Corn(y)

I just read Bauer's account of the corn plowing ritual and the origin myth of Manco Capac and Mama Huaco, after which I read Zuidema's account of the Capac Raymi Camay Quilla feast. I was under the impression that both scholars would be describing the same ritual(s), but it seems like Bauer and Zuidema are talking about completely separate things. Perhaps Bauer just isn't getting into the astronomical specifics, but in Zuidema's telling there's little about corn, which is the essence of Bauer's piece. Either my expectations were false or my understanding is dim. Either way, I think that the plowing ritual sounds like something that would be really cool to model. We could capture the movement of plowing with motion capture/Maya, research/reproduce the sounds of the hailis being sung, model the 600 nobles lined up and the llamas and guinea pigs sacrificed, recreate/model the Arco Punto and the fields of Huanaypata and Sausero, reconstruct the ceremonial tunics depicted in the illustrations in Bauer, and more. We could even include a tutorial on chicha and perhaps link to/embed the video I found of the chew-and-spit process (on BoingBoing) or reconstruct the making of chicha ourselves.

With a little clarification on the compatibility/incompatibility of the Bauer/Zuidema discussions of the ritual, I think I'll be on the way to getting started producing the actual content for our final project!