August 29, 2013 • 37 mins
Just before Francisco Pizarro arrived in South American in 1532, the Inca empire covered 350,000 square miles and boasted a million inhabitants. Yet Pizarro managed to take down this vast, powerful and advanced bureaucracy with only 168 men. Find out how and learn about the Inca on this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. Jerry's here of course, and uh, this is
(00:23):
stuff you should know. Welcome friends. Yeah, oh, before we
get started, I want to do a little plug. We
want to do a little plug for COD, the Cooperative
for Education, our friends in Guatemala. Of course. Yeah, if
you by way of Cincinnati, right, um, you, if you
haven't heard him, you want to go listen to our
Guatemala Adventure Parts one and two. Jerry gives a big
(00:46):
speech and the second one is very dramatic and moving. Um.
And basically, co ED is a group that is dedicated
to ending poverty in Guatemala by basically funding them. And
there's schooling through education, yes, through a textbook and then
computer program where your donations go to uh buy textbooks
(01:09):
that are rented by the families, and that rental money
goes into escrow accounts and then when the textbooks wear out,
they can buy new ones in perpetuity. That's exactly right.
And I think the textbook rentals something like two dollars
a year. Uh. They did a lot of surveys to
find out what the average family in these uh living
(01:29):
in the conditions that they live in, can afford. And
uh they've got it down pretty much to the science.
They have another thing, chuckers UM that's their Scholarship and
Youth Development program and it takes it a several steps
further where certain kids who are showing a lot of
potential UM, they get their tuition paid for. There's programs,
(01:52):
additional programs that are all paid for through this scholarship program.
And so co ED has developed this program. They're reaching
out to Steve you should know listeners who have apparently
shown up and forced to help co ED. Ever since
the Guatemalan Adventure episodes. Yeah, they've had people go on
tours with Jerry even and uh, yeah, it's really neat
(02:14):
like it's been just a great friendship over the past
few years. It has been UM. So you can go
to UM www dot Cooperative for Education dot org, slash
help Kids and become a scholarship sponsor UM And there's
two levels of sponsorship. There is the diploma sponsor right, Yeah,
(02:39):
seventy bucks a month yeah, and then the honorable sponsor
bucks a month, but very valuable and that is taking
kids literally as directly as you can without physically going
down there and picking them up, but lifting a kid
out of you know, like abject poverty and giving them
the chance for a real quality education. Yeah. I mean
(03:03):
we've seen him an action, and your money's going to
like a great place. I agree to use it. Well.
Uh and we mentioned this before and another episode and um,
as a result, some stuffies should know listeners became scholarship
um donors. That's right, who are well we've pledged to
like read these names. Yeah, anybody who who goes on
(03:24):
and becomes a scholarship sponsor with co ED and agrees
to U let us say their name if you want. Um,
we are reading your names out and thank you on
the podcast. So here's the first batch. That's right, Thank
you Andy Ho. That is A and d I E
why um. Thank you to Bendick Buck sauce nice. Thank
(03:45):
you to Aaron Nice or niece I don't know, and
I E s niece nice. Let's say both we did.
Thank you to Ian Murray for having a normal name.
Thank you to Jordan Wicker. Uh you want to read
the last three thanks to Katie Apple or a pel
(04:08):
pel uh, thanks to Kelly Andrews, and thanks to Zoya Erdevig.
That's right, And it sounds like we have people from
all over the world helping and chipping in, judging from
these names, so that's really great. Yeah. And the name
that you'll probably recognize because he's all over social our
social stuff, Caleb Weeks. Caleb Weeks super volunteered and uh
(04:29):
he is a programmer and he basically helped take the
co ED website into the one century by leaps and bounds,
um be by volunteering as a programmer. Yeah, you can
always get in touch with them if you don't have
any dough but you've got some other skill like they'll
take help in all kinds of ways, pro web program
gramming and video work. And Jerry's done some videography work
(04:51):
for him. I've done some voiceover stuff for him. It's
just it's a it's a real live charitable organization, agreed. Yeah, um,
so go help him. That's www. Dot Cooperative for Education
dot org slash help Kids and check it out. See
what you think. Okay, all right, Yeah, that was a
good one though. We We like to talk about coed
every now and then because there's good folks. So now
(05:14):
we can talk about sort of a related ish topic.
I guess it is. You know, it's down there. I
recognized a couple of these words. Yeah, well we'll get
to it, but there was one of them is actually
a town in Guatemala. I think which one? Catch catch
a cow? Yeah, that sounds familiar. That's a language. It's
a language, seriousays, but I remember when I was in
(05:37):
Guatemala hearing that. Right. Yeah, so we're talking inca. Yeah, pretty,
This is a Josh Clark jam. It was. This was
back when I was like storry eyed over anything that
had anything to do with Man. You wrote a series
of Charles Man related articles, and if for those of
you don't know, that is Josh's favorite book. We've talked
(05:58):
about it um a lot on the show, and I'm
still gonna read it one day. I just need to
do it. It's great. You know, you will not be disappointed.
I feel like if I read it now, they'd be like, oh,
I know that part. I know that part. You I'm
sure you will. You'll you'll recognize a lot of it.
But it's so much more fleshed out you got your
stank all over. That book isn't bad either of the
(06:19):
sequel mann here, it's a it's mannished Manish. You can
definitely tell Man wrote it for sure. So we're talking
about the Inca people who um, they had a habit,
not a habit, they had a practice they called I
can't quit. They had a practice in their culture of
child sacrifice, which sounds horrific and based in our modern
(06:44):
day culture. It is. But we've long pointed out the
tenets of cultural relativism. I would like to say that
I officially renounced cultural relativism on the whole. Oh really, Yeah,
I have since changed my viewpoint. I think there are
absolutes that are universal or should be, and that a
(07:04):
culture can be judged as barbaric per for certain practices. Yeah,
cultural relative is, and I know we've explained it before,
but that's basically you can't look back at some old
culture that did these things and judge it by today's
standards and say, you know, but it's a foundation of anthropology.
You couldn't have about cultural relatives of this. Oh yeah,
(07:27):
I mean, like as an absolute, like there's you there
was nothing that you could do that was out of
bounds as a culture because you could only judge the
culture by its own standards. Therefore everything is self justified, right.
I still believe that to a certain degree. But I
think in certain cases maybe I could say because people
(07:47):
can make the argument for a lot of things being
oh no, that's just the culture of things. Right now,
I'm exactly where you are. I would say, of things
are bound by culture for a relativism, But I do
think there are a handful of things, and I don't
even know if I have them fully explored yet, but
I think there's a handful of things that are just
(08:09):
you just shouldn't do, and if you do it, then
you're there's You're not as great as the cultures that
don't do that. Yeah, Because you know what, we had
a we had a fantic issue with us on the
Facebook law when we I posted about the posthumous pardoning
of Alan Turing, the codebreaker and inventor of the touring
test scientists in England that was homosexual and chemically castrated,
(08:33):
and they England recently um pardoned him posthumously and it
was pretty cool, and I posted about it, and this
one guy was like, well, you know back then they
that they were doing the best they can. They were
trying to help him out, but you know, because they
thought being gay was a disease. And I was like, listen, man,
you can't just sweep it under the rug by saying
this is just how things were. So I think that's
sort of an instance where I don't believe in it. Yeah,
(08:55):
even though it wasn't an ancient thing. It was like
the nineties, but it gets you know, it was a
different time in a different culture. So I guess I'm
with you. Then, Yeah, cool, there's a long winding way
of saying that. Cool. I liked the long winded way.
