In Our Time - The Inca

Episode Date: June 13, 2019

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the people of Cusco, in modern Peru, established an empire along the Andes down to the Pacific under their supreme leader Pachacuti. Before him, their control grew slowly from C13th and was at its peak after him when Pizarro arrived with his Conquistadors and captured their empire for Spain in 1533. The image, above, is of Machu Picchu which was built for emperor Pachacuti as an estate in C15th. With Frank Meddens Visiting Scholar at the University of ReadingHelen Cowie Senior Lecturer in History at the University of YorkAndBill Sillar Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology at University College LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for 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, Atahulpa 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 1,500 miles.

He had an army of 80,000 warriors, controlling 10 million people and a country. 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 garotted at Hualpa in 1533, and a civilization that it 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 Medans, visiting scholar at the University of Reading, Alan 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 Siller, what was the extent of the Empire at its peak? 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, across the Andean mountains. How long had it been... This is accumulation of different peoples. It wasn't one. Can you tell us how it came about?

Well, 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 organisation. Give us an idea of the length of the short and the length of the long. Well, the peopling of the high Andes starts around 10,000 BC. That's long. 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 1,000 AD, covering some of the area that the Inca were in, and the Inca inherits some of that structure, but that has collapsed completely in the 300 or so years before the Inca emerge. So the Inca emerge at this place we're now called Kusko. And can you tell us how and when they emerged and how they got to be in control?

Well, they emerge out of the collapse of that empire, the development of, to start with small groups within the Kusko Valley, who are also building terraces and canal systems and small settlements. This is in Peru. This is up in the high Andes. So Kusko is about 3,400 meters above sea level. And the Inca are one small ethnic group within that area, but they manage to coalesce a number of different ethnic groups. and they work together to construct some of the buildings and the terrorist systems, and they use a combination of conquest and the alliance and marriage organisations 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. 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? Yes, well, they've been in complete control of the Kusko area for, you know, the area, if you like, from Kusko to Lake to Tikhaka 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. But they've still got this huge empire. So you give all sorts of other countries as well being part of the empire. Yes. 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. Thank you very much. Helen, Helen Cowie, their base was Cusco's over 3,000 metres above sea level. How did they find enough? How did they get to eat there? Yes, so it's very challenging and inhospitable terrain on the face of it. But what the Inca's managed to do, and again, as Bill has indicated, a lot of this was building on what previous civilisations 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 high poona, over about 3,500 metres, they would pasture llamas and alpacas. So they have this kind of more vertical sense of living,

what's known as an archipelago settlement, so that they can exploit these different niches. And they also use terracing as well, again to take advantage of these microclimates. So one of the best examples of this would be at Morai, which is just north of Cuthco. And you've got there these concentric circles made of stone with different kind of platforms going upwards.

And 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 Inkers do is, of course, they trade with different regions. And because the empire is so vast, as Bill indicated, 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. The potatoes are a good example. Potatoes are a very good example. Can you tell us about that? Indeed. So they devised this way, well previous civilisations

have devised this way and they take it up of freeze-drying 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 instant mashed potato that they create. But another example would be meat as well. They dry meat

from blamas and alpacres to form a substance called charky, 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 they often are, This is a region affected by the El Nino phenomenon, among other things. They have these kind of stores in place. What about the terracing? You mentioned that there. The engineering was ingenious, wasn't it?

It was. Not only with the terracing. Can you give us some more examples, please? 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.

What do you mean by now? 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. They thought that mountains looked down on them. I didn't look down them, looked after them as it were. They looked up to mountains who looked down on them and were part of their God system. Absolutely, yes. Yeah, they had a spiritual

significance. They were kind of shrines often as well. Did their spiritual life come into their agricultural cultivation? Absolutely. So a lot of the Inka festivals and the ceremonies that they carry out were closely related to the 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. They had no horses. They didn't have horses. They 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. Absolutely. But llamas were a major source of transport for them. Obviously, Llamas will only go so far before, if you overload them, they'll sit down and refuse to move, so they 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. Thank you very much. Frank Menn's, what stories did the Inka themselves tell about their origin? There's a number of different ones. It's quite fun in a sense.

all Inca stories are variations on a 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 Pagaritambo, which is about 30 kilometers south of Kusko. There is a number of events that take place. One of the things that happens is that one of the brothers, Ayarkachi, 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 warn him in. War him in? Yes, so he's supposedly still there. And then the others move on and finally enter into the valley of Kusko 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 Kusko 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 him. So it's as if you've got this bird landing and turning into stone at that particular. location. Manco Kapaki, he sinks a golden rod into the ground tests whether it's agricurally

productive and establishes his kingdom at Kusko. What connection did the Inca feel with the landscape around them? The landscape is seen as an animated structure. 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 use. your life and your society. Thank you. Bill Sillard, what were the, what was their religion? Can you tell us something about that?

