Astronomy played a key role in the Inca culture, particularly due to the importance of agriculture. The city of Cuzco was laid out in a radial plan which mimicked the sky and pointed to specific astronomical events on the horizon. The Incas were a horizon-based culture.
The most important events involved certain risings and settings of the Sun, Moon and Stars. They recognized several groupings of stars, such as the Pleiades and Orion's Belt. Pleiades were called the "7 Kids" after the 7 brightest stars in the cluster. The Incas were actually able to see 13 stars due to the clear atmosphere at the very high altitude of Cuzco.
Each earthly animal had a corresponding animal star or group of stars in the heavens that protected the animal.
The Incas understood the annual movement of the stars and planets making them able to predict the seasons. The Inca built carefully oriented pillars on very high mountain tops overlooking Cuzco, and when the Sun, Moon and Stars, rose or set between the pillars, then it was a perfect time to plant at a specific altitude.
A whole range of pillars were employed so that the most accurate time-keeping was possible for the high altitudes, the valley floor, and everywhere in between. The spirits of the Sun, Moon and Stars were believed to be absorbed and reflected in a form of sacred energy powerful enough to create the force of life over certain locations in the volcanic terrain that surrounded them. Temples were built in those particular places to link them to the movement of the planets and the stars. The Temple of the Sun, for example in Machu Picchu has a stone called the Inti-Watana that is mounted on a platform. The 4 faces of this particular stone are aligned with the 4 cosmological directions: North, South, East, and West. The stone casts particular shadows during solstices and equinoxes. Another visible evidence of the Inca knowledge about solstices and equinoxes are the 8 towers on either side of the city of Cuzco, 4 of which faced the rising, and 4 the setting Sun.
The feminine spirit of the planet Venus was believed to be a servant of the Sun and was ordered to go ahead of or behind the Sun, but always remain close. She was the goddess who cared for princesses, girls and flowers. Also people gathered after sunset to await the rising of the planet. As she approached in the early hours before dawn, the wall between the world of the shadows and the world of the living, as they believed, became thinner making the people able to communicate with their dead loved ones, that were in their journeys to eternity, sending them a message of reassurance that they still loved and remembered them.
They also knew about summer and winter solstices, leaving a very visible evidence of this by building 8 towers on either side of the city of Cuzco, 4 of which faced the rising, and 4 the setting Sun. They verified the equinoxes by means of very richly carved stone column, which stood in the middle of the court of each of the temples. When the equinoctial season was at hand, the qualified priests made daily observations of the shadow cast by this column. A wide circle was drawn about the entire space of which this column constituted the center, and across the middle of this circle they drew a line from East to West, between 2 points which very long experience had taught them how to locate.
The Incas were familiar with the backwards or retrograde rotation of the planet Venus. The planet rotates 3 times on its axis in 730 earth-days, while the Earth goes twice around the Sun in the same period of time, making Venus and the Earth be locked in a 3:2 tidal resonance. Every 2 years, the exact portion of the planet Venus faces Earth.
To the Incas, objects in the heavens had a replica and deep connection with earthly life. They were aware of Venus' spinning from East to West. In other words, if we arrive to Venus in the morning, the Sun would be in the West and would set in the East in about 4 earth-months later. A day on Venus lasts 243 earth-days, and a year lasts 225 earth-days. Unlike most of the planets in the Solar System, Venus has almost no axial tilt.
The Incas' knowledge of astronomy allowed them to make complex calendars. Their knowledge was so advance that scientist and researchers' knowledge of today is somewhat limited compared to them.
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