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How did 168 conquistadors take down the Inca empire? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:15
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
0:18
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. Jerry's here of course, and uh, this is
0:23
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Welcome friends. Yeah, oh, before we
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Speaker 1: get started, I want to do a little plug. We
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Speaker 1: want to do a little plug for COD, the Cooperative
0:34
Speaker 1: for Education, our friends in Guatemala. Of course. Yeah, if
0:37
Speaker 1: you by way of Cincinnati, right, um, you, if you
0:41
Speaker 1: haven't heard him, you want to go listen to our
0:42
Speaker 1: Guatemala Adventure Parts one and two. Jerry gives a big
0:46
Speaker 1: speech and the second one is very dramatic and moving. Um.
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Speaker 1: And basically, co ED is a group that is dedicated
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Speaker 1: to ending poverty in Guatemala by basically funding them. And
0:59
Speaker 1: there's schooling through education, yes, through a textbook and then
1:03
Speaker 1: computer program where your donations go to uh buy textbooks
1:09
Speaker 1: that are rented by the families, and that rental money
1:12
Speaker 1: goes into escrow accounts and then when the textbooks wear out,
1:16
Speaker 1: they can buy new ones in perpetuity. That's exactly right.
1:21
Speaker 1: And I think the textbook rentals something like two dollars
1:23
Speaker 1: a year. Uh. They did a lot of surveys to
1:26
Speaker 1: find out what the average family in these uh living
1:29
Speaker 1: in the conditions that they live in, can afford. And
1:33
Speaker 1: uh they've got it down pretty much to the science.
1:36
Speaker 1: They have another thing, chuckers UM that's their Scholarship and
1:40
Speaker 1: Youth Development program and it takes it a several steps
1:44
Speaker 1: further where certain kids who are showing a lot of
1:47
Speaker 1: potential UM, they get their tuition paid for. There's programs,
1:52
Speaker 1: additional programs that are all paid for through this scholarship program.
1:56
Speaker 1: And so co ED has developed this program. They're reaching
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Speaker 1: out to Steve you should know listeners who have apparently
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Speaker 1: shown up and forced to help co ED. Ever since
2:05
Speaker 1: the Guatemalan Adventure episodes. Yeah, they've had people go on
2:08
Speaker 1: tours with Jerry even and uh, yeah, it's really neat
2:14
Speaker 1: like it's been just a great friendship over the past
2:17
Speaker 1: few years. It has been UM. So you can go
2:21
Speaker 1: to UM www dot Cooperative for Education dot org, slash
2:27
Speaker 1: help Kids and become a scholarship sponsor UM And there's
2:32
Speaker 1: two levels of sponsorship. There is the diploma sponsor right, Yeah,
2:39
Speaker 1: seventy bucks a month yeah, and then the honorable sponsor
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Speaker 1: bucks a month, but very valuable and that is taking
2:47
Speaker 1: kids literally as directly as you can without physically going
2:51
Speaker 1: down there and picking them up, but lifting a kid
2:55
Speaker 1: out of you know, like abject poverty and giving them
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Speaker 1: the chance for a real quality education. Yeah. I mean
3:03
Speaker 1: we've seen him an action, and your money's going to
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Speaker 1: like a great place. I agree to use it. Well.
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Speaker 1: Uh and we mentioned this before and another episode and um,
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Speaker 1: as a result, some stuffies should know listeners became scholarship
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Speaker 1: um donors. That's right, who are well we've pledged to
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Speaker 1: like read these names. Yeah, anybody who who goes on
3:24
Speaker 1: and becomes a scholarship sponsor with co ED and agrees
3:27
Speaker 1: to U let us say their name if you want. Um,
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Speaker 1: we are reading your names out and thank you on
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Speaker 1: the podcast. So here's the first batch. That's right, Thank
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Speaker 1: you Andy Ho. That is A and d I E
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Speaker 1: why um. Thank you to Bendick Buck sauce nice. Thank
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Speaker 1: you to Aaron Nice or niece I don't know, and
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Speaker 1: I E s niece nice. Let's say both we did.
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Speaker 1: Thank you to Ian Murray for having a normal name.