So we're on the same page. So how do you
feel about child sacrifice and the Incan culture? Um, The
weird thing is, I don't in this particular instance. I
(09:19):
do think it's bound by cultural relativist I think so too,
because it was so long ago. It was also so
extremely well thought out. It was venerated, it wasn't um brutal. Right, Well,
I mean it depends, so let's let's talk about this. Well,
how about this. It doesn't matter what I think of it.
I think we'll leave it to each listener to decide
(09:40):
what they think of inc and child sacrifice. First of all,
incan child sacrifice was used very uncommonly in cases of
really dire circumstances where they really had irked the gods
and needed to appease them, or in a very special
symbolic Asian for the most part them the it was
(10:04):
guinea pigs that were offered as blood sacrificed by the Yeah,
so children and then sometimes women were very infrequently sacrificed,
but of course never the men. Well yeah, um, when
they were however, uh, they there was an elaborate ritual
and process that was followed, and the kids were basically
like demigods for being offered up by their parents. Yeah,
(10:28):
you point out, it's not that they didn't um like
they had any animosity towards kids at all. They were
actually revered and that's why it was such like the
ultimate sacrifice because kids were so revered. Right, Well, it's
kind of like we value our children. We're gonna kill
one of them. That's how much we want to appease you.
That's how much we need these potato crops to survive.
(10:50):
That's right. So, um, there was a big ceremony. They
built a chamber, they gave the kid a little corn
alcohol the you know, soothe them, I guess, yeah, and
stave off fear. Um. You said that they knocked him
on the head with a cushioned blow to knock them out, Yeah,
which I imagine was probably done while they were like
(11:11):
not really paying attention. Um. But the point is they
wanted to prevent suffering as much as possible, so at
least they would be unconscious. But they think they died
of exposure basically, So it's not like they drove a
stake through the heart or anything like that. I just
kind of leave them at the top of the highest
point and they they went out of their way to
(11:32):
to make sure the children didn't feel any fear or
as little fear as possible. UM. And I think for
those reasons, because it was infrequent, because they tried to
make the child comfortable and not fearful, because it was
a relatively painless death. UM. I think that it kind
of I don't know, it falls within cultural relativism for me.
(11:55):
The thing that UM, I do take an issue with
was that the parents who offered up their kid was
in the kid's decision. Well, of course not. They immediately
gained higher status in the society. So I think that
that great honor, you know, it was, but it was
a way to gain status, Uh you know what I mean. Um,
so I think that it was in that respect. You
(12:16):
can really kind of cast a shadow upon it too.
And that and the fact that children died to get
potato crops to grow. Yeah, it wasn't a cute thing.
It's not like Tom hankson Met Ryan jumping in the
volcano to a piece of the will Pony was a
great movie. So they must have thought that things were
working because the Incas were like a super successful people. Yeah,
(12:38):
very quickly to like a million, a million people. That's
a lot of people back then in the span of
how many years, just a couple of centuries. Yeah, a
couple hundred years. A million people back then. That's what
you're doing pretty well. And they're spreading far and wide right.
And it wasn't like a couple of Inca. The initial
Inca got together and just had a million offspring. The
(12:59):
Inca how much, came out of nowhere as a civilization
and just dominated everybody else who is living as loose tribes,
unconnected tribes in the Andes at the time. Yeah, they were.
They were smart. They were technological technologically wow, technologically advanced
they were, um they they So the Andes are very
(13:22):
inhospitable place there. It's an arid climate and it's really
high up. Yeah, I mean just surviving there is is
something else much less thriving. Yeah, and getting crops to
grow well. INCA figured out irrigation techniques. They figured out
terraced farming, and we have the potato peanuts queen wa
(13:43):
quenwa um types of squash, peppers and beans all thank
we have other incaive things who well, thank the INCA.
Thank you INCA, or at the very least think the
people of the Andes that the INCA eventually came to subjugate. Okay,
that doesn't seem as heart felt and um, but they
(14:04):
but the INCA technology was very advanced. Yeh, super advanced. Um.
They had a very uh strictly rigidly defined class system,
starting at the top of course with the royals, and
then on the way down all the way down to
you know, the workers and the laborers and the commoners
and the military right and the INCA royal line was
(14:25):
perpetuated incestuously. A INCA ruler would marry his blood sister
full blood sister, and then they would have offspring, and
those offspring would be the INCA. So you can imagine
there was some yeah, strange INCA that emerged over time.
What's staggering is that there were Inca that were incredibly
(14:46):
smart and yes, and who built this civilization UM through
an incestuous line because it really was protected like that UM.
And then the INCA ruler would all so have dozens
of other wives that he wasn't related to, and then
from those offspring would be the the second tier of society,
(15:09):
the highest UM rulers, bureaucrats, advisors. I bet there were
some ancestrous kids too that you don't hear about as
much either that we're just sort of, you know, hidden away.
I'm sure you know what I'm saying. Isn't that bizarre though,
I mean, I know, if you're basing your your like
royal family on incests, you're you're already at a at
(15:30):
a you know, negative, I would think, But the Inca
are far from the only only group to come up
with this idea of protecting the royal bloodline by only
um producing offspring with that pure blood man. Crazy world Um,
so they were big time expansionists. They like to spread
(15:52):
out to the suburbs and the exerbs, and uh it
ended up being a problem which we'll get to. But
they were spread far and wide geographically, which can be
trouble eventually, as we'll see. Um. Sometimes they were crushing
people with their military forces. Sometimes they were tempting people
with like, hey, look we have roads, we have we
(16:14):
have technology, we have farming systems in the irrigation that
you're gonna like thrive with. Right they the nobles of
these the ones that they kind of colluded with, those
groups would become part of that second tier aristocracy as well.
So there was it was either might persuading him with
technology like you said, or saying, hey, you've got a
(16:35):
pretty nice spot over here if you come bring your
people under inca rule. So this also it sounds great
when you're getting all these different tribes, these hundreds of
tribes together under one more powerful group. But again, just
like spreading out far and wide, that would also eventually
be one little knock against them in their eventual downfall,
(16:56):
because when you've got people that were gathered together like that,
they're still all the ly fractured in a way, right, right,
But the Inca took great pains to get around this,
and these the tactic that Stalin would later use. You
take people from the conquered lands and move some of
them over here, and then you do the exact opposite
(17:17):
with some people from the other conquered land. And what
you do is you rule through dilution, cultural dilution. So
you're mixing up the tribes. Basically, you're breaking up families,
you're breaking up villages, you're breaking up tribes, that makes sense,
shuffling them all together and um giving them all a
common language and a common ruler, and through that you're
(17:38):
forcing a new cultural identity on them. That's what the
Inca did. That's how they were able to, I guess,
gain a population in a territory as big as they
did in just a couple of centuries, like miles. That
was like, yeah, from Ecuador to Chile. That's crazy. There's
three and fifty thousand square mile territory after just a
(17:59):
couple a hundred years of putting it together. Yeah, but
again you're setting yourself up for problems. Back then, you know,
they didn't have telegraphs, they had runners, They did, and
eventually the runners are even like at two hundred and
fifty miles a day. Okay, So I need to correct myself.
And that's not right, is it? I already I didn't
think it was. I already emailed Tracy Wilson of Stuffy,
(18:21):
Misson History class, who handles um changes to articles, uh,
and said, I need to change this. It says in
the article are originally said that these runners, highly trained
runners that would deliver communications throughout the kingdom of the Inca,
could cover two hundred fifty miles in a day. It
is wrong. That's four hundred kilometers in a day. Um,
(18:44):
it's absolutely wrong. Uh. Instead they would use a relay
system of runners that could cover two hundred and fifty
miles in a day. Oh well you didn't. Um. Well,
it made it sound like each runner cover two hundred
fifty miles And I like, I see what you mean. Wait,
that doesn't sound right. So I specified a relay. Using
(19:05):
a relay system, I kind of assumed that nobody can
run that much of the day, right, Well, I'm kind
of dumb except Forrest Gump. Um. So my point was, though,
even with those runners covering that distance, when you were
that spread out, it's eventually going to lead to fracturing
in some problems and communication and just a breakdown of
the society. Right. Um, and also took I don't know
(19:27):
if you mentioned or not. They didn't have the wheel.
