AP PHOTOS: Incan festival pays homage to sun across Andes
Franklin Briceno, Associated Press
Updated 11:20 pm, Sunday, June 24, 2018
CUZCO, Peru (AP) — Long before electricity, ancient Incans relied on one sole energy source to power their daily lives: the sun.
So each year when winter approached and the sun's daily jaunt across the sky became increasingly short, Incan worshippers offered a festival of music, dance and sacrifices in hopes of being granted a plentiful harvest.
The festival was known as Inti Raymi, and today it is still celebrated throughout the Andes, not to mention more than a few yoga studios. On Sunday, indigenous communities along the path of the once powerful Incan Empire gathered for the Southern Hemisphere's winter solstice to honor the ancient sun god Inti.
In the small Ecuadorean town of Cotacachi rowdy revelers danced in traditional costumes in a colonial plaza. In the former Incan capital of Cuzco, Peru, a few thousand mainly foreign tourists paid upward of $160 for a grandstand seat to watch hundreds of actors re-enact a llama sacrifice at an ancient citadel. Tens of thousands more, mostly poor Peruvian, spectators congregated on three hillside vantage points to watch from afar with red tape and police dogs keeping them in check.
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/world/article/AP-PHOTOS-Incan-festival-pays-homage-to-sun-13022653.php