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Speaker 1: Thank you to Jordan Wicker. Uh you want to read
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Speaker 1: the last three thanks to Katie Apple or a pel
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Speaker 1: pel uh, thanks to Kelly Andrews, and thanks to Zoya Erdevig.
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Speaker 1: That's right, And it sounds like we have people from
4:16
Speaker 1: all over the world helping and chipping in, judging from
4:19
Speaker 1: these names, so that's really great. Yeah. And the name
4:22
Speaker 1: that you'll probably recognize because he's all over social our
4:25
Speaker 1: social stuff, Caleb Weeks. Caleb Weeks super volunteered and uh
4:29
Speaker 1: he is a programmer and he basically helped take the
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Speaker 1: co ED website into the one century by leaps and bounds,
4:38
Speaker 1: um be by volunteering as a programmer. Yeah, you can
4:41
Speaker 1: always get in touch with them if you don't have
4:43
Speaker 1: any dough but you've got some other skill like they'll
4:45
Speaker 1: take help in all kinds of ways, pro web program
4:48
Speaker 1: gramming and video work. And Jerry's done some videography work
4:51
Speaker 1: for him. I've done some voiceover stuff for him. It's
4:53
Speaker 1: just it's a it's a real live charitable organization, agreed. Yeah, um,
4:58
Speaker 1: so go help him. That's www. Dot Cooperative for Education
5:02
Speaker 1: dot org slash help Kids and check it out. See
5:05
Speaker 1: what you think. Okay, all right, Yeah, that was a
5:09
Speaker 1: good one though. We We like to talk about coed
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Speaker 1: every now and then because there's good folks. So now
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Speaker 1: we can talk about sort of a related ish topic.
5:17
Speaker 1: I guess it is. You know, it's down there. I
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Speaker 1: recognized a couple of these words. Yeah, well we'll get
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Speaker 1: to it, but there was one of them is actually
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Speaker 1: a town in Guatemala. I think which one? Catch catch
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Speaker 1: a cow? Yeah, that sounds familiar. That's a language. It's
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Speaker 1: a language, seriousays, but I remember when I was in
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Speaker 1: Guatemala hearing that. Right. Yeah, so we're talking inca. Yeah, pretty,
5:42
Speaker 1: This is a Josh Clark jam. It was. This was
5:45
Speaker 1: back when I was like storry eyed over anything that
5:48
Speaker 1: had anything to do with Man. You wrote a series
5:52
Speaker 1: of Charles Man related articles, and if for those of
5:55
Speaker 1: you don't know, that is Josh's favorite book. We've talked
5:58
Speaker 1: about it um a lot on the show, and I'm
6:01
Speaker 1: still gonna read it one day. I just need to
6:02
Speaker 1: do it. It's great. You know, you will not be disappointed.
6:05
Speaker 1: I feel like if I read it now, they'd be like, oh,
6:07
Speaker 1: I know that part. I know that part. You I'm
6:09
Speaker 1: sure you will. You'll you'll recognize a lot of it.
6:11
Speaker 1: But it's so much more fleshed out you got your
6:13
Speaker 1: stank all over. That book isn't bad either of the
6:19
Speaker 1: sequel mann here, it's a it's mannished Manish. You can
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Speaker 1: definitely tell Man wrote it for sure. So we're talking
6:27
Speaker 1: about the Inca people who um, they had a habit,
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Speaker 1: not a habit, they had a practice they called I
6:35
Speaker 1: can't quit. They had a practice in their culture of
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Speaker 1: child sacrifice, which sounds horrific and based in our modern
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Speaker 1: day culture. It is. But we've long pointed out the
6:47
Speaker 1: tenets of cultural relativism. I would like to say that
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Speaker 1: I officially renounced cultural relativism on the whole. Oh really, Yeah,
6:55
Speaker 1: I have since changed my viewpoint. I think there are
7:00
Speaker 1: absolutes that are universal or should be, and that a
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Speaker 1: culture can be judged as barbaric per for certain practices. Yeah,
7:11
Speaker 1: cultural relative is, and I know we've explained it before,
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Speaker 1: but that's basically you can't look back at some old
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Speaker 1: culture that did these things and judge it by today's
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Speaker 1: standards and say, you know, but it's a foundation of anthropology.
