Chakana (Andean cross)
The chakana is the Andean stepped cross, a square cross with twelve points and often a circle at its centre. Its name means bridge or ladder in Quechua; that it stands for the Southern Cross is a modern reading.
Meaning
Marco Giovannetti and Sofía Silva, writing in the journal Estudios Atacameños in 2020, give the Cusco Quechua meaning of chakana as bridge, ladder, and the lower limb of the body, and describe its usual form as a stepped cross. A 2023 EFE report describes it as a square stepped cross with twelve points and a round centre, found again and again in the native cultures of the Andes. For Kichwa communities in Ecuador it is the centre of every important ceremony, Expreso reports, decorated with the produce of Pachamama, and José Lligaló, a sabio (wise man) of Chibuleo, says it represents the universe and once served as a farming calendar.
Origin and history
The stepped cross is old. Giovannetti and Silva trace it to the carvings on the Tello monolith at Chavín, about 3,000 years ago, to the walls of Tiwanaku in the Middle Horizon, and to Inca shrines on the Island of the Moon in Lake Titicaca, at Ollantaytambo and at Pisac. In 2023 a team led by Pieter van Dalen Luna of San Marcos University reported a frieze in a temple about 4,000 years old at Miraflores, in the Chancay valley on Peru’s central coast, which if complete would be the oldest chakana yet found.
Is the chakana the Southern Cross?
Not in the oldest record we have. Giovannetti and Silva cite the anthropologist Gary Urton, who in the 1970s found Cusco farmers naming several chakanas in the sky, but only in the sense of a bridge or ladder; Urton suggests that after the Spanish conquest the idea of chakana may have been replaced by that of the cross, which may be where the popular Southern Cross reading comes from. Writing in 2010, Zuidema suspected the Southern Cross mattered in the Inca calendar, but could not say exactly how. Today the identification is common: Kichwa ritual specialists quoted by Expreso speak of the “Cruz del Sur” as the union of below and above, earth and sun. Giovannetti and Silva also note that much modern writing on the chakana’s philosophy comes from outside academic research.
The cross and the Cross of May
Ceremonies for the chakana in the sky are held in La Plata, Argentina, and as the Fiesta de la Cruz Andina on Cerro Chena in Santiago de Chile, both on 2 and 3 May, the Catholic feast of the Holy Cross. Giovannetti and Silva see in the shared date the chakana merging with the Christian cross.
Read next
- Next in Andean and Inca symbolsWiphalaA square flag of 49 small squares in seven colours, set in diagonals. It is a symbol of the Aymara, Quechua and other Andean peoples and, since 2009, one of Bolivia’s official state symbols. How old it is, and where it came from, is disputed.
- Chakana ceremonies fall on the Catholic feast of the Holy Cross, 3 MayLatin crossA cross with a long upright and a crossbar set high. It is the form of cross most often shown on Christian monuments, and recalls Christ’s death by crucifixion.
See also
Pachamama, Nazca lines, Nazca hummingbird, Nazca monkey, Nazca spider, Gateway of the Sun (the Staff God).
Sources
- La chakana en la configuración espacial de El Shincal de Quimivil (Catamarca), by Marco Giovannetti and Sofía Silva, Estudios Atacameños no. 66 (2020), pp. 213–235, Universidad Católica del Norte, Estudios Atacameños, Polisemia y profundidad temporal del símbolo chakana
- La chakana, ícono de la cultura andina, Expreso (Guayaquil), Diario Expreso, article text
- Un templo en Perú atesora la que podría ser la cruz andina más antigua de Suramérica, Gestión (Lima), EFE report, May 2023, Gestión / EFE, article text
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or crosses.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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