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. They, ancestors were very important, but they blur because people's ancestors, 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. 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 have been reincarnated.

Yes. Well, so 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. I asked you about religion, but can I put that to one side for a second? How did this, comparatively to a small tribe, succeed in taking over so much territory and so many other tribes? tribes. Was there any key thing? 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 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 should have 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 Chanka, of a neighbouring group that come and attack them and that they draw together 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... You mean decimated, you mean wiped out? Wiped out, particularly the elite 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 in gold. Helen, can I come back to a question that I asked Bill? isn't that he didn't answer it. You went on to say many other more interesting things.

So what about the sun and the moon? So the sun and moon were important deities for the Incas, and particularly the Sun, which was worshipped on a wide scale. It always seemed quite sensible to me in ancient religions that they should have a particular regard for the Sun. Anyway, never mind. It does make sense to worship something that you can see. And the Inca's, to the Inca's attitudes to all the precious metals

were also connected to that. So gold was seen as being the sweat of the sun. sun and silver was supposed to be the tears of the moon. And there was also this idea of duality in Inca societies. He'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 Inca's would make sacrifices to, usually of llamas. A white llama was sacrificed to the sun god Inti every day in Cusco. So you needed a lot of llamas for that. Was there any human sacrifice at all? There was some, yes. Nothing. Who would be sacrificed? 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 Inca's, 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.

Inca King, I mean, not one Inca person. 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 cheacher beer which the 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 was why it was children. And it could be about 200,000. perhaps sacrificed on the death of an emperor. So quite large numbers, that we haven't found that many Inca mummies to corroborate that. Cusco, therefore, Frank, Frank Madden is the centre of an enormous empire.

How was it connected with that empire? It was the biggest empire in the southern hemisphere, wasn't it? There was a massive road network which was fundamental to link to the the periphery with the centre. And was this held together my messengers? Yes, you have a structure where you have Chaski 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 a threat, 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 people, which is this string form of writing, where you've got a chord which has strings hanging off it with knots.

the messenger would take this and run and have a put-tutu, a conch shell trumpet, which he would announce his arrival for the next waste station, where the next runner would be ready to take it further along. It seems to work very efficiently, doesn't it? It did until the Spaniards came. It's a 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 work.

So it required a consistent effort to put this in place. And presumably those storehouses with potatoes 10 years old would play their part as well? Yeah, 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 Kusko itself, in Woonoko, there were very large banks of

500 or so of these structures where materials could be stored. Did all roads lead to and from Kusko? 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 Kusko. And indeed Kusko is seen as the centre of what one name

that the Inca give to their empire is Tawantin Suu, the four parts together or the four contributions together. And Cusco is seen as the very centre of that, where the four parts are united. And do we have any idea what Cusco was, as it were, like? Yes. In some ways, there are bits of Cuscoe 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 and as much as the original structure of Kuska 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

Cori Kancha, the golden enclosure which was particularly the focus of both the sun and the moon but of other it's also where the Inka ancestors were held sits at the point where two rivers come together and that is the sort of know that is where the bird

stopped where Manco Capac planted as 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 participating in caeseramines and then above that Saxoomann 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 how did the ruler rule and what did the people have to do The ruler ruled through connection.

So there were leaders of provinces, there were military leaders, there were ritual organization leaders, 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 labour.

So it was through creating reciprocal arrangements and one of the ways that they get sealed is through offering drinks to each other so that you create a contract. Drinks made out of maize, the principal product. Mainly, yeah. Yes. You want to come in? Yeah, the ruler also mediates with the sacred, and that is fundamentally seen as an aspect that justifies his leadership role.

He's a god. Yes. Helen, they had gold and silver, which led to their undoing. Did they think of them themselves think that was tremendously valuable? Yes, but not in the same way as the Spanish. So for the Spanish gold and silver have monetary value as a currency. For the Inca's, they have value as a status symbol. So the Inca's 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 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 Kusko so they could produce gold and silver artifacts for the Inca's. 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. What strength, we talked about the ancestors, do you think we give people, this has enough value about the place the ancestors played? I think it's quite hard, for us to understand the extent to which the Inca's 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, they seem to have been very well organized but perhaps it was brutally organized when, as I understand it, when they had 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? 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, you take. tax is paid by labour 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 sorry you want to say something well I need to add to some extent to what Frank is saying, and 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. So we're looking at, now, can we move on, I'm afraid, now. Thank you 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. It was still a powerful, settled, controlling empire. How did they respond to Pizarro when he turned up with his 200

men and their horses? Well, I think that one of the sort of insecurities within the empire is the process of succession because 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 an insecurity at the process of an emperor dying. So if Waino Kappak 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, Atalpa and Wascar. The civil war that had been going on meant that when the Spanish arrived, the place is in a process of disruption. When they said first, when they said eyes first on the Spanish, what were their thoughts?