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Speaker 1: You couldn't have about cultural relatives of this. Oh yeah,
7:27
Speaker 1: I mean, like as an absolute, like there's you there
7:30
Speaker 1: was nothing that you could do that was out of
7:34
Speaker 1: bounds as a culture because you could only judge the
7:38
Speaker 1: culture by its own standards. Therefore everything is self justified, right.
7:42
Speaker 1: I still believe that to a certain degree. But I
7:43
Speaker 1: think in certain cases maybe I could say because people
7:47
Speaker 1: can make the argument for a lot of things being
7:51
Speaker 1: oh no, that's just the culture of things. Right now,
7:54
Speaker 1: I'm exactly where you are. I would say, of things
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Speaker 1: are bound by culture for a relativism, But I do
8:01
Speaker 1: think there are a handful of things, and I don't
8:04
Speaker 1: even know if I have them fully explored yet, but
8:06
Speaker 1: I think there's a handful of things that are just
8:09
Speaker 1: you just shouldn't do, and if you do it, then
8:11
Speaker 1: you're there's You're not as great as the cultures that
8:15
Speaker 1: don't do that. Yeah, Because you know what, we had
8:17
Speaker 1: a we had a fantic issue with us on the
8:20
Speaker 1: Facebook law when we I posted about the posthumous pardoning
8:24
Speaker 1: of Alan Turing, the codebreaker and inventor of the touring
8:28
Speaker 1: test scientists in England that was homosexual and chemically castrated,
8:33
Speaker 1: and they England recently um pardoned him posthumously and it
8:37
Speaker 1: was pretty cool, and I posted about it, and this
8:39
Speaker 1: one guy was like, well, you know back then they
8:41
Speaker 1: that they were doing the best they can. They were
8:42
Speaker 1: trying to help him out, but you know, because they
8:45
Speaker 1: thought being gay was a disease. And I was like, listen, man,
8:48
Speaker 1: you can't just sweep it under the rug by saying
8:50
Speaker 1: this is just how things were. So I think that's
8:52
Speaker 1: sort of an instance where I don't believe in it. Yeah,
8:55
Speaker 1: even though it wasn't an ancient thing. It was like
8:57
Speaker 1: the nineties, but it gets you know, it was a
9:00
Speaker 1: different time in a different culture. So I guess I'm
9:03
Speaker 1: with you. Then, Yeah, cool, there's a long winding way
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Speaker 1: of saying that. Cool. I liked the long winded way.
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Speaker 1: So we're on the same page. So how do you
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Speaker 1: feel about child sacrifice and the Incan culture? Um, The
9:14
Speaker 1: weird thing is, I don't in this particular instance. I
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Speaker 1: do think it's bound by cultural relativist I think so too,
9:21
Speaker 1: because it was so long ago. It was also so
9:25
Speaker 1: extremely well thought out. It was venerated, it wasn't um brutal. Right, Well,
9:32
Speaker 1: I mean it depends, so let's let's talk about this. Well,
9:35
Speaker 1: how about this. It doesn't matter what I think of it.
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Speaker 1: I think we'll leave it to each listener to decide
9:40
Speaker 1: what they think of inc and child sacrifice. First of all,
9:43
Speaker 1: incan child sacrifice was used very uncommonly in cases of
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Speaker 1: really dire circumstances where they really had irked the gods
9:55
Speaker 1: and needed to appease them, or in a very special
9:59
Speaker 1: symbolic Asian for the most part them the it was
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Speaker 1: guinea pigs that were offered as blood sacrificed by the Yeah,
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Speaker 1: so children and then sometimes women were very infrequently sacrificed,
10:12
Speaker 1: but of course never the men. Well yeah, um, when
10:16
Speaker 1: they were however, uh, they there was an elaborate ritual
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Speaker 1: and process that was followed, and the kids were basically
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Speaker 1: like demigods for being offered up by their parents. Yeah,
10:28
Speaker 1: you point out, it's not that they didn't um like
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Speaker 1: they had any animosity towards kids at all. They were
10:34
Speaker 1: actually revered and that's why it was such like the
10:37
Speaker 1: ultimate sacrifice because kids were so revered. Right, Well, it's
10:40
Speaker 1: kind of like we value our children. We're gonna kill
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Speaker 1: one of them. That's how much we want to appease you.
