← In Our Time: History
In Our Time: History
The Inca
00:52:49
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the advanced Andean empire, dominant until Pizarro arrived
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Helen Cowie
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Helen Cowie
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Melvyn Bragg
Downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programs. Hello. In 1532, Atahualpa became a ruler of the great Inca empire that was based high in the Andes of South America and spread along the Pacific coast for over 1500 miles. He had an army of 80,000 warriors controlling 10 million people and a complex system of roads, irrigation canals, terraced fields and temples developed by Andean people over thousands of years. Within a year, this elaborate empire had collapsed. The conquistadores captured and garrotted Atahualpa in 1533, and a civilization that had seemed so strong was then destroyed by civil war, religious conversion and smallpox. With me to discuss the rise and fall of the Inca are Frank Meddens, visiting Scholar at the University of Reading, Helen Cowie, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of York, and Bill Siller, senior Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. Bill Zillow, what was the extent of the Inca empire at its peak?
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Helen Cowie
It was stretching from Argentina and Chile up through Bolivia and Peru, going through Ecuador to the boundaries of Colombia. Around 10 million people in a very large area stretching from the Pacific coast over towards the Amazon and across the Andes, across the Andes and across the Andean mountains.
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Melvyn Bragg
How long had it been? This is accumulation of different peoples. It wasn't one. Can you tell us how it came about?
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Helen Cowie
Well, it's a. It's a short process in terms of the expansion of the empire, but it's a very long process in terms of the development of Andean culture and particularly its development of agriculture, use of camelids, and its development of complex systems of architecture, of social Organization.
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Melvyn Bragg
Well, give us an idea of the length of the short and the length of the long.
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Helen Cowie
Well, the peopling of the High andes starts around 10,000 BC.
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Melvyn Bragg
That's long.
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Helen Cowie
That's long. But the occupation of building terraces and canal systems, that's been going for about 3,000 years or so. Before the Inca. There is a previous empire, the Wari Empire, that's stretching from around 600 to 1000 AD covering some of the area that the Inca were in. And the Inca inherit some of that structure, but that has collapsed completely in the 300 or so years before the Inca emerge.
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Melvyn Bragg
So the Inca emerge at this place we now call Cusco. And can you tell us how and when they emerge and how they got to be in control?
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Helen Cowie
Well, they, they emerge out of the collapse of that empire. The development of, to start with, small groups within the Cusco Valley who are also building terraces and canal systems, settlements. This is in Peru, this is up in the High Andes. So cusco is about 3400 meters above sea level. And the Inca are one small ethnic group within that area. But they managed to coalesce a number of different ethnic groups and they together to construct some of the buildings and the terror systems. And they use a combination of conquest and alliance and marriage organizations in order to draw together the smaller ethnic groups in their immediate area. And that takes around two or three hundred years prior to the process of really large expansion of empire.
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Melvyn Bragg
When they're in charge, when the Spanish arrived, they've been in charge for proper charge to the whole lot for about 150 years, something like that.
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Helen Cowie
Yes. Well, they've been in complete control of the Cusco area for, you know, the area, if you like, from Cusco to Lake Titicaca for about 150 years. Some of that expansion was still slightly going on at the time that the Spanish arrived. So heading into Ecuador, they've only really overtaken bits of Ecuador and going into the very boundaries of Colombia in the 50 or so years, 70, 80 years before the Spanish have arrived.
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Melvyn Bragg
But they've still got this huge empire. So what you give all sorts of other countries as well, being part of the Inca.
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Helen Cowie
So they expand through a continual process of conquer, sometimes using their military might, the fear of that, and therefore people choosing to make alliances with them and indeed many ethnic groups feeling that they will get advantages out of that process.
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Melvyn Bragg
Thank you very much, Helen. Helen Curry Their base was cusco is over 3000 meters above sea level. How did they find enough? How did they get to eat there?
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Helen Curry
Yes, so it's very challenging and inhospitable terrain on the face of it. But what the Incas managed to do, and again, as Bill has indicated, a lot of this was building on what previous civilizations had done in the Andes, is they exploit different ecological niches. So because you've got mountainous terrain, you have lots of different altitudes, and that means lots of different microclimates. So, for example, maize will grow really well in the river valleys, and crops like chili and cotton as well. Higher up, they would grow things like potato and quinoa. And then in the haipuna, over about 3,500 meters, they would pasture llamas and alpacas. So they have what's this kind of more vertical sense of living what's known as an archipelago settlement, so that they can exploit these different niches. They also use terracing as well, again to take advantage of these microclimates. One of the best examples of this would be at Morai, which is just north of Couth Co. You've got these concentric circles made of stone with different kind of platforms going upwards because there's a big temperature differential between the bottom and the top, you can grow different crops within those. The other thing that the Incas do is, of course, they trade with different regions. And because the empire is so vast, as Bill indic, that means they have access to crops that grow at lower altitudes, such as the coca leaf, for example. And also they develop various systems for preserving food.
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Melvyn Bragg
Potatoes are a good example.
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Helen Curry
Potatoes are a very good example.
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Helen Cowie
Tell us about that.