They had one of the most highly advanced civilizations um
to ever pop up in the Americas, and they didn't
have the wheel. That's crazy. And it's not like the
wheel wasn't in existence. They were just an isolated group
like that. We're talking around the thirteenth century to the
sixteenth century. The Incas were around, and um the height
(19:52):
of their power was in the mid thirteenth century under
a ruler named Pacha Kuti, who is a great name,
and Pachacuti was the one for whom Machupicchi was built
as a royal estate. Yeah, I didn't know that. But
since the I mean, the government was a really big
factor because of the way the class system was built
and so rigid. It was a people that was that
(20:16):
were largely dependent on the government because they had the
smarts and people liked, you know, having bountiful crops and
and gold. Well they probably don't have much gold. Well,
there's definite trade. They had plenty of goal. Well no,
not the commoners, you know, well, no, no, but there
was a definite trade off. It was like you were
under Inca rule now, but you also have as many
(20:36):
potatoes as you need. Um, you've got great roads. Your
family is gonna not die young. Probably liquor evidently, yeah, exactly. Um.
And yes, there was a very strong bureaucracy. So India
modern day India is a very bureaucratic state. And there's
apparently sixteen hundred and sixty two government workers for every
(20:58):
hundred thousand people in India. You, wow, that's a lot.
In under Inca rule, there were um, thirteen hundred and
thirty one government officials for every ten thousand people. Wow,
that's an a staggering bureaucracy. But that's how they ran
this thing so well, this huge um system was run
(21:23):
through bureaucrats. That's right up to a point of course.
We all know it's you know, bad things are coming
our way because at the top of the podcast are
coming their way. Uh. And in the fifteenth century, Uh,
they had a big boom in expansion and basically it
became just a little too unwieldy and chaotic. They were
spread too far and wide. You know, when you whenever
(21:45):
you're that far apart and have that many different tribes
that make up your people, you're gonna have insurgencies and
rebels that they quashed pretty you know, did a pretty
good job of quashing those for many years. But um,
it was just too big again to spread out and
to to maintain basically at that time period. Well, I
guess probably the real crippling blow came in five when
(22:09):
Huenia Kopac Huenia Kupak, he was the Inca ruler. He
was a very strong ruler. Um he died, but unfortunately,
within just a few days of him, his successor died.
So okay, I was gonna say, why didn't he name
a successor? He did, and that also emailed Tracy about
(22:30):
but yeah he um he named a successor and they
both died within a couple of days of one another. Um,
which left the power vacuum and there were two sons
that moved to fill it and a seven year civil
war ensued that really fractured Incan society. Yeah, that was
at the Hualpa and Uscar, Yeah, which I think is
(22:52):
Incan for Oscar, I think so too. It's like George
and Oscar Bluth's right. Uh, and there was a seven
years civil war. The civil war of any type is gonna,
you know, fracture society. Seven year ones real bad, especially
when there's nobody in control during the time. Um the
I guess who Scar ultimately lost. He was executed by
(23:16):
his brother, Alto Walpa um in fifteen thirty two. But
the damage was done. After all, to Alpa consolidated power.
Incan society was on very shaky ground already. Yeah, the
cracks were showing. And uh, right about that time, a
Spanish conqueror named Francisco Pizzato arrived. And um, he didn't
(23:38):
have a lot of dudes with him. He had less
than two hundred men. And we will tell you the
story of just how those hundred and sixty eight men,
says Charles Mann took over this vast empire. And reason
number one is what we just said. He got there
at the right time. They were weekend, they were fractured,
the cracks were showing. Civil war had broken out, so
(23:59):
it was a good time to go in and do
a little conquering, right, And he followed in the footsteps
of Cortes Hernan Cortes who I have to say it, right,
who conquered the Mesoamerican Aztec civilization? The Triple Alliance? Right? Yeah?
He he went to South America from Cuba um as
as you know, under the Spanish flag. And even though
(24:23):
Diego Valesquez was the governor of Cuba, he was he
didn't uh, he didn't want him going down there. But
he did such a good job. Cortes did and came
back with a lot of gold, and King Charles the
Five said, you know what, you conquered the Aztecs. You
brought me a bunch of wealth. You were actually okay
in my book. And Pizzato saw this and was like, hey,
(24:45):
I want to get my hands on some wealth. I
feel like I'm a conqueror. Yeah, I'm a conquistador. So
Pizzato was a European and um, because he was European,
he had a very helpful tool. And this is the
number two thing to help them top of the incase.
It's called a gun. Yeah, that was a big one,
a very big one. Um, the boomstick. Yeah. Because on
(25:07):
top of the very obvious um killing power, the gun
provided big advantage, it was also it provided a huge
psychological advantage. Too, because the Inca, like the Aztecs, had
never seen anything like that before, and we're very, very
scared of it. That's right. Um, so they're messed up
in the head, right, So you've got you've got superior firepower.
(25:29):
You have the tactic of divide and conquer that Cortes used,
bizarre used as well. He identified groups that were um
under inc and rule, but we're maybe the most rebellious,
the ones who were most opposed to ink and rule,
identified them and colluded with them to turn them against
the inc and power structure, the central core of it. Yeah. Uh.
(25:52):
The other thing that helped him to when he arrived,
When Pizzato arrived, they thought that he was the creator
god vera trocha, and they thought the same thing about Cortess. Actually,
I thought he was quits a call, which Jerry says
it's a language, but it was a similar thing. They
thought these guys were returning gods or creator gods, so
immediately they kind of revered them and trusted them and
(26:16):
gave them, you know, they had confidence in them, which
was a big mistake. Um, Jerry is talking about catch
a call. That's the language, right, that's a mind language. Yeah,
but I think it's spelled the same. No, I don't
think so, yeah, okay, sorry about that. Yeah. So when
Potato gets there, he's got this trust. They think he's
a returning god. And what does he do with it?
(26:38):
While he captures their ruler. Yeah, he captured Altu Alpa,
who had just just executed his brother in consolidated power,
and all of a sudden, Pizarro shows up, like, I
fight for seven years, finally captured my brother. Execute him.
I'm the Inca now, right, and Pizzarre shows up with
his boomsticks. That's right, So I think he's a god.
(27:00):
I'll go see what he has to say. And oh,
he's holding me ransom. He's asking for a room full
of gold. No problem, I'll give it to him and
he'll let me go. But he doesn't. Pizarro hangs on
to Alta Alpa and ultimately Um finds that he's not
able to command the Inca through Alto Walpa. He was
sort of a puppet for a little while, right, so
(27:21):
he executes him. Pizarro has him strangled and then beheaded. Yep,
that'll do it. It will. So you still need an
Inca ruler if you're gonna rule the Inca because again
Pizzarre only has about a hundred and sixty eight guys
with him. Um, So he sets up another guy, another
Inca UM who's strictly a puppet ruler. Yeah, Manko ku
Back the second, Yes, and him the throne. He was
(27:44):
a son of Juanna ku Back right, of course, So
uh Manco rules for a little bit. But he also
he notices some cracks in the Spanish power structure. Um,
some new Spaniards have arrived. They're not the original hundred
and sixty eight conquistadors. These are some new guys, maybe
some carpet baggage you could call them, and they're not
(28:05):
entirely happy with Bizarro and his rule. So Manko notices
a fracture among the Spaniards, works to his advantage, and
eventually escapes uh Lima, which is the new capital city
of the Inca Kingdom under Spanish rule, and goes off
and found his own city, which is successful for a
little while. So how how many years is this? Okay?