10:46
Speaker 1: That's how much we need these potato crops to survive.
10:50
Speaker 1: That's right. So, um, there was a big ceremony. They
10:54
Speaker 1: built a chamber, they gave the kid a little corn
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Speaker 1: alcohol the you know, soothe them, I guess, yeah, and
11:01
Speaker 1: stave off fear. Um. You said that they knocked him
11:06
Speaker 1: on the head with a cushioned blow to knock them out, Yeah,
11:08
Speaker 1: which I imagine was probably done while they were like
11:11
Speaker 1: not really paying attention. Um. But the point is they
11:16
Speaker 1: wanted to prevent suffering as much as possible, so at
11:18
Speaker 1: least they would be unconscious. But they think they died
11:20
Speaker 1: of exposure basically, So it's not like they drove a
11:25
Speaker 1: stake through the heart or anything like that. I just
11:27
Speaker 1: kind of leave them at the top of the highest
11:29
Speaker 1: point and they they went out of their way to
11:32
Speaker 1: to make sure the children didn't feel any fear or
11:35
Speaker 1: as little fear as possible. UM. And I think for
11:39
Speaker 1: those reasons, because it was infrequent, because they tried to
11:42
Speaker 1: make the child comfortable and not fearful, because it was
11:47
Speaker 1: a relatively painless death. UM. I think that it kind
11:51
Speaker 1: of I don't know, it falls within cultural relativism for me.
11:55
Speaker 1: The thing that UM, I do take an issue with
11:58
Speaker 1: was that the parents who offered up their kid was
12:00
Speaker 1: in the kid's decision. Well, of course not. They immediately
12:04
Speaker 1: gained higher status in the society. So I think that
12:06
Speaker 1: that great honor, you know, it was, but it was
12:09
Speaker 1: a way to gain status, Uh you know what I mean. Um,
12:13
Speaker 1: so I think that it was in that respect. You
12:16
Speaker 1: can really kind of cast a shadow upon it too.
12:19
Speaker 1: And that and the fact that children died to get
12:22
Speaker 1: potato crops to grow. Yeah, it wasn't a cute thing.
12:24
Speaker 1: It's not like Tom hankson Met Ryan jumping in the
12:27
Speaker 1: volcano to a piece of the will Pony was a
12:29
Speaker 1: great movie. So they must have thought that things were
12:33
Speaker 1: working because the Incas were like a super successful people. Yeah,
12:38
Speaker 1: very quickly to like a million, a million people. That's
12:43
Speaker 1: a lot of people back then in the span of
12:45
Speaker 1: how many years, just a couple of centuries. Yeah, a
12:47
Speaker 1: couple hundred years. A million people back then. That's what
12:49
Speaker 1: you're doing pretty well. And they're spreading far and wide right.
12:52
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like a couple of Inca. The initial
12:54
Speaker 1: Inca got together and just had a million offspring. The
12:59
Speaker 1: Inca how much, came out of nowhere as a civilization
13:02
Speaker 1: and just dominated everybody else who is living as loose tribes,
13:08
Speaker 1: unconnected tribes in the Andes at the time. Yeah, they were.
13:11
Speaker 1: They were smart. They were technological technologically wow, technologically advanced
13:18
Speaker 1: they were, um they they So the Andes are very
13:22
Speaker 1: inhospitable place there. It's an arid climate and it's really
13:28
Speaker 1: high up. Yeah, I mean just surviving there is is
13:30
Speaker 1: something else much less thriving. Yeah, and getting crops to
13:33
Speaker 1: grow well. INCA figured out irrigation techniques. They figured out
13:38
Speaker 1: terraced farming, and we have the potato peanuts queen wa
13:43
Speaker 1: quenwa um types of squash, peppers and beans all thank
13:49
Speaker 1: we have other incaive things who well, thank the INCA.
