Was "Ampata" a slayer?

[wenxina]

Mar 27, 2009 7:49:32 GMT -5 Secret Scoobie said:

^ I agree that Giles would of known SOMETHING and also, I think maybe INCAN people lived before the 'shadowmen' that created the slayer (Just a thought).

If you buy that Africa was where modern Man originated from, then it makes sense that the first Slayer was called there, since according the Buffyverse lore, humans displaced the Old Ones. The last demon "infected" a person, turning them into a vampire. The Slayer was created to protect people from vampires. Modern humans arose some 200,000 years ago, and the migration out of Africa is estimated to have happened some 70,000 years ago. The Inca civilization was at its prime sometime in the ADs. I'd argue that Slayers were around for much longer than that; way before the Incans.

[Lukee]

Mar 27, 2009 10:58:23 GMT -5 wenxina said:

Mar 27, 2009 7:49:32 GMT -5 Secret Scoobie said:

^ I agree that Giles would of known SOMETHING and also, I think maybe INCAN people lived before the 'shadowmen' that created the slayer (Just a thought).

If you buy that Africa was where modern Man originated from, then it makes sense that the first Slayer was called there, since according the Buffyverse lore, humans displaced the Old Ones. The last demon "infected" a person, turning them into a vampire. The Slayer was created to protect people from vampires. Modern humans arose some 200,000 years ago, and the migration out of Africa is estimated to have happened some 70,000 years ago. The Inca civilization was at its prime sometime in the ADs. I'd argue that Slayers were around for much longer than that; way before the Incans.

I agree.
I don't think Giles [if] she was a slayer would necessary know about her. Not everything is jotted down in books about each slayer and that would mean Giles would have had o have red hundreds of books to know about her surely?

[Secret Scoobie]

Ok, yeh you guys sound right! For some reasn I was thinking Incas like massively old civilisation, and Shadowmen more like a recenter one. But the thing about the 'last demon' infecting the girl makes sense.
well I still don't think it would have gone completely unsaid by Joss & co. Or what's the point?

[Whedon Fan]

Well the episode is called "Inca Mummy Girl" so I'm betting on the fact that she was an Inca Mummy. lol

[Rebecca]

Mar 20, 2009 22:31:14 GMT -5 said:

It's not said as such that she was sacrificed for her beauty.

S02E04--Guide: Five hundred years ago, the Incan people chose a beautiful teenage girl to become their princess.

Doesn't say for her beauty per se, but it can be implied, since it was for a sacrifice.

[siredbyspike]

I don't think Ampata was a slayer, just a ritual sacrifice for her people..maybe for luck before a battle, or a good harvest or whatever. I found a really interesting site about Incan Human Sacrifice....

[The Inca sacrifices, excluding the sacrifices committed during war, were linked closely with religion, although the subtext was also one of the survival of the community and the maintenance of established political power. The Inca religion was based primarily on the worship of nature gods such as the sun, the moon, the rain, and the mountains--which dominated the landscape. Inca ritual included elaborate forms of divination and the sacrifice of humans and animals. /quote]

the mummy of a young girl named "The Ice Maiden" or "Juanita", excavated in the mid 1990s by Johan Reinhard (PBS Nova, Peru). Based on the archaelogical evidence and on accounts of child sacrifices documented by the conquering Spaniards, Juanita was a young girl who was sacrificed in the name of Inca religion. She was found above 18,000 feet on the peak of Ampato, northwest of Cuzco, the capital of the Inca empire, preserved by ice, richly covered in textiles and accompanied by an abundant array of burial artefacts.

"Beautiful beyond belief" is how one Spanish chronicler described Tanta Carhua (PBS Nova online, Peru, The Sacrificial Ceremony). Carhua was a ten-year old girl whose father had offered to the Inca ruler as a "Capacocha" or "Capac Hucha" sacrifice. She was led to Cuzco by priests where she met the Inca Emperor, and on the way to the mountain where she would be killed, her entourage--which consisted of a procession of priests, witnesses to the sacrifice, porters for carrying the food, and llamas-- passed her home town. According to the story, Tanta Carhua told the villagers: "You can finish with me now because I could not be more honored than by the feasts which they celebrated for me in Cuzco" (PBS Nova online, Peru, The Sacrificial Ceremony). Before she was killed, the girl was fed and given chicha to drug her and then was buried alive. She thus became a goddess, and the mountain was named after her.

