Qualla: Tumebamba https://qualla.com/tumebamba en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:08 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/p/r/z/tumebamba-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Tumebamba https://qualla.com/tumebamba Tumebamba: Introduction https://qualla.com/tumebamba/ Photo credit Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0. The stones came north over 1,600 kilometers of Andean road. Four hundred and fifty of them, each weighing as much as 700 kilos, quarried near Cuzco and dragged across mountain passes by conscripted labor - no wheels, no draft animals, just ropes and men and the order of Huayna Capac. The Inca emperor wanted his new capital built of Cuzco stone. The place he had chosen, Tumebamba, sat at the north end of his empire in what is now southern Ecuador. He intended it to rival and eventually replace the old capital. He died before it could. And then, in the civil war that followed, the city he built was burned.

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Image: Ymblanter | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/p/r/z/tumebamba-wp/6prz-tumebamba-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Tumebamba: Knife Field https://qualla.com/tumebamba/ Photo credit PAULOGARCIA2005, CC BY 3.0. Tumebamba - sometimes spelled Tomebamba, pronounced something like Tumipampa in the Kichwa original - means 'Knife Field' in the Inca tongue: tumi for knife, pampa for plain. Before the Incas arrived, the place was called Guapondelig and belonged to the Canari, a people who had l...

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Image: PAULOGARCIA2005 | CC BY 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/p/r/z/tumebamba-wp/6prz-tumebamba-knife-field.mp3 0:06 2 full Tumebamba: An Empire Moves North https://qualla.com/tumebamba/ Photo credit PAULOGARCIA2005, CC BY 3.0. What Huayna Capac envisioned for Tumebamba was unprecedented. He wanted a second Cuzco. Not just an administrative outpost, but a true imperial capital, complete with the temples and plazas that structured the spiritual life of the empire. This is why the stones came from so far ...

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Image: PAULOGARCIA2005 | CC BY 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/p/r/z/tumebamba-wp/6prz-tumebamba-an-empire-moves-north.mp3 0:06 3 full Tumebamba: The Civil War https://qualla.com/tumebamba/ Photo credit PAULOGARCIA2005, CC BY 3.0. Around 1525, something swept through the Inca heartland - probably a European-introduced disease, possibly smallpox or measles, carried ahead of the Spanish advance by native trade networks. Huayna Capac died of it. So did his chosen successor. What remained were two sons with co...

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Image: PAULOGARCIA2005 | CC BY 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/p/r/z/tumebamba-wp/6prz-tumebamba-the-civil-war.mp3 0:06 4 full Tumebamba: Cuenca on Top https://qualla.com/tumebamba/ Photo credit Martín Vasco, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon passed through in 1547, barely fifteen years after the Inca civil war ended, he looked at the ruins and wrote: 'Everything has crumbled and in ruins, but you can still appreciate how grand it was.' The Spanish built their own city, ...

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Image: Martín Vasco | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/p/r/z/tumebamba-wp/6prz-tumebamba-cuenca-on-top.mp3 0:06 5 full Tumebamba: What the Spindles Say https://qualla.com/tumebamba/ Photo credit PAULOGARCIA2005, CC BY 3.0. At Pumapunku, excavators found spinning tools - whorls and small bone implements used to turn wool into thread. This fragment of evidence suggests the building may have housed aclla, the so-called 'chosen women' of the Inca empire, sequestered in institutional compounds where the...

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Image: PAULOGARCIA2005 | CC BY 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/p/r/z/tumebamba-wp/6prz-tumebamba-what-the-spindles-say.mp3 0:06 6 full