13:53
Speaker 1: Thank you INCA, or at the very least think the
13:55
Speaker 1: people of the Andes that the INCA eventually came to subjugate. Okay,
14:00
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem as heart felt and um, but they
14:04
Speaker 1: but the INCA technology was very advanced. Yeh, super advanced. Um.
14:09
Speaker 1: They had a very uh strictly rigidly defined class system,
14:13
Speaker 1: starting at the top of course with the royals, and
14:18
Speaker 1: then on the way down all the way down to
14:20
Speaker 1: you know, the workers and the laborers and the commoners
14:22
Speaker 1: and the military right and the INCA royal line was
14:25
Speaker 1: perpetuated incestuously. A INCA ruler would marry his blood sister
14:32
Speaker 1: full blood sister, and then they would have offspring, and
14:36
Speaker 1: those offspring would be the INCA. So you can imagine
14:38
Speaker 1: there was some yeah, strange INCA that emerged over time.
14:42
Speaker 1: What's staggering is that there were Inca that were incredibly
14:46
Speaker 1: smart and yes, and who built this civilization UM through
14:52
Speaker 1: an incestuous line because it really was protected like that UM.
14:57
Speaker 1: And then the INCA ruler would all so have dozens
15:02
Speaker 1: of other wives that he wasn't related to, and then
15:05
Speaker 1: from those offspring would be the the second tier of society,
15:09
Speaker 1: the highest UM rulers, bureaucrats, advisors. I bet there were
15:15
Speaker 1: some ancestrous kids too that you don't hear about as
15:17
Speaker 1: much either that we're just sort of, you know, hidden away.
15:21
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know what I'm saying. Isn't that bizarre though,
15:24
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, if you're basing your your like
15:27
Speaker 1: royal family on incests, you're you're already at a at
15:30
Speaker 1: a you know, negative, I would think, But the Inca
15:34
Speaker 1: are far from the only only group to come up
15:36
Speaker 1: with this idea of protecting the royal bloodline by only
15:42
Speaker 1: um producing offspring with that pure blood man. Crazy world Um,
15:49
Speaker 1: so they were big time expansionists. They like to spread
15:52
Speaker 1: out to the suburbs and the exerbs, and uh it
15:55
Speaker 1: ended up being a problem which we'll get to. But
15:57
Speaker 1: they were spread far and wide geographically, which can be
16:02
Speaker 1: trouble eventually, as we'll see. Um. Sometimes they were crushing
16:06
Speaker 1: people with their military forces. Sometimes they were tempting people
16:10
Speaker 1: with like, hey, look we have roads, we have we
16:14
Speaker 1: have technology, we have farming systems in the irrigation that
16:17
Speaker 1: you're gonna like thrive with. Right they the nobles of
16:21
Speaker 1: these the ones that they kind of colluded with, those
16:24
Speaker 1: groups would become part of that second tier aristocracy as well.
16:29
Speaker 1: So there was it was either might persuading him with
16:32
Speaker 1: technology like you said, or saying, hey, you've got a
16:35
Speaker 1: pretty nice spot over here if you come bring your
16:38
Speaker 1: people under inca rule. So this also it sounds great
16:42
Speaker 1: when you're getting all these different tribes, these hundreds of
16:44
Speaker 1: tribes together under one more powerful group. But again, just
16:49
Speaker 1: like spreading out far and wide, that would also eventually
16:53
Speaker 1: be one little knock against them in their eventual downfall,
16:56
Speaker 1: because when you've got people that were gathered together like that,
16:59
Speaker 1: they're still all the ly fractured in a way, right, right,
17:02
Speaker 1: But the Inca took great pains to get around this,
17:06
Speaker 1: and these the tactic that Stalin would later use. You
17:09
Speaker 1: take people from the conquered lands and move some of
17:13
Speaker 1: them over here, and then you do the exact opposite
17:17
Speaker 1: with some people from the other conquered land. And what
17:20
Speaker 1: you do is you rule through dilution, cultural dilution. So
17:23
Speaker 1: you're mixing up the tribes. Basically, you're breaking up families,
17:27
Speaker 1: you're breaking up villages, you're breaking up tribes, that makes sense,
17:30
Speaker 1: shuffling them all together and um giving them all a
17:34
Speaker 1: common language and a common ruler, and through that you're
17:38
Speaker 1: forcing a new cultural identity on them. That's what the
17:41
Speaker 1: Inca did. That's how they were able to, I guess,
17:44
Speaker 1: gain a population in a territory as big as they
17:47
Speaker 1: did in just a couple of centuries, like miles. That
17:51
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, from Ecuador to Chile. That's crazy. There's
17:56
Speaker 1: three and fifty thousand square mile territory after just a
17:59
Speaker 1: couple a hundred years of putting it together. Yeah, but
18:02
Speaker 1: again you're setting yourself up for problems. Back then, you know,
18:04
Speaker 1: they didn't have telegraphs, they had runners, They did, and
18:08
Speaker 1: eventually the runners are even like at two hundred and
18:12
Speaker 1: fifty miles a day. Okay, So I need to correct myself.