(28:28):
So it's a slow takeover, it wasn't you know? They
didn't get off the ship with a hundred and sixty
eight guys and oh no, no, they did no, no,
but in like assumed control of the Yeah, I'm sorry,
I misspoke with with within a year, so fifteen thirty
two they land. By fifteen thirty six they've already killed
Alta waalpa uh installed Manko the second as the puppet ruler.
(28:54):
So they were essentially in power at that point, oh totally.
And then by fifteen thirty six Manco flees and found
a rival Incin state. Now that Incan state survived for
thirty six years, and by fift seventy two the Spanish
were very tired of all of the assaults and the
sieges on Lima. Sure there were insurgencies going on, and
(29:16):
they said, you know what, We're just gonna get rid
of this rival um Inca state Vilcabamba um headed by
Manko for a little while until um until the end.
The last Inco was named tupac Amaru. Seriously, and the
Inco when they stormed uh or the Spaniards when they
(29:37):
stormed Vilcabamba, they captured tupac Amaru and beheaded him and
effectively with that stroke ended Inca civilization forever. And they said, no,
he's just a hologram. We got the wrong guy, right, Yeah, Uh, okay,
So it was a bit of a I get it
now that it was six years that makes sense. That
(29:58):
was all. I really just condensed things into a very
brief sketch and it needed more flushing out. Maybe I'll
go back and flush it out. If not, if I,
if I don't, you should go um read the account
actually is a really great brief account of the downfall
of the Inca from the Microsoft in Carta Encyclopedia. They
(30:23):
had something good in there. Yeah, that's what you sent me. Yeah,
that's good stuff. So they also got a little bit
and more help because even with all these things going on,
it's still less than two hundred men, you know, like
even with the cracks and even with the collusion, and
even with the guns and everything going on, it's still
less than two hundred dudes. And it was a population
(30:46):
of a million. So they needed a little bit of
help from Europe's old friends. Smallpox. Yeah, this is what
really led to the set the stage for the Inca
downfall at the hands of a hundred and sixty eight
coun kiss. They did not know about smallpox, They had
no immunities against smallpox, they didn't live around livestock like
(31:07):
the Spaniards did. They had alpacas and guinea pigs, but
apparently they never carried smallpox. It's an old world disease
that was introduced to the New World and it ravaged it.
That's right. That's what they believe killed Huaina Kupac and
his name successor, which left the power vacuum in the
Civil War. Um. They think it killed a lot of
(31:27):
incomes who may have otherwise revolted against the Spaniards and
fought them, and they inadvertently brought smallpox with them. Yeah right.
It wasn't like early chemical warfare or anything like that. No,
they had no idea about the existence of smallpox until
they saw what was going on and became aware of
smallpox and that the native populations had no defenses against it.
(31:48):
Then maybe in the late eighteenth early nineteenth century Europeans
started using it as biological war We covered that in
something I remember tainted Blankets to the Native America ends
and things like that. Cheez, yeah, because I mean once
it got introduced, it just ravaged the America's just ravaged it.
You can't even say decimated because we'll get too many
(32:10):
emails from misusing it. But apparently somewhere between ninety and
nine of the indigenous populations of America, which by some
estimates was that a hundred million by the fourteen nineties,
a fifth of the world population. Nine of that was
wiped out within a hundred and thirty years of Columbus's
(32:31):
arrival in the Indies. And that is how a hundred
and sixty eight men can take over such a bass population.
As Paul Harvey would say, that's the end of the story,
or is it. Yeah? Okay, man, you're like, no, no, no,
I got one more thing. No I don't Paul Harvey
comes in and punches you into nice. Um. For those
(32:55):
of you that don't know Paul Harvey. For those of
you who are un your age sixty, yeah probably Now
look him up. I'm not even gonna tell you who
is this Paul Harvey. Yeah, look him up. Okay. And
in the meantime, while you're looking things up, look up
the h this article I wrote. Hopefully it'll be updated
by the time this episode comes out. Um, just type
(33:16):
in conquistadors c O N Q U I S T
A D O R S in the search bar at
how stuff worst dot com and it will bring it up.
Since I said search, part's time for a message break,
and now it's time for a listener mail. Yeah, and
(33:37):
I gotta say I really love our jingle. Yeah, it's good.
It was a great gift. It's Creed all right. So
this is uh from a former quartermaster UM in the
Coastguard who sort of bridge the gap between sextants and GPS,
so he was rounded, you know, he saw both worlds.
(33:57):
It's very interesting. Yeah, that's quite a transition, al right, guys,
great podcast. I was a quartermaster in the U. S.
Coast Guard and worked with charts and navigation. My last
duty station was aboard the buoy tender US Coast Guard
Cutter sund and Deluth, Minnesota. Our area of responsibility was
Lake Superior, and I feel fortunate to have participated in
(34:18):
the transition from positioning buoys using sextance to using TPS.
GPS was new at the time, and because there was
a built in error to the signal, had to be
removed by a differential military system. A few civilian applications
were using it at the time. The GPS unit that
we had only provided a lad tude latitude and longitude,
(34:38):
which we then plotted on a chart to get our position.
Because our charts were using old datum um, they were inaccurate,
and in some instances the GPS coordinates had us driving
the ship over land um. Although GPS was quicker and
in most cases more accurate than sex Stance, we didn't
fully trust it yet, so we had to plot out
the position of each buoy with sex Stance and the
(35:01):
GPS to compare the two. After a couple of more
years comparing the two, and after the charts were updated
with a more accurate datum, we eventually switched to all
GPS position. Do you remember that pavement album what is it?
Westing By? Must getting sextant yet? B sides? Great? One?
Is it? Yeah? Look at it? And every time we
(35:21):
hear the word sex and I think about it. When
navigating in the Great Lakes, we use radar and bearings
to fixed objects on land to charter position and use
GPS coordinates alongside the traditional methods of navigation as a check.
GPS became very valuable to navigating and software improved to
plot the position on an electronic chart. Even back then
(35:43):
I could see all the writing on the wall. The
new the Coastguard would probably replace Quartermasters with GPS units
in the future. In two thousand three, the Coastguard stopped
training quartermasters and soon after the existing quartermasters were offered
different positions within the Coastguard and they smashed all sexidence.
Now we can all go out there and say that
(36:04):
we learned today what a quartermaster does or did they
didn't smash the sexdence. By the way, um, navigating by
means of sextant, radar and visual bearings is becoming a
dying arc. But I'm proud to have been proficient in
navigation and feel fortunate to have experienced of transition from
old to new, old school to new fair winds and
following sees Jared Park's former quartermasters second class US Coast Guard.
(36:29):
By the way, I should mention you've got a lot
of flak for not knowing what orienteering was orienting for
maps podcast. Yeah, and and I posted the brown map
to I don't want to use I need that because
everybody on Twitter's ask him and like, yeah, please do
it right now. Yeah, thank you. I will tweet that directly.
(36:51):
So thanks to Jared for that at email. Yeah, thanks Jared.
Body to make yourself obsolete, Uh, if you have made
yourself obsolete in some way, um or have contributed to
the obsolation of uh, anything that's pretty interesting stuff create obsoletion, right, sure, yeah,
I think it's right orienting. UH we want to hear
(37:13):
about it. You can send us a tweet to uh
s y s K podcast that's on Twitter handle. You
can join us on Facebook dot com. That's Facebook dot com,
slash Stuff you Should Know, You can send us an
email the Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com, and you
can join us at our home on the web Stuff
you Should Know dot com for more on this and
(37:39):
thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot Com.