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Helen Curry
Indeed. So they devise this way. Well, previous civilizations have devised this way, and they take it up, freeze dried potatoes, essentially. So the potato freezes overnight. You squeeze out the water and you repeat this process until it gets smaller and drier, and it will then last for about 10 years, and you can then rehydrate it. So it's kind of like a form of sort of instant mashed potato that they create. But another example would be meat as well. They dry meat from lavas and alpacas to form a substance called charki, which is where we get the word beef jerky from. It's the same process. And that again was used, for example, for rations for the army. So this is a way of ensuring when there are droughts and floods, which there often are, this is a region affected by the El Nino phenomenon, among other things, they have these kind of stores in place.
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Melvyn Bragg
What about the terracing? You mentioned that the engineering was ingenious, wasn't it? It was not only with the terracing can you give us some more examples, please?
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Helen Curry
Yes. I mean, their road system is very impressive, but this stretched across the empire and it involved things like suspension bridges, which didn't exist in Europe at the time, made from rope, local reeds and things like that. And of course, in their cities as well, they develop a way of building which doesn't use mortar, but you have bricks that kind of perfectly tessellate with one another. And obviously we have really well known sites such as Machu Picchu, which are iconic and mirror elements of the landscape too. So they have some.
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Melvyn Bragg
What do you mean by that?
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Helen Curry
So, for example, there's a rock in Machu Picchu in the actual site, which mirrors the mountain behind it. It's been cut to the same shape, which has sort of spiritual connotations as well.
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Melvyn Bragg
They thought that mountains looked down on them. Look, look. I didn't look down on them. Looked after them, as it were. They looked up to mountains who looked down on them and were part of their God system.
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Helen Curry
Absolutely, yes. Yeah. They had a spiritual significance. They were kind of shrines often as well.
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Melvyn Bragg
Did their spiritual life come into their agricultural cultivation?
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Helen Curry
Absolutely. So a lot of the Inca festivals and the ceremonies that they carry out were closely related to the ag agricultural calendar. Often that entailed sacrificing different number of llamas, for example, and different coloured llamas at different stages of the year to propitiate different gods.
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Melvyn Bragg
They had no horses.
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Helen Curry
They didn't have horses.
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Melvyn Bragg
They'd never seen a horse, which was massively significant later on, and they didn't have the wheel. So that meant everything was transported on foot or on the back of the. Not terrifically strong llamas.
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Helen Curry
Absolutely. But llamas were a major source of transport for them. Obviously llamas would only go so far before if you overload them, they'll sit down and refuse to move. So there were limitations, but they were nonetheless able to transport goods all the way across the Andes. They were able to act as porterage for the military as well. So they were very important in that sense.
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Melvyn Bragg
Thank you very much, Frank Menz, what stories did the Inca themselves tell about their origin?
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Frank Meddens
There's a number of different ones. It's quite fun. In a sense, all Inca stories are variations on theme, so you get different angles. There is not a single story, and the most well known ones talk about four brothers and four sisters coming out of three caves in an area called Pajaritambo, which is about 30 kilometers south of Cusco. There is a number of events that take place. One of the things that happens is that one of the brothers, Ayar Kachi, is particularly unpleasant. He has a sling and he wields this frequently, causing mountains to fall and valleys to form. And the family gets a bit upset about this, and they tempt him back into one of the caves and wall.
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Melvyn Bragg
Him in, Warn him in.
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Frank Meddens
Yes. So he's supposedly still there. And then the others move on and finally enter into the valley of Cusco, where Manco Inca, or Manco Capac, views the valley and asks one of his other brothers to fly over. So he turns into a bird and flies over into the valley, lands at Cuzco, and turns into a stone, a boundary marker. Funnily enough, you can still see this part of that particular myth reenacted at Machu Picchu, where you've got the Temple of the Condor and you've got this carved condor which has wings made out of the natural rock behind them. So it's as if you've got this bird landing and turning into stone at that particular location. Manco Capacqui, he sinks a golden rod into the ground, tests whether it's agriculturally productive, and establishes his kingdom at Cuzco.
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Melvyn Bragg
What connection did the Inka feel with the landscape around them?
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Frank Meddens
Oh, the landscape is seen as an animated structure. So you have rivers running through it that they metaphorically see as carrying blood and sperm. The mountains whose blood and whose sperm of the earth mother, if you will. But all the various aspects within the landscape, rocks, mountains, are individually seen as living beings, as human beings are living. So a rock has an animated element to it that gives it life and means. You can negotiate with it and you need to feed it so as to ensure that the landscape provides enough productive support and structure to your life and your society.
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Melvyn Bragg
Thank you, Bill Siller. What was their religion? Can you tell us something about that?
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Helen Cowie
Perhaps religion suggests a single structure. There is a lot of different ideas. So, as Frank is saying, places had identities and names, and they were a very important part of how people engaged. Ancestors were very important, but they blur because people's ancestry becomes part of the landscape, that stones and places become part of the kinship group. And therefore, when people refer to their deep ancestry, they start referring to places rather than what we would see as people.