18:15
Speaker 1: And that's not right, is it? I already I didn't
18:17
Speaker 1: think it was. I already emailed Tracy Wilson of Stuffy,
18:21
Speaker 1: Misson History class, who handles um changes to articles, uh,
18:25
Speaker 1: and said, I need to change this. It says in
18:27
Speaker 1: the article are originally said that these runners, highly trained
18:31
Speaker 1: runners that would deliver communications throughout the kingdom of the Inca,
18:36
Speaker 1: could cover two hundred fifty miles in a day. It
18:40
Speaker 1: is wrong. That's four hundred kilometers in a day. Um,
18:44
Speaker 1: it's absolutely wrong. Uh. Instead they would use a relay
18:47
Speaker 1: system of runners that could cover two hundred and fifty
18:51
Speaker 1: miles in a day. Oh well you didn't. Um. Well,
18:56
Speaker 1: it made it sound like each runner cover two hundred
18:59
Speaker 1: fifty miles And I like, I see what you mean. Wait,
19:01
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound right. So I specified a relay. Using
19:05
Speaker 1: a relay system, I kind of assumed that nobody can
19:08
Speaker 1: run that much of the day, right, Well, I'm kind
19:10
Speaker 1: of dumb except Forrest Gump. Um. So my point was, though,
19:14
Speaker 1: even with those runners covering that distance, when you were
19:18
Speaker 1: that spread out, it's eventually going to lead to fracturing
19:21
Speaker 1: in some problems and communication and just a breakdown of
19:24
Speaker 1: the society. Right. Um, and also took I don't know
19:27
Speaker 1: if you mentioned or not. They didn't have the wheel.
19:31
Speaker 1: They had one of the most highly advanced civilizations um
19:36
Speaker 1: to ever pop up in the Americas, and they didn't
19:39
Speaker 1: have the wheel. That's crazy. And it's not like the
19:41
Speaker 1: wheel wasn't in existence. They were just an isolated group
19:43
Speaker 1: like that. We're talking around the thirteenth century to the
19:47
Speaker 1: sixteenth century. The Incas were around, and um the height
19:52
Speaker 1: of their power was in the mid thirteenth century under
19:55
Speaker 1: a ruler named Pacha Kuti, who is a great name,
20:00
Speaker 1: and Pachacuti was the one for whom Machupicchi was built
20:03
Speaker 1: as a royal estate. Yeah, I didn't know that. But
20:07
Speaker 1: since the I mean, the government was a really big
20:09
Speaker 1: factor because of the way the class system was built
20:12
Speaker 1: and so rigid. It was a people that was that
20:16
Speaker 1: were largely dependent on the government because they had the
20:20
Speaker 1: smarts and people liked, you know, having bountiful crops and
20:25
Speaker 1: and gold. Well they probably don't have much gold. Well,
20:27
Speaker 1: there's definite trade. They had plenty of goal. Well no,
20:29
Speaker 1: not the commoners, you know, well, no, no, but there
20:31
Speaker 1: was a definite trade off. It was like you were
20:33
Speaker 1: under Inca rule now, but you also have as many
20:36
Speaker 1: potatoes as you need. Um, you've got great roads. Your
20:40
Speaker 1: family is gonna not die young. Probably liquor evidently, yeah, exactly. Um.