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. Jerry's here of course, and uh, this is
(00:23):
stuff you should know. Welcome friends. Yeah, oh, before we
get started, I want to do a little plug. We
want to do a little plug for COD, the Cooperative
for Education, our friends in Guatemala. Of course. Yeah, if
you by way of Cincinnati, right, um, you, if you
haven't heard him, you want to go listen to our
Guatemala Adventure Parts one and two. Jerry gives a big
(00:46):
speech and the second one is very dramatic and moving. Um.
And basically, co ED is a group that is dedicated
to ending poverty in Guatemala by basically funding them. And
there's schooling through education, yes, through a textbook and then
computer program where your donations go to uh buy textbooks
(01:09):
that are rented by the families, and that rental money
goes into escrow accounts and then when the textbooks wear out,
they can buy new ones in perpetuity. That's exactly right.
And I think the textbook rentals something like two dollars
a year. Uh. They did a lot of surveys to
find out what the average family in these uh living
(01:29):
in the conditions that they live in, can afford. And
uh they've got it down pretty much to the science.
They have another thing, chuckers UM that's their Scholarship and
Youth Development program and it takes it a several steps
further where certain kids who are showing a lot of
potential UM, they get their tuition paid for. There's programs,
(01:52):
additional programs that are all paid for through this scholarship program.
And so co ED has developed this program. They're reaching
out to Steve you should know listeners who have apparently
shown up and forced to help co ED. Ever since
the Guatemalan Adventure episodes. Yeah, they've had people go on
tours with Jerry even and uh, yeah, it's really neat
(02:14):
like it's been just a great friendship over the past
few years. It has been UM. So you can go
to UM www dot Cooperative for Education dot org, slash
help Kids and become a scholarship sponsor UM And there's
two levels of sponsorship. There is the diploma sponsor right, Yeah,
(02:39):
seventy bucks a month yeah, and then the honorable sponsor
bucks a month, but very valuable and that is taking
kids literally as directly as you can without physically going
down there and picking them up, but lifting a kid
out of you know, like abject poverty and giving them
the chance for a real quality education. Yeah. I mean
(03:03):
we've seen him an action, and your money's going to
like a great place. I agree to use it. Well.
Uh and we mentioned this before and another episode and um,
as a result, some stuffies should know listeners became scholarship
um donors. That's right, who are well we've pledged to
like read these names. Yeah, anybody who who goes on
(03:24):
and becomes a scholarship sponsor with co ED and agrees
to U let us say their name if you want. Um,
we are reading your names out and thank you on
the podcast. So here's the first batch. That's right, Thank
you Andy Ho. That is A and d I E
why um. Thank you to Bendick Buck sauce nice. Thank
(03:45):
you to Aaron Nice or niece I don't know, and
I E s niece nice. Let's say both we did.
Thank you to Ian Murray for having a normal name.
Thank you to Jordan Wicker. Uh you want to read
the last three thanks to Katie Apple or a pel
(04:08):
pel uh, thanks to Kelly Andrews, and thanks to Zoya Erdevig.
That's right, And it sounds like we have people from
all over the world helping and chipping in, judging from
these names, so that's really great. Yeah. And the name
that you'll probably recognize because he's all over social our
social stuff, Caleb Weeks. Caleb Weeks super volunteered and uh
(04:29):
he is a programmer and he basically helped take the
co ED website into the one century by leaps and bounds,
um be by volunteering as a programmer. Yeah, you can
always get in touch with them if you don't have
any dough but you've got some other skill like they'll
take help in all kinds of ways, pro web program
gramming and video work. And Jerry's done some videography work
(04:51):
for him. I've done some voiceover stuff for him. It's
just it's a it's a real live charitable organization, agreed. Yeah, um,
so go help him. That's www. Dot Cooperative for Education
dot org slash help Kids and check it out. See
what you think. Okay, all right, Yeah, that was a
good one though. We We like to talk about coed
every now and then because there's good folks. So now
(05:14):
we can talk about sort of a related ish topic.
I guess it is. You know, it's down there. I
recognized a couple of these words. Yeah, well we'll get
to it, but there was one of them is actually
a town in Guatemala. I think which one? Catch catch
a cow? Yeah, that sounds familiar. That's a language. It's
a language, seriousays, but I remember when I was in
(05:37):
Guatemala hearing that. Right. Yeah, so we're talking inca. Yeah, pretty,
This is a Josh Clark jam. It was. This was
back when I was like storry eyed over anything that
had anything to do with Man. You wrote a series
of Charles Man related articles, and if for those of
you don't know, that is Josh's favorite book. We've talked
(05:58):
about it um a lot on the show, and I'm
still gonna read it one day. I just need to
do it. It's great. You know, you will not be disappointed.
I feel like if I read it now, they'd be like, oh,
I know that part. I know that part. You I'm
sure you will. You'll you'll recognize a lot of it.
But it's so much more fleshed out you got your
stank all over. That book isn't bad either of the
(06:19):
sequel mann here, it's a it's mannished Manish. You can
definitely tell Man wrote it for sure. So we're talking
about the Inca people who um, they had a habit,
not a habit, they had a practice they called I
can't quit. They had a practice in their culture of
child sacrifice, which sounds horrific and based in our modern
(06:44):
day culture. It is. But we've long pointed out the
tenets of cultural relativism. I would like to say that
I officially renounced cultural relativism on the whole. Oh really, Yeah,
I have since changed my viewpoint. I think there are
absolutes that are universal or should be, and that a
(07:04):
culture can be judged as barbaric per for certain practices. Yeah,
cultural relative is, and I know we've explained it before,
but that's basically you can't look back at some old
culture that did these things and judge it by today's
standards and say, you know, but it's a foundation of anthropology.
You couldn't have about cultural relatives of this. Oh yeah,
(07:27):
I mean, like as an absolute, like there's you there
was nothing that you could do that was out of
bounds as a culture because you could only judge the
culture by its own standards. Therefore everything is self justified, right.
I still believe that to a certain degree. But I
think in certain cases maybe I could say because people
(07:47):
can make the argument for a lot of things being
oh no, that's just the culture of things. Right now,
I'm exactly where you are. I would say, of things
are bound by culture for a relativism, But I do
think there are a handful of things, and I don't
even know if I have them fully explored yet, but
I think there's a handful of things that are just
(08:09):
you just shouldn't do, and if you do it, then
you're there's You're not as great as the cultures that
don't do that. Yeah, Because you know what, we had
a we had a fantic issue with us on the
Facebook law when we I posted about the posthumous pardoning
of Alan Turing, the codebreaker and inventor of the touring
test scientists in England that was homosexual and chemically castrated,
(08:33):
and they England recently um pardoned him posthumously and it
was pretty cool, and I posted about it, and this
one guy was like, well, you know back then they
that they were doing the best they can. They were
trying to help him out, but you know, because they
thought being gay was a disease. And I was like, listen, man,
you can't just sweep it under the rug by saying
this is just how things were. So I think that's
sort of an instance where I don't believe in it. Yeah,
(08:55):
even though it wasn't an ancient thing. It was like
the nineties, but it gets you know, it was a
different time in a different culture. So I guess I'm
with you. Then, Yeah, cool, there's a long winding way
of saying that. Cool. I liked the long winded way.
So we're on the same page. So how do you
feel about child sacrifice and the Incan culture? Um, The
weird thing is, I don't in this particular instance. I
(09:19):
do think it's bound by cultural relativist I think so too,
because it was so long ago. It was also so
extremely well thought out. It was venerated, it wasn't um brutal. Right, Well,
I mean it depends, so let's let's talk about this. Well,
how about this. It doesn't matter what I think of it.