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Melvyn Bragg
And let's stay with the ancestors for a minute. They mummify them, don't they? And they bring them out at celebrations in their mummified state. Well, they couldn't hardly bring them out in any other way anyway. They bring them out in their mummified state and they feed them, and they take messages from them, and they act as if they had been reincarnated.
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Helen Cowie
Most people in the Andes were at this time putting their dead into places where they would dry out. So they went into high burial towers where they would dry in the wind, or onto caves and things like that. But particularly the Inca elite, they dried their mummies and then brought them out for processions. And they were taken to different places after death to have festivals with them. They were fed, they were given drink, and they were seen to be alive. So people would interpret their actions. And the dead mummies still controlled some, as they owned aspects of the land. And they were also involved in the investiture of the next Inca, for instance. So the dead continued to be active within society.
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Melvyn Bragg
I asked you about religion, but can I put that to one side for a second and ask you, how did this comparatively small tribe succeed in taking over so much territory and so many other tribes? Was there any key thing?
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Helen Cowie
There were several key things. I think one of them is that they drew upon aspects of the prior society that many had shared. So they've got. The agricultural systems, they've got. Begun to develop some of the same aspects of communication and things and recording of information. But they were particularly good at alliance making and warfare. And I think that the significant thing that we get from some of the sort of mytho history that the Spanish are recording is that they respond in some ways to other people attacking them by being better at attacking back. So there's a myth of the pachanka of a neighboring group that come and attack them, and that they draw together and. And. And are able to fight them and successfully beat them off. And indeed, we have military aspects of that. They used clubs to hit people and things like that. That was very successful. But they then combined that with negotiating power. They created marriage alliances, and they insisted upon either people joining them or being decimated. And through that.
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Melvyn Bragg
You mean decimated, you mean wiped out.
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Helen Cowie
Wiped out the elite of the. Of the people that they were going against being wiped out. And that allowed them to continually expand out and draw in the different groups that they were involved in.
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Melvyn Bragg
Helen, can I come back to a question that I asked Bill? It isn't that he didn't answer it. He went on to say many other more interesting things. So what about the sun and the moon?
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Helen Curry
So the sun and the moon were important deities for the Incas, and particularly the sun, which was worshipped on a.
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Melvyn Bragg
Wide scale, always seemed quite sensible to me in ancient religions that they should. That they should have a Particular regard for the sun. Anyway, never mind.
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Helen Curry
It does make sense to worship something you can see. And the Incasu. So the Inca's attitude towards the precious metals were also connected to that. So gold was seen as being the sweat of the sun, and silver was supposed to be the tears of the moon. And there was also this idea of duality in Inca society, so you'd have kind of male and female deities complementing one another. So that's what you've got going on there as well. So the sun was a primary object that the Incas would make sacrifices to, usually of llamas. A white llama was sacrificed to the sun God Inti every day in Cusco, so he needed a lot of llamas.
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Melvyn Bragg
Was there any human sacrifice at all?
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Helen Curry
There were some, yes.
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Melvyn Bragg
Nothing who would be sacrificed.
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Helen Curry
So there was nothing on the scale that we see with the Aztecs, in which it was mainly rival warriors who were sacrificed. With the Incas, it was often children, because they were seen as purer, effectively, and they would often be sacrificed when one Inca died and another took over.
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Melvyn Bragg
Inca king. I mean, not one Inca person.
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Helen Curry
Yes, the Inca ruler, who was also called the Inca, just to make that more confusing. So when the Inca emperor died, they would sacrifice children, and typically that meant taking the children, often to the top of a mountain or a volcano, against sacred places and sacrificing them there. They were often given things like chicha beer, which is a beer made from maize, and then they would often be strangled or sometimes sort of hit on the back of the head and sacrificed. And sometimes this would happen in times of sort of epidemics or natural catastrophes as well. And I think the idea behind this was that you were sacrificing something you really cared for and that that was why it was children. And it could be about 200, perhaps sacrificed on the death of an emperor. So quite large numbers that we haven't found that many Inca mummies to corroborate that.
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Melvyn Bragg
Cuzco, therefore, Frank Meddens is the center of an enormous, enormous empire. How was it connected with that empire? It was the biggest empire in the southern hemisphere, wasn't it?
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Frank Meddens
There was a massive road network which was fundamental to linking the periphery with the center.
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Melvyn Bragg
And was this held together by messengers?
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Frank Meddens
Yes, you have a structure where you have cesky runners who would be based in a number of way stations along this road system. They would run maybe four and a half kilometers and then be replaced by the next person. Story goes that fresh fish would come to the Inca from the coast within A day. Messages from Cusco to Ecuador would take about a week. One assumes that the message was carried in a form of a khipu, which is this string form of writing where you've got a cord which has strings hanging off it with knots. And the messenger would take this and run and have a pututu, a conch shell, trumpets, which he would announce his arrival for the next weigh station where the next runner would be ready to take it further along.
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Melvyn Bragg
It seems to work very efficiently, doesn't it?
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Frank Meddens
It did until the Spaniards came.
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Helen Cowie
Yeah, huge investiture in terms of the road, but also way stations, tambos that were along this system where runners would be waiting to make this one work. So it required a consistent effort to put this in place.
