The Four Ages of the World in Andean Mythology
The four ages of the world, sometimes called the four suns, were the principal cosmological framework by which the Inca and their Andean predecessors accounted for the origin and the destiny of the world. According to the version recorded by the Jesuit priest Bernabé Cobo in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo of 1653, the world had passed through four suns, or ages, each ending in a great catastrophe, before the emergence of the present fifth sun, the sun of the Incas. The scheme formed part of the larger Inca creation myth, which derived ultimately from older Andean traditions, and it provided a moral and cosmological framework for the interpretation of history and the prediction of the future. The myth of the four ages is closely linked to the myth of the dark giants destroyed in the first dawn, and the two traditions together form the core of the Andean cosmogonic system.
The principal sources for the myth of the four ages are Cobo, the chronicler Pedro Cieza de León, and the indigenous chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, whose 1615 El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno records a related scheme in which the four ages are each associated with a moral failing of the people of the time. The scholarly literature on the four ages has been reviewed by Gary Urton, Catherine Allen, and Tom Zuidema, who have situated the myth in the broader context of Andean cosmology.
The Scheme Recorded by Bernabé Cobo
In the version recorded by Cobo, the four ages of the past and the present fifth age were each named with a Quechua term that designated a region of the cosmos. The first age was called Uya Pacha and was a time when the people lived in darkness; the first humans were giants of great stature, and they were destroyed by the sun’s first appearance, when the heat of the new sun melted the snows and burned many of them to ash. The second age was called Runa Pacha and ended in a rain of fire that consumed everything in its path. The third age, called Uku Pacha, ended in a flood that turned most of the people to stone. The fourth age, called Hanan Pacha, ended in a rain of fire and the burning of the world. The present fifth sun, called Qhapaq Inti or the sun of the Incas, is destined to end in earthquakes.
The names of the four ages correspond to the three worlds of Andean cosmology. Hanan Pacha, the upper world, is the realm of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the celestial deities, including Inti and the apus. Kay Pacha, the present middle world of humans, is the world of the living. Uku Pacha, the inner world, is the realm of the dead, of the earth mother Pachamama, and of the buried ancestors. The fact that one of the past ages was named Uku Pacha and that the present age is associated with Kay Pacha suggests that the Andean conception of cosmic time was deeply integrated with the conception of cosmic space, and that the four ages together traced a movement through the three worlds.
The Moral Scheme of Guaman Poma de Ayala
A related scheme was recorded by Guaman Poma de Ayala in his 1615 chronicle, in which he lists four ages, each associated with a moral failing of the people of the time. The first age was destroyed by hunger, the second by plague, the third by war, and the fourth by famine. The scheme is presented in a series of drawings in the chronicle, each of which depicts the people of the age, the moral failing, and the catastrophic end. The drawings have been analyzed in detail by the art historian Muriel Porter Weaver, who has shown that they draw on a combination of Andean and European iconographic traditions and that they represent one of the most elaborate cosmogonic illustrations produced in colonial Peru.
The moral scheme of Guaman Poma is significant for several reasons. First, it shows that the four ages were understood not only as cosmic events but also as moral events, in which the conduct of the people of the age determined the form of the catastrophe that destroyed them. Second, it places the four ages in a Christian eschatological framework, since the present fifth age is the age of the Incas, and the destruction of the world by earthquake is the Andean equivalent of the Christian apocalypse. Third, it provides a charter for the Spanish conquest, since the destruction of the Inca empire by a small band of Spanish adventurers could be understood as the fulfillment of the prophecy that the present age would end in catastrophe.
The Four Ages and the Ceque System
The four ages of the world were also linked to the ceque system of Cusco, the sacred geography that organized the Inca capital and its surroundings. The chronicler Cobo, who recorded the ceque system in the form that has been analyzed in detail by the anthropologist Tom Zuidema in his 1964 monograph, listed the ceques in four groups corresponding to the four quarters of the empire, and the four quarters were associated with the four ages of the world in some versions of the myth. The parallel between the four ages and the four quarters of the empire is consistent with the general Andean practice of organizing space and time according to a common set of fourfold categories.
The integration of the four ages into the ceque system served a number of ideological functions. It provided a cosmological justification for the political geography of the empire, since the four quarters of the empire were understood to correspond to the four ages of the world, and the ruler of the four quarters, the Sapa Inca, was understood to occupy the center of the cosmic order. It also provided a calendrical framework for the rituals of the central cult, since the major festivals of the year were associated with the four ages, and the priests of the Coricancha used the fourfold division of the year to organize the ritual calendar.
The Relation to the Flood Myth and the Dark Giants
The myth of the four ages is closely related to two other elements of the Inca creation myth: the myth of the flood and the rebirth of the sun and the myth of the dark giants destroyed in the first dawn. The three traditions together form the core of the Andean cosmogonic system, and the relation between them has been the subject of substantial scholarly debate. Some scholars, including Gary Urton, have argued that the four ages represent an older scheme that was combined with the creator-myth of Viracocha at a relatively late date, possibly in the imperial period of the fifteenth century. Others, including Catherine Allen, have argued that the four ages represent the combination of two originally separate schemes, the cosmic and the moral, and that the synthesis was the work of Guaman Poma de Ayala in the early colonial period.
The connection between the four ages and the dark giants is particularly close, since the first age, Uya Pacha, was a time of darkness, and the giants who lived in that age were destroyed by the first appearance of the sun. The petrified remains of the giants, according to the chroniclers, were the strange rock outcrops that dotted the landscape of the Andes and that were venerated as huacas. The story of the destruction of the giants thus provides the mythological explanation for the existence of the huacas, and the cult of the huacas in turn provides the link between the cosmogonic myth and the daily religious practice of the Andean people.