"Juanita" or the "Ice Maiden" (Figure 5) is another example of a sacrificial girl, found in 1995 by Johan Reinhard at the top of Ampato, a peak situated north of Cuzco, the Inca capital. Notice how her eyes and mouth are wide open. Her eyes seem to be imploring and her mouth gasping for air. Reinhard has mentioned that Juanita has a skull fracture on the back of her head. It is still debated whether these children where sacrificed violently. Reinhard believes that these victims were knocked out with a blow against a towel held at the back of their heads. Thus they would be unconscious when they were buried and would not suffer the pain of the cold and harsh elements as much as if they were fully conscious. (PBS Nova online, The Sacrificial Ceremony).

Notice too Juanita's richly woven garments. These children were apparently feasted and dressed to the hilt for the occasion. Another mummy discovered by Johan Reinhard's expedition, Sarita, was found to be wrapped not only in fine clothes, but with an outer garment generally worn by males. This finding has been interpreted as the child carrying the dress for her future husband in the world-to-come. It could well be that the garment was offered by the male officiating priest or that it was given to her by her father as protection for her trip in the other world.

Other young girls who were sacrificed included the "Chosen Women" or the "Virgins of the Sun". These were beautiful young girls, between 8 and 10 years old, chosen by the Inca officials throughout the vast empire. They were taken into a temple, for example in Machu Picchu, (were several corpses of young women were found), and were forbidden to leave for six to seven years. Their duties included keeping a fire always burning (does this remind us of the vestal priestesses of Rome?), making weavings used for ceremonial rituals. Although they were considered to be virgins, they were available for the pleasure of the Inca ruler or his nobles. At the end of their stay at the temple, they were either released, turned into concubines, or married into nobility. These young women were sometimes chosen as sacrificial victims. It is said that some of the Virgins of the Sun in the Cuzco temple of Coricancha were killed along with llamas, their blood painted on the Inca nobles by the leading Inca ruler.

I just thought this was pretty interesting stuff. Ampato/Ampata...and she was found in 1995? I wonder if this is a coincidence or if it sparked an idea in joss? Mummy Girl aired in what, 1997? Maybe he wanted to do a mummy episode and this is where he got the name from or maybe i'm just reaching, lol.

[Secret Scoobie]

^ That's really cool, and I don' think ampato/ampata is a coincidence! I think Joss was creating secret meaning ;-) good find!

*KARMA*

[Secret Scoobie]

Yeah but Joss doesn't need to stick to history and stuff... all the stuff they made up they prolly 'based'on something, but I'm sure the dates of the apocolypses aren't real, but just based on mythos.

[Secret Scoobie]

Some people would say there has. And plus there are the 2012 things.

I havent personally experiences 10 apocalypses since I was 16. But It as just an example. Some of the stuff is BASED on real mythos, however that have creative license to make it more interesting/fit with their world.

If ampata was 10 you can harldy have the Willow/Xander triangle, and the kissing to suck lifeforce would have been out of place.

[siredbyspike]

Thanks for the Karma SecretScoobie, and btw i love your banner. And EvilWillowRocker, it says a little further down the page that they were taken into the temple at around 8-10 years of age, and forbidden to leave for 6 to 7 years. So that would mean that upon either sacrifice, release, or being turned into concubines or married into nobility- which in this case i'm citing sacrifice as my example- that would mean they were between 14-17 years old, so i'm guessing that would be about right.


Of course, i'm sure different sects of Incans maybe had different practices, but i thought this was a kewl read and a little coincidental for Buffy fans.

And as for apocalypses actually happening...I've always thought of it this way:

that the people living in pompeii thought that it was an apocalypse whenever Mt. Vesuvius erupted, because to them, that was mostly their entire world. And they probably thought out of fear that evil was taking over or had caused it. Same way with Incans, and Aztecs and alot of other cultures and people/places that got wiped out or off the map altogether.

