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In Quechua
Quechua

Quechua is a Native American language of South America. It was already widely spoken across the Central Andes long before the time of the Inca Empire, who established it as the official language of administration for their Empire, and is still spoken today in various regional forms by some 10 million people through much of South America, in...
, a Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples....
 language of South America
South America

South America is the southern continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere....
, a huaca or wak'a is an object that represents something revered, typically a monument of some kind. The term huaca can refer to natural locations, such as immense rocks. Some huacas have been associated with veneration and ritual. Andean cultures believed every object has a physical presence and two camaquen (spirits), one to create it & another to animate it.






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In Quechua
Quechua

Quechua is a Native American language of South America. It was already widely spoken across the Central Andes long before the time of the Inca Empire, who established it as the official language of administration for their Empire, and is still spoken today in various regional forms by some 10 million people through much of South America, in...
, a Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples....
 language of South America
South America

South America is the southern continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere....
, a huaca or wak'a is an object that represents something revered, typically a monument of some kind. The term huaca can refer to natural locations, such as immense rocks. Some huacas have been associated with veneration and ritual. Andean cultures believed every object has a physical presence and two camaquen (spirits), one to create it & another to animate it. They would invoke its spirits for the object to function.

Uses of the term "huaca"

Each separate linguistic group in the Andean empires had its own sacred places. Many of the early civilizations of Peru
Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
 considered all the world to be sacred and alive; this concept meant that anything of significant beauty or strength would be called a huaca. The word pacarina is sometimes used interchangeably for these locations. A huaca can be a place honored such as a high mountain pass, an origin or emergence or place of creation (pacarina), a place of traditional significance such as a spring, a mountain top (apu) where rain and water originates, an astronomically aligned location, or a place of historical or mytho-historical significance (some the early peoples of the Andes did not differentiate between historical and sacred mythical events). A huaca could also be the residence or panaka of the deceased mummies of previous Incas
Inca Empire

The Inca Empire was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cuzco in modern-day Peru....
. . The huaca could also be the sacred location of one of the adopted (conquered) sub-kingdoms of the empire of the Incas or their preceding empires, such as the complex at Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca is a lake located on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It sits 3,812 m above sea level making it one of the highest commercially navigable lakes in the world....
. It can also refer to a specific pacarina (burial place), or a place of origin similar in definition to the origin places in the North American Southwest known as the place of emergence or Sipapu/Shipapu among the peoples which used kiva
Kiva

A kiva is a room used by modern Pueblo people for religious rituals, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, kivas are square-walled and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremony....
s for worship (especially among the people commonly referred to as Pueblo
Pueblo

Pueblos are traditional communities of Native Americans in the United States in the southwestern United States of America. The communities are recognized worldwide for their adobe buildings, which are sometimes called "pueblos"....
). The conquistadors extended its meaning to encompass old structures. This meant that the ruins of Moche
Moche

The 'Moche' civilization flourished in northern Peru from about 100 C.E. to 800 C.E., during the Cultural periods of Peru. While still the subject of some debate, many scholars contend that the Moche were not politically organized as a monolithic empire or state but rather as a group of autonomous polities that shared a common elite cu...
 administrative buildings would be called huacas just as readily as would their temple.

Huacas along ceremonial routes

A huaca could exist along a processional ceremonial line or route as they did for the enactment of sacred ritual within the capital at Cusco
Cusco

||}Cusco is a city in southeastern Peru, near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cusco Region as well as the Cusco Province....
. Such lines were referred to as ceques. The work of Tom Zuidema and Brian Bauer (UT-Austin) explores the range of debate over their usage and significance. Also these lines were sometimes astromonically aligned to various stellar risings and setting pertaining to time keeping (for the purposes of agriculture and ceremony and record keeping). These ceque lines bear significant resemblance to the processional lines among the Maya (sacbe
Sacbe

Sacbe, plural Sacbeob, or "white ways" are raised paved roads built by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Most connect temples, plazas, and groups of structures within ceremonial centers or cities, but some longer roads between cities are also known....
) and the Chacoans . Special compounds were erected at certain huacas to compose entire elaborate network of rituals and religious ceremonial culture. For instance, the ceremony of the sun was performed at Cusco (Inti Ramyi). Incas elaborated creatively on a preexisting system of not only the mita
Mita

Mita can refer to:...
 exchange of labor but also the exchange of the objects of religious veneration of the peoples whom they took into their empire. This exchange ensured proper compliance among conquered peoples. The Incas also transplanted and colonized whole groups of persons of Inca background with newly adopted peoples to arrange a better distribution of Inca persons throughout all of their empire in order to avoid widespread resistance. In this instance huacas and pacarinas became significant centers of shared worship and a point of unification of ethnically and linguistically diverse empire bringing unity and citizenship to often geographically disparate peoples. This led eventually to a system of pilgrimages throughout all of these various shrines by the indigenous people of the empire prior to the introduction of Catholicism
Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its Theology and doctrines, its Catholic liturgy, Ethics, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
.

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