I think we'll leave it to each listener to decide
(09:40):
what they think of inc and child sacrifice. First of all,
incan child sacrifice was used very uncommonly in cases of
really dire circumstances where they really had irked the gods
and needed to appease them, or in a very special
symbolic Asian for the most part them the it was
(10:04):
guinea pigs that were offered as blood sacrificed by the Yeah,
so children and then sometimes women were very infrequently sacrificed,
but of course never the men. Well yeah, um, when
they were however, uh, they there was an elaborate ritual
and process that was followed, and the kids were basically
like demigods for being offered up by their parents. Yeah,
(10:28):
you point out, it's not that they didn't um like
they had any animosity towards kids at all. They were
actually revered and that's why it was such like the
ultimate sacrifice because kids were so revered. Right, Well, it's
kind of like we value our children. We're gonna kill
one of them. That's how much we want to appease you.
That's how much we need these potato crops to survive.
(10:50):
That's right. So, um, there was a big ceremony. They
built a chamber, they gave the kid a little corn
alcohol the you know, soothe them, I guess, yeah, and
stave off fear. Um. You said that they knocked him
on the head with a cushioned blow to knock them out, Yeah,
which I imagine was probably done while they were like
(11:11):
not really paying attention. Um. But the point is they
wanted to prevent suffering as much as possible, so at
least they would be unconscious. But they think they died
of exposure basically, So it's not like they drove a
stake through the heart or anything like that. I just
kind of leave them at the top of the highest
point and they they went out of their way to
(11:32):
to make sure the children didn't feel any fear or
as little fear as possible. UM. And I think for
those reasons, because it was infrequent, because they tried to
make the child comfortable and not fearful, because it was
a relatively painless death. UM. I think that it kind
of I don't know, it falls within cultural relativism for me.
(11:55):
The thing that UM, I do take an issue with
was that the parents who offered up their kid was
in the kid's decision. Well, of course not. They immediately
gained higher status in the society. So I think that
that great honor, you know, it was, but it was
a way to gain status, Uh you know what I mean. Um,
so I think that it was in that respect. You
(12:16):
can really kind of cast a shadow upon it too.
And that and the fact that children died to get
potato crops to grow. Yeah, it wasn't a cute thing.
It's not like Tom hankson Met Ryan jumping in the
volcano to a piece of the will Pony was a
great movie. So they must have thought that things were
working because the Incas were like a super successful people. Yeah,
(12:38):
very quickly to like a million, a million people. That's
a lot of people back then in the span of
how many years, just a couple of centuries. Yeah, a
couple hundred years. A million people back then. That's what
you're doing pretty well. And they're spreading far and wide right.
And it wasn't like a couple of Inca. The initial
Inca got together and just had a million offspring. The
(12:59):
Inca how much, came out of nowhere as a civilization
and just dominated everybody else who is living as loose tribes,
unconnected tribes in the Andes at the time. Yeah, they were.
They were smart. They were technological technologically wow, technologically advanced
they were, um they they So the Andes are very
(13:22):
inhospitable place there. It's an arid climate and it's really
high up. Yeah, I mean just surviving there is is
something else much less thriving. Yeah, and getting crops to
grow well. INCA figured out irrigation techniques. They figured out
terraced farming, and we have the potato peanuts queen wa
(13:43):
quenwa um types of squash, peppers and beans all thank
we have other incaive things who well, thank the INCA.
Thank you INCA, or at the very least think the
people of the Andes that the INCA eventually came to subjugate. Okay,
that doesn't seem as heart felt and um, but they
(14:04):
but the INCA technology was very advanced. Yeh, super advanced. Um.
They had a very uh strictly rigidly defined class system,
starting at the top of course with the royals, and
then on the way down all the way down to
you know, the workers and the laborers and the commoners
and the military right and the INCA royal line was
(14:25):
perpetuated incestuously. A INCA ruler would marry his blood sister
full blood sister, and then they would have offspring, and
those offspring would be the INCA. So you can imagine
there was some yeah, strange INCA that emerged over time.
What's staggering is that there were Inca that were incredibly
(14:46):
smart and yes, and who built this civilization UM through
an incestuous line because it really was protected like that UM.
And then the INCA ruler would all so have dozens
of other wives that he wasn't related to, and then
from those offspring would be the the second tier of society,
(15:09):
the highest UM rulers, bureaucrats, advisors. I bet there were
some ancestrous kids too that you don't hear about as
much either that we're just sort of, you know, hidden away.
I'm sure you know what I'm saying. Isn't that bizarre though,
I mean, I know, if you're basing your your like
royal family on incests, you're you're already at a at
(15:30):
a you know, negative, I would think, But the Inca
are far from the only only group to come up
with this idea of protecting the royal bloodline by only
um producing offspring with that pure blood man. Crazy world Um,
so they were big time expansionists. They like to spread
(15:52):
out to the suburbs and the exerbs, and uh it
ended up being a problem which we'll get to. But
they were spread far and wide geographically, which can be
trouble eventually, as we'll see. Um. Sometimes they were crushing
people with their military forces. Sometimes they were tempting people
with like, hey, look we have roads, we have we
(16:14):
have technology, we have farming systems in the irrigation that
you're gonna like thrive with. Right they the nobles of
these the ones that they kind of colluded with, those
groups would become part of that second tier aristocracy as well.
So there was it was either might persuading him with
technology like you said, or saying, hey, you've got a
(16:35):
pretty nice spot over here if you come bring your
people under inca rule. So this also it sounds great
when you're getting all these different tribes, these hundreds of
tribes together under one more powerful group. But again, just
like spreading out far and wide, that would also eventually
be one little knock against them in their eventual downfall,
(16:56):
because when you've got people that were gathered together like that,
they're still all the ly fractured in a way, right, right,
But the Inca took great pains to get around this,
and these the tactic that Stalin would later use. You
take people from the conquered lands and move some of
them over here, and then you do the exact opposite
(17:17):
with some people from the other conquered land. And what
you do is you rule through dilution, cultural dilution. So
you're mixing up the tribes. Basically, you're breaking up families,
you're breaking up villages, you're breaking up tribes, that makes sense,
shuffling them all together and um giving them all a
common language and a common ruler, and through that you're
(17:38):
forcing a new cultural identity on them. That's what the
Inca did. That's how they were able to, I guess,
gain a population in a territory as big as they
did in just a couple of centuries, like miles. That
was like, yeah, from Ecuador to Chile. That's crazy. There's
three and fifty thousand square mile territory after just a
(17:59):
couple a hundred years of putting it together. Yeah, but
again you're setting yourself up for problems. Back then, you know,
they didn't have telegraphs, they had runners, They did, and
eventually the runners are even like at two hundred and
fifty miles a day. Okay, So I need to correct myself.
And that's not right, is it? I already I didn't
think it was. I already emailed Tracy Wilson of Stuffy,
(18:21):
Misson History class, who handles um changes to articles, uh,
and said, I need to change this. It says in
the article are originally said that these runners, highly trained
runners that would deliver communications throughout the kingdom of the Inca,
could cover two hundred fifty miles in a day. It
is wrong. That's four hundred kilometers in a day. Um,
(18:44):
it's absolutely wrong. Uh. Instead they would use a relay
system of runners that could cover two hundred and fifty
miles in a day. Oh well you didn't. Um. Well,
it made it sound like each runner cover two hundred
fifty miles And I like, I see what you mean. Wait,
that doesn't sound right. So I specified a relay. Using
(19:05):
a relay system, I kind of assumed that nobody can
run that much of the day, right, Well, I'm kind
of dumb except Forrest Gump. Um. So my point was, though,
even with those runners covering that distance, when you were
that spread out, it's eventually going to lead to fracturing
in some problems and communication and just a breakdown of
the society. Right. Um, and also took I don't know
(19:27):
if you mentioned or not. They didn't have the wheel.