I count that as an apocalypse, because who knows if they thought it was happening everywhere as they lay dying. Technically, most of Buffy's apocalypses happened in or very near Sunnydale, right? So that's my theory, i'd be curious to hear other views on that, but if we don't wanna stray too far off topic, maybe we should make an apocalypse thread?

[wenxina]

Apr 4, 2009 13:42:43 GMT -5 said:

has there ever been an apocolypse? You know, end of the world and all that, you would have thought that it would have been recorded.

anywho, any other takers?

The word "apocalypse" is basically used to connote the end of the world. If the world you knew was just tiny (no globalization yet), anything that threatened that could be nigh apocalyptic. Many religious beliefs contain a story about a great flood (i.e. the Noah's ark story). That's pretty gloom and doom. Taking more from the Old Testament, you can probably bet that the plagues that visited Egypt would have been pretty apocalyptic in the eyes of many. Earthquakes that decimated villages, towns, etc. The crazy people marching up and down the streets with signs reading "The End is Nigh" aren't exactly new... people have been predicting the end times for centuries now. The word "apocalypse" literally means "revelation". There's an entire book of Revelation in the Holy Bible. Tried reading it once... felt like I had too much wine.
It's all recorded, in stories, of course. But many of these have a kernel of truth in them, but since the early transmission of these stories relied on oral transmission, they may have changed over the course of time.
But for other forms of "apocalypse"... the Earth has undergone many climate changes in the past that has decimated its life forms. Many believe that we're headed into the next ice age, which will more than likely cause billions of deaths, including humans. Pretty apocalyptic, no? If you lived in a time in fear of a nuclear holocaust, that would also seem pretty apocalyptic (i.e Cold War paranoia, the basic backdrop of the Watchmen). Or maybe I should tell my street preacher that the end isn't nigh...

[Nicholas]

I always figured that she was. The words that she said, I think were originally meant to touch the way that Buffy is feeling, however, those same words also sounded extremely much like those of a Slayer. We have read stories before about Slayers being wrongly sacrificed or burned at the stake, so we really couldnt write that off.

[gumgnome]

Apr 5, 2009 10:41:40 GMT -5 wenxina said:

The word "apocalypse" literally means "revelation". There's an entire book of Revelation in the Holy Bible. Tried reading it once... felt like I had too much wine.

Hahaha!
That is one messed up book. I think John the Baptist had better lay of the peyote!

On the subject of Ampata being a Slayer, i don't buy it. Don't you think she would have mentioned it? I mean when Buffy shows super strength and Ampata says "It seems you have been keeping secrets from me" it's hardly specific enough to think 'Wow she must have been a slayer'. I always just figured that she was a princess sacrificed for her people.

[Secret Scoobie]

^ YES, surely it would've been mentioned. Even if it was just through a hint. I don't buy any of the "hints" listed here.

Ampata was an Incan girl, sacrificed for the spiritual beliefs of her people. If she was a slayer, why would she be sacrficed? And wasn't it a 'regular' tradition. Surely they didn't have many girls in their civilisation (out of all the world) being chosen over and over again.

[Secret Scoobie]

Even if she was a protector? And what are the odds that she'd get chosen as a slayer and a sacrifice? I just think in the specific case of Ampata the Incan mummy, it's extremely unlikely she was a slayer. Just my opinion.

[Secret Scoobie]

Lol! Poor thing!

Oh well, I'm starting to think this is a moot point, considering it's unlike Joss will just answer this for us

[siredbyspike]

It sure would be helpful if Joss just popped up in this thread and said "the answer is blah blah blah" ... but i would probably pee in my pants a little if that actually were to happen, lmao

[Secret Scoobie]

ditto! Pee would definately be my reaction .

"C'mon Joss! Make our day!"

[gumgnome]

Maybe one of us secretly is Joss, but won't reveal his super-cool identity for fear of being mobbed by hyper fan mail...

[Secret Scoobie]

Gumgnome is Joss!!!