Ceque system of Cusco
Sistema de ceques del Cusco
- Date
- c. 1450 (descrito en 1653) · confidence low
- Place
- Cusco, Peru
- Credited to
- Incas of Cusco
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A network of some forty-one imaginary lines radiating from the Coricancha that organised over three hundred shrines (huacas), land and the ritual calendar. It was an Inca way of ordering the valley's sacred and social space.
It is known from the descriptions of Polo de Ondegardo and Bernabé Cobo (1653), not from Inca maps; its precise origin, calendrical nature and reconstruction (Zuidema, Bauer) are debated.
What it led to
- organisation of ritual territory and of land and water distribution among ayllus
- a source for reconstructing Cusco's sacred landscape