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Melvyn Bragg
And presumably those storehouses with potatoes 10 years old would play their part as well.
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Helen Cowie
Yes. So along the road system and in many different areas, there were both small storage structures in some areas, but also in some areas vast banks of them. So in places like Cochabamba in Cusco itself, and Guanuko, they were very large banks of 500 or so of these structures where materials could be stored.
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Melvyn Bragg
Did all roads lead to and from Cusco?
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Helen Cowie
They did. In the end, so to speak. Part of what was being inherited was a road system that pre existed this, that was there from the Wari empire and possibly even before it. But the Inca added to that and developed it with all roads being connected to Cusco. And indeed Cusco is seen as the center of what one name that the Inca give to their empire is to Tawantin Suyu, the four parts together or the four contributions together. And the. And Cusco is seen as the very center of that, where the. The four parts are united.
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Melvyn Bragg
And what do we have any idea what Cusco is as it were like?
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Helen Cowie
Yes, in some ways there are bits of Cusco that still survive today of the Inca construction. So there are some of the amazingly well fitting stone walls of major Inca structures that are there to be seen. It has been adapted in as much as the original structure of Cusco had stepped structures and canals running through it, which is no longer there in the modern structure. But you can still see some of the original design where the central temple, Coricancha, the golden enclosure, which was particularly the focus of both the sun and the moon, but of other also where the Inca ancestors were held, sits at the point where two rivers come together. And that is the sort of know that is where the bird stops, where Manco Capac planted his golden rod. And then from there it goes up to a large plaza, which was the gathering place for large numbers of people that were brought in to participate in Inca ceremonies. And then above that, Sacsuaman, which was a very large area, which became a fortress when the Spanish were there, but was probably mainly a ceremonial area and storage area.
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Melvyn Bragg
What was the. How did the ruler rule and what did the people have to do?
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Helen Cowie
The ruler ruled through connection. So there were leaders of provinces, there were military leaders, there were religious, ritual organization leaders. There was. So they partly did so through that they had, to some extent, personal connections with some of the leaders of the ethnic groups that they had connected, and it was through reciprocity that they ruled. There was an agreement of providing both to individual workers for the state, but also to the elites of the groups that they had conquered. Some materials, things like textiles and stuff like that, and in return, the provision of labor. So it was through creating reciprocal arrangements. And one of the ways they get sealed is through offering drinks to each other so that you create a contract.
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Melvyn Bragg
Drinks made out of maize there.
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Helen Cowie
Maze, mainly.
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Melvyn Bragg
Yeah. Yes. You want to come in?
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Frank Meddens
Yeah. The ruler also mediates with the sacred, and that is fundamentally seen as. As an. An aspect that justifies his leadership role.
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Melvyn Bragg
He's a God.
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Helen Curry
Yes.
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Melvyn Bragg
Yes. Helen. They had gold and silver, which led to their undoing. Did they Inca themselves think that was tremendously valuable?
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Helen Curry
Yes, but not in the same way as the Spaniards. So for the Spanish, gold and silver have monetary value as a currency. For the Incas, they have value as a status symbol. So the Incas value the brilliance and the colour of gold and silver. And as I've mentioned, they had these spiritual connotations as well. So they did appreciate these. These substances, but not in the same way. And indeed, we know that they valued highly decorative articles too. So when they conquered some of the coastal societies, like the Chimu, who had really skilled goldsmiths, they relocated some of these people to Cusco so they could produce gold and silver artefacts. For the Incas. Of course, unfortunately, after the conquest, the Spanish melted a lot of these items down, so we don't have half as many as we would like, but some still survive in museums.
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Melvyn Bragg
What strength. We talked about the ancestors. Do you think we give people, listeners enough value about the place the ancestors played?
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Helen Curry
I think it's quite hard for us to understand the extent to which the Incas valued their ancestors, because it's in some ways alien to our culture, the idea of taking your mummified ancestor out and feeding him beer or coca leaves. But it was very important. And this idea of reciprocity that Bill mentioned that extended to the dead. So the idea was that if you venerated your ancestors, they would ensure that your agriculture was successful, that the empire would succeed. So it was highly important. But it was something the Spanish didn't appreciate, Frank.
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Melvyn Bragg
They seem to have been very well organized, but perhaps it was brutally organized. As I understand it, when they had a. A tribe or a group that were becoming rebellious and challenging, they moved a lot of them somewhere else among people who were very pliant and solved it, perhaps, we hope, that way. Can you give us some insight into that there?
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Frank Meddens
Yes. You have a whole series of movements that are part of controlling the empire by controlling people. Part of it is, as you say, moving complacent people to areas where you've got rebellious ones and rebellious ones to areas where you know that other people are going to be there to keep an eye on them. But you've also got a taxation system which means that you move people to carry out work for you and tax is paid by labor. And people will therefore become part of your army and for a year or two, travel with the army. And people will move to build agricultural terraces for a number of years, but they will retain their rights within their home community. So eventually they will return.
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Melvyn Bragg
Sorry, you want to say something?