20:46
Speaker 1: And yes, there was a very strong bureaucracy. So India
20:49
Speaker 1: modern day India is a very bureaucratic state. And there's
20:53
Speaker 1: apparently sixteen hundred and sixty two government workers for every
20:58
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people in India. You, wow, that's a lot.
21:02
Speaker 1: In under Inca rule, there were um, thirteen hundred and
21:07
Speaker 1: thirty one government officials for every ten thousand people. Wow,
21:12
Speaker 1: that's an a staggering bureaucracy. But that's how they ran
21:16
Speaker 1: this thing so well, this huge um system was run
21:23
Speaker 1: through bureaucrats. That's right up to a point of course.
21:26
Speaker 1: We all know it's you know, bad things are coming
21:28
Speaker 1: our way because at the top of the podcast are
21:31
Speaker 1: coming their way. Uh. And in the fifteenth century, Uh,
21:35
Speaker 1: they had a big boom in expansion and basically it
21:39
Speaker 1: became just a little too unwieldy and chaotic. They were
21:42
Speaker 1: spread too far and wide. You know, when you whenever
21:45
Speaker 1: you're that far apart and have that many different tribes
21:48
Speaker 1: that make up your people, you're gonna have insurgencies and
21:51
Speaker 1: rebels that they quashed pretty you know, did a pretty
21:55
Speaker 1: good job of quashing those for many years. But um,
21:59
Speaker 1: it was just too big again to spread out and
22:01
Speaker 1: to to maintain basically at that time period. Well, I
22:04
Speaker 1: guess probably the real crippling blow came in five when
22:09
Speaker 1: Huenia Kopac Huenia Kupak, he was the Inca ruler. He
22:14
Speaker 1: was a very strong ruler. Um he died, but unfortunately,
22:19
Speaker 1: within just a few days of him, his successor died.
22:23
Speaker 1: So okay, I was gonna say, why didn't he name
22:25
Speaker 1: a successor? He did, and that also emailed Tracy about
22:30
Speaker 1: but yeah he um he named a successor and they
22:33
Speaker 1: both died within a couple of days of one another. Um,
22:36
Speaker 1: which left the power vacuum and there were two sons
22:40
Speaker 1: that moved to fill it and a seven year civil
22:43
Speaker 1: war ensued that really fractured Incan society. Yeah, that was
22:48
Speaker 1: at the Hualpa and Uscar, Yeah, which I think is
22:52
Speaker 1: Incan for Oscar, I think so too. It's like George
22:56
Speaker 1: and Oscar Bluth's right. Uh, and there was a seven
22:59
Speaker 1: years civil war. The civil war of any type is gonna,
23:02
Speaker 1: you know, fracture society. Seven year ones real bad, especially
23:06
Speaker 1: when there's nobody in control during the time. Um the
23:12
Speaker 1: I guess who Scar ultimately lost. He was executed by
23:16
Speaker 1: his brother, Alto Walpa um in fifteen thirty two. But
23:20
Speaker 1: the damage was done. After all, to Alpa consolidated power.
23:24
Speaker 1: Incan society was on very shaky ground already. Yeah, the
23:27
Speaker 1: cracks were showing. And uh, right about that time, a
23:31
Speaker 1: Spanish conqueror named Francisco Pizzato arrived. And um, he didn't
23:38
Speaker 1: have a lot of dudes with him. He had less
23:40
Speaker 1: than two hundred men. And we will tell you the
23:43
Speaker 1: story of just how those hundred and sixty eight men,
23:45
Speaker 1: says Charles Mann took over this vast empire. And reason
23:50
Speaker 1: number one is what we just said. He got there
23:52
Speaker 1: at the right time. They were weekend, they were fractured,
23:55
Speaker 1: the cracks were showing. Civil war had broken out, so
23:59
Speaker 1: it was a good time to go in and do
24:00
Speaker 1: a little conquering, right, And he followed in the footsteps
24:03
Speaker 1: of Cortes Hernan Cortes who I have to say it, right,
24:09
Speaker 1: who conquered the Mesoamerican Aztec civilization? The Triple Alliance? Right? Yeah?