They had one of the most highly advanced civilizations um
to ever pop up in the Americas, and they didn't
have the wheel. That's crazy. And it's not like the
wheel wasn't in existence. They were just an isolated group
like that. We're talking around the thirteenth century to the
sixteenth century. The Incas were around, and um the height
(19:52):
of their power was in the mid thirteenth century under
a ruler named Pacha Kuti, who is a great name,
and Pachacuti was the one for whom Machupicchi was built
as a royal estate. Yeah, I didn't know that. But
since the I mean, the government was a really big
factor because of the way the class system was built
and so rigid. It was a people that was that
(20:16):
were largely dependent on the government because they had the
smarts and people liked, you know, having bountiful crops and
and gold. Well they probably don't have much gold. Well,
there's definite trade. They had plenty of goal. Well no,
not the commoners, you know, well, no, no, but there
was a definite trade off. It was like you were
under Inca rule now, but you also have as many
(20:36):
potatoes as you need. Um, you've got great roads. Your
family is gonna not die young. Probably liquor evidently, yeah, exactly. Um.
And yes, there was a very strong bureaucracy. So India
modern day India is a very bureaucratic state. And there's
apparently sixteen hundred and sixty two government workers for every
(20:58):
hundred thousand people in India. You, wow, that's a lot.
In under Inca rule, there were um, thirteen hundred and
thirty one government officials for every ten thousand people. Wow,
that's an a staggering bureaucracy. But that's how they ran
this thing so well, this huge um system was run
(21:23):
through bureaucrats. That's right up to a point of course.
We all know it's you know, bad things are coming
our way because at the top of the podcast are
coming their way. Uh. And in the fifteenth century, Uh,
they had a big boom in expansion and basically it
became just a little too unwieldy and chaotic. They were
spread too far and wide. You know, when you whenever
(21:45):
you're that far apart and have that many different tribes
that make up your people, you're gonna have insurgencies and
rebels that they quashed pretty you know, did a pretty
good job of quashing those for many years. But um,
it was just too big again to spread out and
to to maintain basically at that time period. Well, I
guess probably the real crippling blow came in five when
(22:09):
Huenia Kopac Huenia Kupak, he was the Inca ruler. He
was a very strong ruler. Um he died, but unfortunately,
within just a few days of him, his successor died.
So okay, I was gonna say, why didn't he name
a successor? He did, and that also emailed Tracy about
(22:30):
but yeah he um he named a successor and they
both died within a couple of days of one another. Um,
which left the power vacuum and there were two sons
that moved to fill it and a seven year civil
war ensued that really fractured Incan society. Yeah, that was
at the Hualpa and Uscar, Yeah, which I think is
(22:52):
Incan for Oscar, I think so too. It's like George
and Oscar Bluth's right. Uh, and there was a seven
years civil war. The civil war of any type is gonna,
you know, fracture society. Seven year ones real bad, especially
when there's nobody in control during the time. Um the
I guess who Scar ultimately lost. He was executed by
(23:16):
his brother, Alto Walpa um in fifteen thirty two. But
the damage was done. After all, to Alpa consolidated power.
Incan society was on very shaky ground already. Yeah, the
cracks were showing. And uh, right about that time, a
Spanish conqueror named Francisco Pizzato arrived. And um, he didn't
(23:38):
have a lot of dudes with him. He had less
than two hundred men. And we will tell you the
story of just how those hundred and sixty eight men,
says Charles Mann took over this vast empire. And reason
number one is what we just said. He got there
at the right time. They were weekend, they were fractured,
the cracks were showing. Civil war had broken out, so
(23:59):
it was a good time to go in and do
a little conquering, right, And he followed in the footsteps
of Cortes Hernan Cortes who I have to say it, right,
who conquered the Mesoamerican Aztec civilization? The Triple Alliance? Right? Yeah?
He he went to South America from Cuba um as
as you know, under the Spanish flag. And even though
(24:23):
Diego Valesquez was the governor of Cuba, he was he
didn't uh, he didn't want him going down there. But
he did such a good job. Cortes did and came
back with a lot of gold, and King Charles the
Five said, you know what, you conquered the Aztecs. You
brought me a bunch of wealth. You were actually okay
in my book. And Pizzato saw this and was like, hey,
(24:45):
I want to get my hands on some wealth. I
feel like I'm a conqueror. Yeah, I'm a conquistador. So
Pizzato was a European and um, because he was European,
he had a very helpful tool. And this is the
number two thing to help them top of the incase.
It's called a gun. Yeah, that was a big one,
a very big one. Um, the boomstick. Yeah. Because on
(25:07):
top of the very obvious um killing power, the gun
provided big advantage, it was also it provided a huge
psychological advantage. Too, because the Inca, like the Aztecs, had
never seen anything like that before, and we're very, very
scared of it. That's right. Um, so they're messed up
in the head, right, So you've got you've got superior firepower.
(25:29):
You have the tactic of divide and conquer that Cortes used,
bizarre used as well. He identified groups that were um
under inc and rule, but we're maybe the most rebellious,
the ones who were most opposed to ink and rule,
identified them and colluded with them to turn them against
the inc and power structure, the central core of it. Yeah. Uh.
(25:52):
The other thing that helped him to when he arrived,
When Pizzato arrived, they thought that he was the creator
god vera trocha, and they thought the same thing about Cortess. Actually,
I thought he was quits a call, which Jerry says
it's a language, but it was a similar thing. They
thought these guys were returning gods or creator gods, so
immediately they kind of revered them and trusted them and
(26:16):
gave them, you know, they had confidence in them, which
was a big mistake. Um, Jerry is talking about catch
a call. That's the language, right, that's a mind language. Yeah,
but I think it's spelled the same. No, I don't
think so, yeah, okay, sorry about that. Yeah. So when
Potato gets there, he's got this trust. They think he's
a returning god. And what does he do with it?
(26:38):
While he captures their ruler. Yeah, he captured Altu Alpa,
who had just just executed his brother in consolidated power,
and all of a sudden, Pizarro shows up, like, I
fight for seven years, finally captured my brother. Execute him.
I'm the Inca now, right, and Pizzarre shows up with
his boomsticks. That's right, So I think he's a god.
(27:00):
I'll go see what he has to say. And oh,
he's holding me ransom. He's asking for a room full
of gold. No problem, I'll give it to him and
he'll let me go. But he doesn't. Pizarro hangs on
to Alta Alpa and ultimately Um finds that he's not
able to command the Inca through Alto Walpa. He was
sort of a puppet for a little while, right, so
(27:21):
he executes him. Pizarro has him strangled and then beheaded. Yep,
that'll do it. It will. So you still need an
Inca ruler if you're gonna rule the Inca because again
Pizzarre only has about a hundred and sixty eight guys
with him. Um, So he sets up another guy, another
Inca UM who's strictly a puppet ruler. Yeah, Manko ku
Back the second, Yes, and him the throne. He was
(27:44):
a son of Juanna ku Back right, of course, So
uh Manco rules for a little bit. But he also
he notices some cracks in the Spanish power structure. Um,
some new Spaniards have arrived. They're not the original hundred
and sixty eight conquistadors. These are some new guys, maybe
some carpet baggage you could call them, and they're not
(28:05):
entirely happy with Bizarro and his rule. So Manko notices
a fracture among the Spaniards, works to his advantage, and
eventually escapes uh Lima, which is the new capital city
of the Inca Kingdom under Spanish rule, and goes off
and found his own city, which is successful for a
little while. So how how many years is this? Okay?