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Helen Cowie
Well, only to add to some extent to what Frank is saying, in as much as this was drawing on an earlier system, so that when Helen mentioned archipelago, the idea is that within a ethnic group you would have places that you sent workers to manage fields, to grow coca, whatever, outside your area. That is what the Inca are to some extent developing. They then manipulate that to make it a form of control by using this idea of moving sort of disruptive people to new areas. They are developing something that previously exists, but they're expanding it to an empire level.
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Melvyn Bragg
So we're looking at. Now, can we move on? I'm afraid now, if you don't mind. So we're looking at a very solid setup which happens at the time that Pizarro arrives to be in a state of civil war. But it had just about resolved that still a powerful, settled, controlling empire. How did they respond to Pizarro when he turned up with his 200 men and their horses?
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Helen Cowie
Well, I think that one of the sort of insecurities within the empire is the process of succession, because you. It wasn't just the eldest son, so to speak, of the emperor who became the next emperor. It was somebody who was powerful and could command sufficient support that led to a insecurity at the process of an emperor dying. So if Huanakapac died of smallpox, which he may have done, it would have created this insecurity as to who should be the next leader. Therefore, there was a disruptive process going on between particularly two potential successors, Atahualpa and Huascar. The civil war that had been going on meant that when the Spanish arrived, the places in a play, a process of disruption.
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Melvyn Bragg
What, when they said first? Aye, when they said eyes first on the Spanish, what were their thoughts? What do we know what they thought about them?
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Helen Cowie
About what the Inca thought?
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Melvyn Bragg
Exactly.
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Helen Cowie
We do slightly know that in as much as there's a record written by Titu Cusi, who is a nephew of the. Of the Inca of Atahuallapa, who writes about the fact that they are impressed by the horses, they're impressed by the metal armor.
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Melvyn Bragg
What do you mean by impressed? I mean terrified. They wanted them.
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Helen Cowie
They wanted them. I think that the expression is that they would quite like, happily like to have killed off the Spanish but kept their horses.
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Melvyn Bragg
Well, go on. You just. We've started with the horses, but also the horses were clad in iron a bit, and there was, through the bits in the thing, they seem to be eating iron, so they're very strong.
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Helen Cowie
And the Spanish themselves try to present that they. They were trying to make the horses into an even more powerful thing. So they were claiming that the horses may have eaten iron and metal, but.
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Melvyn Bragg
They were white, these men, and bearded and these. This was strange too, wasn't it?
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Helen Cowie
It was strange. I mean, the degree to which it was massively strange, I think is difficult to know because the Inca were themselves encountering very different looking people as they expanded into such a large empire. But they were unusual. Absolutely.
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Melvyn Bragg
Helen, you want to come in here. So we've got this confrontation before anything much happens. The Spanish have come in the wake of what was called Stout Cortez. You couldn't get away with that nowadays in the Aztecs. And they'd come for gold and silver and they met this massive. They must have been very impressed by. They didn't see 80,000 troops all at once, but they must have heard of this and there were 200 of them, guns, horses, white and so on. Why did they find the Inca so vulnerable to what was slaughter, what was a complete, complete victory?
- [32:11]
Helen Curry
And beyond that, I mean, partly it was to do with the weaponry that they had and the horses, of course, which were completely alien to the Incas. Titu Cusi in fact refers to the horses as llamas with silver shoes. Although they do quite swiftly adapt to that. I think more important are some of the kind of structural problems within the empire. And Bill has mentioned the fact that there was a succession crisis going on and this was a long standing vulnerability. And of course, Pizarro is lucky to stumble upon the Incas at that moment. And I think also the Incas very much underestimate the Spaniards and what they're trying to achieve. So Atahualpa, he is captured by Pizarro and his men in an ambush, largely because he is unarmed at this point. And part of what goes on as well is he's handed a Bible which he does not understand and at which he drops. And this is interpreted as him rejecting the Christian God and is a sign for the Spaniards to attack him.
- [33:06]
Melvyn Bragg
Well, an excuse, we say.
- [33:08]
Helen Curry
An excuse indeed. But while he's in captivity, one of his main preoccupations is what Huascar is going to do. So he orders him to be executed. So he's more concerned about his brother. He's more concerned about his brother usurping his throne than about the Spaniards. And similarly, Huascar's relatives hope to manipulate the Spaniards to benefit them and to get them back into power. I think another issue is that.
- [33:32]
Melvyn Bragg
So it seems a sort of paralysis on the Inca side.
- [33:34]
Helen Curry
Yes. Also because their lead has been taken into captivity.
- [33:39]
Melvyn Bragg
I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rushing you, but didn't they think they ought to get these people there, were warriors and chuck them out of their city and get on with their lives?
- [33:48]
Helen Curry
I think they simply didn't realize how serious the Spaniards were because there were so few of them and they seemed abnormal. They didn't seem to have the qualities that the Incas would recognize in an army. So they didn't react. And because they had lost their leader as well, I think they weren't able to act quickly. I mean, it is worth saying that the Incas do put up resistance subsequently after the Spaniards have taken Cusco and they do form a kind of neo Inca state as well, after the Spaniards have conquered them. So they're not immediately wiped out. And there are attempts to respond.