What do we know what they thought about them? About what the Inca thought. Exactly. We do slightly know that, and as much as there's a record written by Tito Kuthi, who is a nephew of the Inca of Atulapa, who writes about the fact that they are impressed by the horses, they're impressed by the metal armour. What do you mean by impressed?

I mean, terrified, they wanted them? They wanted them. I think that the expression is that they would quite like to have killed off the Spanish, but kept their horses. Well, go on. we've started with the horses. But also, the horses were clad in iron a bit, and through the bits in the thing,

they seemed to be eating iron. So they're very strange. And the Spanish themselves tried to present that. 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 they were white, these men, and bearded, and this was strange too, wasn't it? It was strange.

I mean, the degree to which it was massively strange, I think is difficult to know, because the Inca were themselves in countering. very different-looking people as they expanded into such a large empire, but they were unusual, absolutely. 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 over 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 it. 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 and what was a complete victory 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 Inca's. Titu Kusi, 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... 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's lucky to stumble upon the Inca's at that moment. And I think also the Inca's very much underestimate the Spaniards and what they're trying to achieve. So Atulper, 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 Well an excuse

An excuse indeed But while he's in captivity One of his main preoccupations is what Huasca is going to do So he orders him to be executed So he's more concerned His brother He's more concerned about his brother

Usurping his throne Than about the Spaniards And similarly Huascair's relatives Hope to manipulate the Spaniards to benefit them and to get them back into power. I think another issue is that... So it seems a sort of paralysis on the Inca side. Yes, also because their lead has been taken into captivity.

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. I think they simply didn't realise how serious the Spaniards were. And in fact, because there were so few of them, and they didn't, they seemed abnormal, they didn't seem to have the qualities that the Inca's would recognise in an army.

So they didn't react. And because they had lost their leader as well, I think they weren't able to react quickly. I mean, it is worth saying that the Inca's 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. Frank, you want to come in. Yeah, I think the horses should not be on the rest. 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 be a god or maybe a beast, they don't know. The horses are very effective in this early period of keeping the Inca's under control and their soldiers at bay. So the Inca seem, if I can be perhaps too summarizing, Inca seem rather paralyzed and waiting to see what would happen, and Ahubo goes around, Anna and gets put in what is in captivity, where he's going to be, they're going to say, we want this cell of yours,

filled with golden silver before we let you go, as I understand it. Well, it's Atapualpa who orders his people from captivity to carry out certain actions. And I think it's after Atopalpa's own death that

They're garotium, does they? Yeah. That things start to get more out of control, in a sense, for the Spaniards, for a while at least. And it's... Just to add to that, one of the things quite interesting is that Atalpa is saying

take this gold from Kusko, this gold and silver. Attawalpa's base was actually in Ecuador and Quito. He is saying, take the material from the base that is particularly associated with Wascar. 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 Spaniards make, Spanish make any attempt to understand these people? instead of quite soon as we've got blowing them into oblivion. Yes, they did. I mean, they had their own translator, Martin, who was very important in terms of the process of communicating between the Ketra speaking and other languages, but particularly Ketra speaking Inka 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 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 try and record Inca history and understanding in order to be able to maintain their control.

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? 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 Huasca and Atta Welper to rule in their stead, effectively giving some legitimacy to them. The first one they choose dies, but the second one,

Meanwhile, the Spaniards are getting on with collecting the golden silver. They are indeed, yes. Fine, okay. So the first puppet emperor they choose dies, but the second Manco Inca does survive and initially allies with the Spanias, he's very young at the time, until he eventually rebels against them

and indeed besieges Cusco 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 state. Is there any stand-up battle? There are several confrontations, there are certainly some battles

during the siege of Cusco and afterwards. When do the Spanish know they won? I mean definitively, probably in 1572 when the very last Inca is executed to Pekaramaru. That's a long time on from,

that's 50 years on. So I'm trying to, probably this is my it's a futile expectation of mine. I'm trying to work out. They got there in 33. Now, what's happened by 35? Are the Spanish in control?

Pretty much. They've seized Cusco. One of the issues is they've also fallen out amongst themselves. So the conquistos spend a long time murdering one another. So there's two families of Pizarro's and the Almagros who are constantly, essentially, buying for control of Peru, which delays consolidation of power. How do you get accepted that the Spanish are now in charge, Bill?