(28:28):
So it's a slow takeover, it wasn't you know? They
didn't get off the ship with a hundred and sixty
eight guys and oh no, no, they did no, no,
but in like assumed control of the Yeah, I'm sorry,
I misspoke with with within a year, so fifteen thirty
two they land. By fifteen thirty six they've already killed
Alta waalpa uh installed Manko the second as the puppet ruler.
(28:54):
So they were essentially in power at that point, oh totally.
And then by fifteen thirty six Manco flees and found
a rival Incin state. Now that Incan state survived for
thirty six years, and by fift seventy two the Spanish
were very tired of all of the assaults and the
sieges on Lima. Sure there were insurgencies going on, and
(29:16):
they said, you know what, We're just gonna get rid
of this rival um Inca state Vilcabamba um headed by
Manko for a little while until um until the end.
The last Inco was named tupac Amaru. Seriously, and the
Inco when they stormed uh or the Spaniards when they
(29:37):
stormed Vilcabamba, they captured tupac Amaru and beheaded him and
effectively with that stroke ended Inca civilization forever. And they said, no,
he's just a hologram. We got the wrong guy, right, Yeah, Uh, okay,
So it was a bit of a I get it
now that it was six years that makes sense. That
(29:58):
was all. I really just condensed things into a very
brief sketch and it needed more flushing out. Maybe I'll
go back and flush it out. If not, if I,
if I don't, you should go um read the account
actually is a really great brief account of the downfall
of the Inca from the Microsoft in Carta Encyclopedia. They
(30:23):
had something good in there. Yeah, that's what you sent me. Yeah,
that's good stuff. So they also got a little bit
and more help because even with all these things going on,
it's still less than two hundred men, you know, like
even with the cracks and even with the collusion, and
even with the guns and everything going on, it's still
less than two hundred dudes. And it was a population
(30:46):
of a million. So they needed a little bit of
help from Europe's old friends. Smallpox. Yeah, this is what
really led to the set the stage for the Inca
downfall at the hands of a hundred and sixty eight
coun kiss. They did not know about smallpox, They had
no immunities against smallpox, they didn't live around livestock like
(31:07):
the Spaniards did. They had alpacas and guinea pigs, but
apparently they never carried smallpox. It's an old world disease
that was introduced to the New World and it ravaged it.
That's right. That's what they believe killed Huaina Kupac and
his name successor, which left the power vacuum in the
Civil War. Um. They think it killed a lot of
(31:27):
incomes who may have otherwise revolted against the Spaniards and
fought them, and they inadvertently brought smallpox with them. Yeah right.
It wasn't like early chemical warfare or anything like that. No,
they had no idea about the existence of smallpox until
they saw what was going on and became aware of
smallpox and that the native populations had no defenses against it.
(31:48):
Then maybe in the late eighteenth early nineteenth century Europeans
started using it as biological war We covered that in
something I remember tainted Blankets to the Native America ends
and things like that. Cheez, yeah, because I mean once
it got introduced, it just ravaged the America's just ravaged it.
You can't even say decimated because we'll get too many
(32:10):
emails from misusing it. But apparently somewhere between ninety and
nine of the indigenous populations of America, which by some
estimates was that a hundred million by the fourteen nineties,
a fifth of the world population. Nine of that was
wiped out within a hundred and thirty years of Columbus's
(32:31):
arrival in the Indies. And that is how a hundred
and sixty eight men can take over such a bass population.
As Paul Harvey would say, that's the end of the story,
or is it. Yeah? Okay, man, you're like, no, no, no,
I got one more thing. No I don't Paul Harvey
comes in and punches you into nice. Um. For those
(32:55):
of you that don't know Paul Harvey. For those of
you who are un your age sixty, yeah probably Now
look him up. I'm not even gonna tell you who
is this Paul Harvey. Yeah, look him up. Okay. And
in the meantime, while you're looking things up, look up
the h this article I wrote. Hopefully it'll be updated
by the time this episode comes out. Um, just type
(33:16):
in conquistadors c O N Q U I S T
A D O R S in the search bar at
how stuff worst dot com and it will bring it up.
Since I said search, part's time for a message break,
and now it's time for a listener mail. Yeah, and
(33:37):
I gotta say I really love our jingle. Yeah, it's good.
It was a great gift. It's Creed all right. So
this is uh from a former quartermaster UM in the
Coastguard who sort of bridge the gap between sextants and GPS,
so he was rounded, you know, he saw both worlds.
(33:57):
It's very interesting. Yeah, that's quite a transition, al right, guys,
great podcast. I was a quartermaster in the U. S.
Coast Guard and worked with charts and navigation. My last
duty station was aboard the buoy tender US Coast Guard
Cutter sund and Deluth, Minnesota. Our area of responsibility was
Lake Superior, and I feel fortunate to have participated in
(34:18):
the transition from positioning buoys using sextance to using TPS.
GPS was new at the time, and because there was
a built in error to the signal, had to be
removed by a differential military system. A few civilian applications
were using it at the time. The GPS unit that
we had only provided a lad tude latitude and longitude,
(34:38):
which we then plotted on a chart to get our position.
Because our charts were using old datum um, they were inaccurate,
and in some instances the GPS coordinates had us driving
the ship over land um. Although GPS was quicker and
in most cases more accurate than sex Stance, we didn't
fully trust it yet, so we had to plot out
the position of each buoy with sex Stance and the
(35:01):
GPS to compare the two. After a couple of more
years comparing the two, and after the charts were updated
with a more accurate datum, we eventually switched to all
GPS position. Do you remember that pavement album what is it?
Westing By? Must getting sextant yet? B sides? Great? One?
Is it? Yeah? Look at it? And every time we
(35:21):
hear the word sex and I think about it. When
navigating in the Great Lakes, we use radar and bearings
to fixed objects on land to charter position and use
GPS coordinates alongside the traditional methods of navigation as a check.
GPS became very valuable to navigating and software improved to
plot the position on an electronic chart. Even back then
(35:43):
I could see all the writing on the wall. The
new the Coastguard would probably replace Quartermasters with GPS units
in the future. In two thousand three, the Coastguard stopped
training quartermasters and soon after the existing quartermasters were offered
different positions within the Coastguard and they smashed all sexidence.
Now we can all go out there and say that
(36:04):
we learned today what a quartermaster does or did they
didn't smash the sexdence. By the way, um, navigating by
means of sextant, radar and visual bearings is becoming a
dying arc. But I'm proud to have been proficient in
navigation and feel fortunate to have experienced of transition from
old to new, old school to new fair winds and
following sees Jared Park's former quartermasters second class US Coast Guard.
(36:29):
By the way, I should mention you've got a lot
of flak for not knowing what orienteering was orienting for
maps podcast. Yeah, and and I posted the brown map
to I don't want to use I need that because
everybody on Twitter's ask him and like, yeah, please do
it right now. Yeah, thank you. I will tweet that directly.
(36:51):
So thanks to Jared for that at email. Yeah, thanks Jared.
Body to make yourself obsolete, Uh, if you have made
yourself obsolete in some way, um or have contributed to
the obsolation of uh, anything that's pretty interesting stuff create obsoletion, right, sure, yeah,
I think it's right orienting. UH we want to hear
(37:13):
about it. You can send us a tweet to uh
s y s K podcast that's on Twitter handle. You
can join us on Facebook dot com. That's Facebook dot com,
slash Stuff you Should Know, You can send us an
email the Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com, and you
can join us at our home on the web Stuff
you Should Know dot com for more on this and
(37:39):
thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot Com.
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