diversity results from a complex historical background, comprising periods of greater communication between different peoples and languages, and periods of fragmentation and individual development. The Languages of the Andes documents in a single volume the indigenous languages spoken and formerly spoken in this linguistically rich region, as well as in adjacent areas. Grouping the languages into different cultural spheres, it describes their characteristics in terms of language typology, language contact, and the social perspectives of present-day languages. The authors provide both historical and contemporary information, and illustrate the languages with detailed grammatical sketches. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book will be a valuable source for students and scholars of linguistics and anthropology alike.

Primary source of information on pre-Conquest Incan history, traditions and chronology. Full details of ceremonies, festivals, and religious beliefs, origin of the Incas, arrival of the Spaniards, much more. 2 maps. Bibliography.

Spanish explorer and historian PEDRO SARMIENTO DE GAMBOA (1532-1592) spent more than twenty years in Peru. During that time he collected what was, at the time of its writing in 1572, the most accurate history of Incan civilization. De Gamboa personally interviewed many Incas around Cuzco in order to hear the songs and stories of their ancestors. This history was not gathered without an ulterior motive, however. De Gamboa aimed to show that the Inca were cruel tyrants who had usurped the land they were living on when the Spaniards found them. By showing that the Inca deserved the treatment they got from the Spanish crown, De Gamboa hoped to save his country's reputation on the world stage. Scholars and amateur historians will find here fascinating Incan mythology as well as thorough explanations of Incan society. This replica of a 1907 British edition also includes The Execution of the Inca Tupac Amaru, by the 16th-century Spaniard CAPTAIN BALTASAR DE OCAMPO.

Honored by UNESCO’s Memory of the World designation, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615) rewrites Andean history in accordance with the author’s goals of reforming Spanish colonial rule in the continent-spanning viceroyalty of Peru. Housed at the Royal Library of Denmark since the 1660s, brought to international attention in 1908, and first published in facsimile in 1936, the autograph manuscript has been the topic of research in Andean ethnology and related disciplines for several decades. Now, on the eve of the 400th anniversary of Guaman Poma’s composition of the Nueva corónica, a renowned group of international scholars has focused fresh attention on the work, its author, and its times. Accomplished Andeanists such as R. Tom Zuidema, Frank Salomon, Jan Szeminski, and Regina Harrison are joined by other notable and younger scholars to explore Andean institutions and ecology, Inca governance, Spanish conquest-era history, the transformations of native and European sources in Guaman Poma’s hand, and his multilingual artistic dexterity. The relationship of the manuscript to Fray Martín de Murúa’s chronicles and a critical analysis of claims about the Nueva corónica’s authorship round out the volume.