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 organising the stores, they are still managing the war, you know, the, the, most of the people that are being killed on both sides are indigenous people and 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. But the Spanish are accumulating what they came for, the gold and silver, and they're calling the shots, I think, basically, are they? Yes. You can argue even that some of the uprising 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 its conflict is something to the benefit of some of these Spaniards.

The Inca's were solely depleted, 80 or 90% and there were three reasons for this. Do you want to tell us? Yes, I mean, disease was a primary reason. The Inca's 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 of 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... What about conversion?

forced conversion. The indigenous people are forced to convert to Catholicism, And this is a problem because Christianity is a monotheistic religion, whereas the Inca's allowed people they conquered to retain their own deities. The Spanish didn't. So many are forced to adopt Catholicism as a religion and stop worshipping their ancestors, stop worshipping their shrines. Are they punished?

Not initially, but later on if they are seen to apostise and to leave the Catholic religion. Finally, is there any hope of knowing a great deal more about the Inca Bill? 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 the Inca, and particularly what was happening before the Inca in order to understand the roots of Andean civilization. There are important things going on in terms of understanding how the Inca recording system, the Kipus, 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... And there are Inco 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 Coe, Frank Medans and Bill Silla. Next week, the Mitalinian debate when the Athenians voted to kill all the men of Mitalin and then spread across the Aegean to stop that happening because they change their minds. Thanks for listening.

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. You were going to come in, Frank. 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 and 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. And 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 Spondula shell, for example, gets traded from coastal Ecuador and 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.

One thing that's worth, a couple of things that are worth adding to that. First is that there is no currency in the Andes. There is no form of monetary exchange. Everything is done through reciprocity or some forms of barter in 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. action 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 sea becomes the kickstart of really the monetisation 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. One thing I would emphasize as well is it's pretty catastrophic when the Spanish conquer the Inca's 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 have been buried, or, for example, worshipping the gods through sacrifices of llamas or guinea pigs, which was their other main domestic. 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 looks 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 cheap, chiechabir 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 Iscariate, 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. Is there any sense that mummies were used in battle? 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 Inkers who have multiples of themselves by being represented by rocks or statues that are... Represented well? In battle, in negotiations with foreign dignitions. Yes. 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. Do we have any idea about the, do we have any idea of the life of the, the labors, the least advantage? I mean, they just labour away day after day and that was that. 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 Kusko, how little material culture that we recognise as Inca 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 Kusko. 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 Wernoku is looking at changes in diet and men end up with an 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 like what sort of they

had they think the form of lasting communication was with string not sin string can you say We didn't say quite enough about that. Yes, these are known as Kipu. 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're used 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 Incurros to communicate these message. And there's a particular reader of the Kusko called the Kipukamaiok, if I can say that correctly, who interprets these devices as well. But perhaps other people want to add further information on that. 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 Kippukamaios to read them, so we know that they had narrative material within them. But we as yet, all we know is the use of colour, 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 has been currently developed and debated.

They were destroyed by a bishop's conference that, weren't they? Some of them were, but some of them still survived and some of them have been recovered from archaeological context, which is helping us hugely because 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. 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.

We talked about them liking to negotiate, but there could be a very savage. and we tell also, and one thing that came up was that the skins of their enemies were used as drums. Is there anything in that? Yes, I mean, we get sort of chroniclers saying that that is what happened. They were certainly savage. I think in terms of the fact that they would meet 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 warfews, 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 in the head with clubs of stone. And their pointed star-shaped things that would really sort of break your skull. So 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 ink 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. We do know that in the campaign organised by Huayna Capac to conquer the people in what's now Ecuador, a large number were massacred in a lake that's now called Jaguar Kotter, 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. Well, that's a very good point to end on. I think our producer's coming in anyway. Tea or coffee? I have tea, thank you very much. I'll have tea, yes, Ben. More tea, yeah?

Well, thank you very much. Coffee for me. That's possible. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. I'm Simon Mundy, host of Don't Tell Me the Score, the podcast that uses sport to explore life's bigger questions, covering topics like resilience, tribalism, and fear with people like this.

We keep talking about fear, and to me, I always want to bring it back to, Are You Actually in Danger? That's Alex Honnold, star of the Oscar winning film Free Solo, in which he climbed a 3,000-foot sheer cliff without ropes. So, I mean, a lot of those social anxieties things, and certainly I've had a lot of issues with talking to attractive people in my life. I'm like, oh, no, like I can never do that. And it certainly feels like you're going to die,

but realistically, you're not going to die. And that's all practice, too. Have a listen to Don't Tell Me the Score, full of useful everyday tips from incredible people on BBC Sounds.