- [34:22]
Melvyn Bragg
Frank, you want to come in?
- [34:23]
Frank Meddens
Yeah. I think the horses should not be underestimated because even today when you have civil disturbances, horses are still used to intimidate people on foot. And the horses eating metal and being like a cyber being part metal, part being, which may be sacred or may, may be a God or maybe, maybe a beast, they don't know. The horses are very effective in this early Period of keeping the Incas under control and their soldiers at bay.
- [35:08]
Melvyn Bragg
So the Inca seem, if I can be perhaps too summarizing, Inca seem rather paralyzed and, and waiting to see what would happen and goes around unarmed, gets put in a. What is in captivity, where he's going to be. They're going to say we want this, this celebules filled with gold and silver before we let you go.
- [35:27]
Frank Meddens
As I understand it, well, it's Atapualpa who orders his, his people from Kekta captivity to carry out certain actions. And I think it's. It's after, at Pualpa's own death that they Garrotto yeah, that, that things start to get more out of control in a sense for the Spaniards for a while at least.
- [35:53]
Helen Cowie
And it's bill, just to add to that, one of the things quite interesting is that Atahualpa is saying take this gold from Cusco, this gold and silver. Atahuallpa's base was actually in Ecuador, in Quito. He is saying take the material from the base that is particularly associated with Huascar. Yes, it's the old capital, but he is in the process of setting up a new one. So he is in some ways he's not undermining his own authority through that process. In the same way, what did the.
- [36:18]
Melvyn Bragg
Spaniards make Spanish make any attempt to understand these people instead of quite soon as we got blowing them into oblivion?
- [36:29]
Helen Cowie
Yes, they did. I mean they had their own translator, Martin, who was very important in terms of the process of communicating between the Quechua speaking and other languages, but particularly Quechua speaking Inca and the Spanish. And they did make very strong attempts I think to understand what was going on. Indeed the success of the Spanish is partly that they did understand, understand quite a lot of how the Inca were working. Partly they were drawing on sort of information they already had about how the Aztec worked, which is why they chose to take the emperor and capture him, was because they'd already seen an empire that was like that where taking a single ruler can have such devastating effect. So they did bring certain understandings and of the landscape and they then, you know, one of the things that they do quite early on is to begin to, to try and record Inca history and understanding in order to be able to maintain their control.
- [37:22]
Melvyn Bragg
But the elephant in the room is this. The Spaniards destroyed enough of the Inca for them to take over the whole thing in Cusco, etc. How did they do that?
- [37:34]
Helen Curry
So one of the things they try to do is to establish a puppet Inca emperor. So they get one of the half brothers of Huascar and Atahualpa to rule in their stead, effectively giving some legitimacy to them. The first one they choose dies, but.
- [37:48]
Melvyn Bragg
The second one, meanwhile, the Spaniards are getting on with collecting the golden sword.
- [37:51]
Helen Curry
They are indeed, yes. So the first puppet emperor they choose dies, but the second Manco Inca does survive and initially allies with the Spaniards. He's very young at the time, until he eventually rebels against them and indeed besieges Cuzco and Lima, which the Spanish have established on the coast before retreating to establish this kind of neo Inca state running parallel with the Spanish.
- [38:14]
Melvyn Bragg
Is there any standard battle?
- [38:17]
Helen Curry
There are several confrontations. There are certainly some battles during the siege of Cuzco and after.
- [38:23]
Melvyn Bragg
When do the Spanish know they won?
- [38:25]
Helen Curry
I mean definitively, probably in 1572 when the very last Inca is executed to Pacamaru. But that's a long time on from.
- [38:34]
Melvyn Bragg
That's 50 years on. So I'm trying to probably. This is my. It's a futile expectation of mine trying to work out they got there in 33, now what's happened by 35. Are the Spanish in control?
- [38:47]
Helen Curry
Pretty much. They've seized Cuzco. One of the issues is they've also fallen out amongst themselves. So the Conquistasaurs spend a long time murdering one another. So there's two families, the Pizarros and the Almagros, who are constantly essentially vying for control of Pizza Peru, which delays consolidation of power.
- [39:05]
Melvyn Bragg
Have the Inca accepted that the Spanish are now in charge? Bill?
- [39:10]
Helen Cowie
I think they accept some of their role, but I think one of the things that's important to say within that is what do we mean by the Spanish? We're still meaning a very small number of people. The main people that are running this are other Andean people. They are still organizing the stores, they are still managing the.
- [39:29]
Melvyn Bragg
The war.
- [39:29]
Helen Cowie
You know, the most of the people that are being killed on both sides are indigenous people that are fighting on both sides either for or against the Spanish. So the Spanish is still actually mainly Andean people with a relatively small number of ruling, if you like, Spanish people that are getting in control.
- [39:49]
Melvyn Bragg
But the Spanish are accumulating what they came for, the gold and silver, and they're calling the shots, I think, basically. Are they?
- [39:55]
Frank Meddens
Yes. You can argue even that some of the uprisings you get against them are instigated by the Spaniards themselves, because whilst these people are fighting them, they are not loyal subjects to the king and they can go for more gold and silver. So conflict is something to the benefit of some of these Spaniards, the Incas.
