Brief Look at Inca Civilization 1200-1534 A.D.
The Inca came to the Peruvian area of Cuzco around the 12th century A.D. as a tribe. Before the Inca dominated the Andes, there had been the Moche, Nazca, Wari, and Tiwanaka whose ways the Inca heavily borrowed from. By the mid-1400s the Inca dominated the Andes. Much of the Inca empire building credit goes to Pachacuti Inka (Inka means emperor and all Inca emperors would use the term after their name). Pachacuti Inka, the ninth ruler, called his empire Tahuantinsuyu or "Land of the Four Quarters." Pachacuti Inka designed Tahuantinsuyu in a cross form with Cuzco, the capital city, in the middle.
The National Geographic Website, "The Lost Empire" states that during the height of the empire, Tahuantinsuyu was the largest nation on the earth and even today it still holds the title as the largest native state in the western hemisphere. The geographical dimensions of the empire ran north to south close to 2,500 miles along the Andean mountain range from Colombia to Chile and west to east from the Atacama Desert to the Amazon rain forest. The population of the empire is estimated to have tallied more than ten million people.
Cuzco is believed to have been the richest city in the New World. Pachacuti Inka laid the city out in a grid and built an architecturally brilliant city in the shape of a puma. When the Spanish arrived in Cuzco, they saw incredible wealth in the palaces of the past rulers. (See section titled "Inca Wealth" for more explanation.) Gold and silver, which the Spanish lusted for, were plentiful. However, while the Inca considered gold and silver precious, cloth was a more valuable treasure.
When Francis Pizarro arrived with his small army of 168 men and about 60 horses, he found a civilization that looked impressive in size and wealth, but was actually on the brink of disaster for two reasons. The first was that the smallpox virus had begun decimating the indigenous people. Charles Mann in his book, 1491, estimates that the population may have been cut in half, if not more (88). The cause of the smallpox virus was the horses and cattle Pizarro or earlier expeditions had brought with them. The indigenous people had never been exposed to horses and cattle and by consequence any of the diseases they carry.
Smallpox incubates for approximately twelve days before symptoms of illness appear. In that time, the unknowing carrier will infect others; who in turn, will infect even more.
The second major advantage for Pizarro was that the Incas had a central ruler. The Inka made the decisions. Pizarro arrived just as the previous Inka had died and two of his sons, Atahualpa and Huascar, had finished fighting a bloody battle for control. Atahualpa eventually won, but when Atahualpa was captured by Pizarro, no one was left to make decisions quickly. This left some of the defeated fraction willing to align itself with the Spanish and rekindled the battle for control among the Inca, thus splintering the kingdom at a time when it needed most to pull together.
The Spanish conquistadors were brutal in their takeover and suppression of the Inca people in their quest for wealth, but it would be the religious zeal of the Catholic priests who would literally destroy the fiber of the society as well as the records and much of the Inca literature.
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