INCAS

According to the Utah state core third graders should learn about the Incas of South America. I started teaching about the Incas. We did a timeline, we looked at some myths and legends, we have done some reading about them. We made an Incan couting thing called a Quipu, I even made a keynote presentation to show them. This next week I will put the students in groups and they will get to make a poster about a certain aspect about the Incan Life. They were a fascinating people. Did you know that when they would marry they would exchange sandles or that they had built a road system that was over 12,000 miles long but they had no wheeled vechiles or that they didn't have to pay taxes, instead they had to do a service like working on the temples or roads and that was their contribution to the empire. I really didn't know that much about them before I started to do some research on them.
Here is one of the myths about the Incas. I thought that is was interesting that one of their myths is similar to a Bible story that we believe as Christians. Even my students made the connection to the the Noah Story. So here is the question Jeremy and I were asking each other: How do two different groups of people who live across the world from each other have similar stories?

INCAN FLOOD MYTH
At one time, people became very evil. They were so busy doing evil deeds that they neglected the gods. Only those in the high Andes mountains were honest and true.
One day, two brothers who lived in the high Andes mountains noticed their llamas were acting strangely. They asked the llamas why they were staring up at the sky. The llamas answered that they were told by the stars that a great flood was coming. The brothers believed the llamas. They moved their families and flocks into a cave they found on the highest mountain.It began to rain. The rain continued for four months and four days. At last the rain stopped. The water receded. The brothers and their families repopulated the earth. The llamas were most grateful to the stars for warning them about the flood. That is why llamas prefer to live on the mountain tops, safe from floods, and near their friends, the stars.

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