- [40:26]
Melvyn Bragg
Were sorely depleted, 80 or 90%. And there were three reasons for this. Do you want to tell us? Yes.
- [40:34]
Helen Curry
I mean, disease was a primary reason. The Incas didn't have any immunity to European diseases, smallpox in particular, but also typhus and even measles, because they'd had no contact with them for millennia. And this meant, as you said, there's catastrophic decline in the population. Also, much of their livestock dies as well, from overuse by the Spaniards, which apparently found larva brains, a delicacy, and also through disease as well, brought by sheep and other animals from the Old World. So disease was a major factor. Also exploitation. The Spanish.
- [41:07]
Melvyn Bragg
What about conversion? Forced conversion.
- [41:10]
Helen Curry
The indigenous people are forced to convert to Catholicism, and this is a problem because Christianity is a monotheistic religion. Whereas the Incas allowed people they conquered to retain their own deities, the Spanish didn't. So many are forced to adopt Catholicism as a religion and start worshipping their ancestors, stop worshipping their.
- [41:29]
Melvyn Bragg
Are they punished?
- [41:31]
Helen Curry
Not initially, but later on if they are seen to apostatize and to leave the Catholic religion.
- [41:37]
Melvyn Bragg
Finally, is there any hope of knowing any. A great deal more about the Inka, Bill?
- [41:43]
Helen Cowie
I think we're continually expanding our knowledge of the Inca, partly through archaeology, so we are investigating more and more areas. So particularly understanding what was happening well beyond Inca and particularly what was happening before the Inca, in order to understand the roots of the Andean civilization. There are important things going on in terms of understanding how the Inca Inca recording system, the khipus, the knotted strings, how they are being interpreted and understood. There is more and more research going on into the things like the use of crops and the different.
- [42:18]
Melvyn Bragg
And there are Inca ceremonies still with us in parts of South America now that continues to some extent. We haven't time to go there, I'm afraid. Maybe we will all go there another time. Thanks very much to Helen Curry, Frank Meddens and Bill Silla. Next week, the Mitylenian debate when the Athenians voted to kill all the men of Mytilene and then sped across Aegean to stop that happening because they changed their minds. Thanks for listening.
- [42:44]
Helen Curry
And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.
- [42:52]
Melvyn Bragg
You're going to come in, Frank.
- [42:54]
Frank Meddens
Yeah, I don't know what I was going to say there, but I think one of the things that is worth flagging up is that you don't have a trade system, an exchange economy like we would understand. So any goods get Exchanged based on who you are related to, which works into this archipelago system. So you make an effort to have family living in different ecosystems where they have got access to different resources. You legitimately can lay claim to those resources from your relatives. That's not to say that you don't have a complete absence of trade like Spongyless Shell, for example, gets traded from coastal Ecuador. Presumably gold and silver get exchanged in a more complex way than who you are related to. But for example, you've got a shrine near Lake Titicaca where The Inca places 48 different or elements of 48 different ethnic groups, so that that shrine has easy access to a whole range of resources.
- [44:14]
Helen Cowie
One thing that's worth a couple of things that are worth adding to that first is that there's, there is no currency in the Andes, there is no form of monetary exchange. Everything is done through reciprocity or some forms of barter and exchange and gift giving that happens at elite level. So that's one of the reasons why the use of storage by the Inca state allowed them to have a very large level of interaction and control as they tax people with labour to produce goods that went into the storage that they could then manipulate to request other things from people. One of the ironies of all this is that although they didn't have currency, the silver that eventually came from pot or C becomes the kickstart of really the monetarization at a much greater level of the European economy and having a very significant effect on the development of capitalism and indeed the Industrial Revolution.
- [45:10]
Helen Curry
One thing I would emphasize as well is it's pretty catastrophic when the Spanish conquer the Incas and a lot of elements of their culture are severely tested, but quite a lot of them do survive. So if we think about religion, yes, people are forced to convert, but there's pretty clear evidence from well into the 17th and 18th centuries that indigenous traditions such as for example disinterring mummies or dead people who've been buried, or for example, worshipping the gods through sacrifices of llamas or guinea pigs, which was their other main domesticated animal that continues. And you end up with quite a sort of syncretic form of religion that incorporates both Christianity and pre existing Andean beliefs. This is illustrated really well by a picture that is in Cusco Cathedral which shows Jesus having the Last Supper. And it's done by an artist named Marcos the Pater. If you look at it initially it looked quite normal. Jesus and his disciples are sat around a table. But if you look closer, Jesus is about to Tuck into a roasted guinea pig, which is not really what you'd expect. And he's also drinking chicha beer and other items. So this kind of mixture does continue. One other quite nice element of the painting is that the disciple who is Judas Iscariot is supposed to have been painted with the facial features of Francisco Pizarro, the conquistador. So that's quite a good way of getting back at the conquistadors through painting.
- [46:33]
Melvyn Bragg
Is there any sense that mummies were used in battle?
- [46:37]
Frank Meddens
You have. Yes, is the easy answer to that. You have individual inkers who are not just represented by their mummies. You have got individual Incas who have multiples of themselves by being represented by rocks or statues represented well in battle, in negotiations with.
- [47:06]
Melvyn Bragg
So they take the stones along with them.
- [47:08]
Frank Meddens
Yes, and these are perceived as animated. They will have people going with them who will talk for the rock that represents the king. But if a battle is fought by an Inca general, where you have an Inca representative, a Wauke, they are known as accompanying this general in battle, then the end result of conquest is that it's seen as the Inca who has made the conquest, not the general.
- [47:45]
Melvyn Bragg
Do you have any idea about the. Do we have any idea of the life of the laborers? The least advantaged? I mean, they just labor away day after day, and that was that.
- [47:55]
Helen Cowie
I think we do have quite a lot of information on that. In some ways, archaeology is quite good at looking at sort of domestic households and how they are working. One of the things that's quite interesting is away from Cusco, how little material culture that we recognize as income we are finding in those households. So much of what seems to be daily life looks fairly similar. And yet we know from historic records that some of these people are the ones that are going and laboring on the fields, working with the military, building the structures in Cusco. So some of their daily life continues as it was. We know quite a lot about them. For instance, one of the things that comes out from some very nice work in Monoco is looking at changes in diet. And men end up with increased element of maize in their diet. And one of the arguments is that this is because they are drinking more beer, because they are being reciprocated for their work through festivals of beer while they are working. So that we see some aspects of what the Inca are doing and using beer to manipulate the masses, if you.
- [49:00]
Melvyn Bragg
Like, what sort of they had. They have form of lasting communication was with string, not cinch ring. Can you say? We didn't say quite enough about that, yes.
- [49:11]
Helen Curry
These are known as khipu, and essentially they are pieces of string made of cotton or sometimes camelid fibre with little knots in them. And again, we can't entirely interpret these, although important work is being done in that field to try and decipher them. What they certainly do tell us is they use for things like censuses, so you can tell the number of people in a particular community. They conduct a census on the flocks as well, the llamas and alpacas, every November. So you've got registers of that and also things like the amount of goods in the warehouses. So they're very useful as a recording device. And also they can be carried by these messengers that we talked about going along the Inca rows to communicate these messages. And there's a particular reader of the Cusco called the kipukamayok, if I can say that correctly, who interprets these devices as well. But perhaps other people want to add further information on that.
- [50:03]
Helen Cowie
Well, I suppose that we know the numbering system within it, so the way that that works is a decimal system and it can record very high numbers in millions. But what we don't know is the way that it recorded some of the more narrative information. And yet the Spanish recorded information from some of these. They got the kipukamayos to read them. So we know that, that they had narrative material within them. But we as yet, all we know is the use of color, the use of spin direction, the use of choice of yarn, of material that's used. These are used to record information. But how it was used is a thing that is being currently developed and debated.
- [50:40]
Melvyn Bragg
They were destroyed by a bishop's conference that weren't there.
- [50:43]
Helen Cowie
Some of them were, but some of them still survived and some of been recovered from archaeological context, which is helping us hugely because it then, particularly ones that have been recovered from storehouses, we can then begin to say how they might relate to what is in the stores.
- [50:56]
Frank Meddens
One of the things that they have worked out is that as you have the horizontal string from which the vertical strings hang, you have categories of material being represented by the various vertical strings and quantities by the various knots hanging down. So you could relatively easily use this to say, we have transported X amounts of maize from A to B.
- [51:28]
Melvyn Bragg
We talked about them likely to negotiate, but they could be very savage, we're told. Also, and one thing that came up was that the skins of their enemies were used as drums. Is there anything in that?
- [51:41]
Helen Cowie
Yes, I mean, we get sort of chroniclers saying that that is what happened. They were Certainly savage. I think they, in terms of the fact that they would mete out violence against people that were attacking them or not obeying them. One of the differences, if you like, between the warfares of the Andes and the warfare of the Spanish was that it was about sort of stone and cloth. So actually people protected themselves with clothing, but they also used cloth to make slings and throw stones at people and then they hit people on the head with clubs of stone and pointed star shaped things that would really sort of break your skull. So the one of the differences there is the Spanish meeting that with metal swords and metal armament, which actually was able to cut through some of the cloth armament and things like that. So that meeting of things. But yes, the Inca were perfectly happy to use violence if they thought it was appropriate. And indeed one of the ways that people became powerful as warriors were to be successful in warfare and kill people.
- [52:44]
Helen Curry
We do know that in the campaign organized by Huayna Capac to conquer the people in what's now Ecuador, a large number were massacred in a lake that's now called Yagua Cocha, which means Lake of blood, because apparently so much blood was spilt that it turned the lake red. So there's certainly evidence of violence, although also negotiation.
- [53:03]
Melvyn Bragg
Well, that's a very good point to end on, I think. Our producers coming in anyway.
- [53:07]
Helen Cowie
Tea or coffee? I have tea, thank you very much.
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Simon Mundy
More teas?
- [53:14]
Melvyn Bragg
Yeah, thank you very much.
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