24:14
Speaker 1: He he went to South America from Cuba um as
24:19
Speaker 1: as you know, under the Spanish flag. And even though
24:23
Speaker 1: Diego Valesquez was the governor of Cuba, he was he
24:27
Speaker 1: didn't uh, he didn't want him going down there. But
24:29
Speaker 1: he did such a good job. Cortes did and came
24:32
Speaker 1: back with a lot of gold, and King Charles the
24:36
Speaker 1: Five said, you know what, you conquered the Aztecs. You
24:39
Speaker 1: brought me a bunch of wealth. You were actually okay
24:42
Speaker 1: in my book. And Pizzato saw this and was like, hey,
24:45
Speaker 1: I want to get my hands on some wealth. I
24:47
Speaker 1: feel like I'm a conqueror. Yeah, I'm a conquistador. So
24:51
Speaker 1: Pizzato was a European and um, because he was European,
24:54
Speaker 1: he had a very helpful tool. And this is the
24:57
Speaker 1: number two thing to help them top of the incase.
25:00
Speaker 1: It's called a gun. Yeah, that was a big one,
25:02
Speaker 1: a very big one. Um, the boomstick. Yeah. Because on
25:07
Speaker 1: top of the very obvious um killing power, the gun
25:12
Speaker 1: provided big advantage, it was also it provided a huge
25:15
Speaker 1: psychological advantage. Too, because the Inca, like the Aztecs, had
25:19
Speaker 1: never seen anything like that before, and we're very, very
25:22
Speaker 1: scared of it. That's right. Um, so they're messed up
25:25
Speaker 1: in the head, right, So you've got you've got superior firepower.
25:29
Speaker 1: You have the tactic of divide and conquer that Cortes used,
25:34
Speaker 1: bizarre used as well. He identified groups that were um
25:37
Speaker 1: under inc and rule, but we're maybe the most rebellious,
25:40
Speaker 1: the ones who were most opposed to ink and rule,
25:43
Speaker 1: identified them and colluded with them to turn them against
25:47
Speaker 1: the inc and power structure, the central core of it. Yeah. Uh.
25:52
Speaker 1: The other thing that helped him to when he arrived,
25:54
Speaker 1: When Pizzato arrived, they thought that he was the creator
25:57
Speaker 1: god vera trocha, and they thought the same thing about Cortess. Actually,
26:02
Speaker 1: I thought he was quits a call, which Jerry says
26:06
Speaker 1: it's a language, but it was a similar thing. They
26:09
Speaker 1: thought these guys were returning gods or creator gods, so
26:12
Speaker 1: immediately they kind of revered them and trusted them and
26:16
Speaker 1: gave them, you know, they had confidence in them, which
26:19
Speaker 1: was a big mistake. Um, Jerry is talking about catch
26:23
Speaker 1: a call. That's the language, right, that's a mind language. Yeah,
26:27
Speaker 1: but I think it's spelled the same. No, I don't
26:29
Speaker 1: think so, yeah, okay, sorry about that. Yeah. So when
26:33
Speaker 1: Potato gets there, he's got this trust. They think he's
26:35
Speaker 1: a returning god. And what does he do with it?
26:38
Speaker 1: While he captures their ruler. Yeah, he captured Altu Alpa,
26:41
Speaker 1: who had just just executed his brother in consolidated power,
26:45
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, Pizarro shows up, like, I
26:48
Speaker 1: fight for seven years, finally captured my brother. Execute him.
26:53
Speaker 1: I'm the Inca now, right, and Pizzarre shows up with
26:56
Speaker 1: his boomsticks. That's right, So I think he's a god.
27:00
Speaker 1: I'll go see what he has to say. And oh,
27:02
Speaker 1: he's holding me ransom. He's asking for a room full
27:04
Speaker 1: of gold. No problem, I'll give it to him and
27:07
Speaker 1: he'll let me go. But he doesn't. Pizarro hangs on
27:10
Speaker 1: to Alta Alpa and ultimately Um finds that he's not
27:15
Speaker 1: able to command the Inca through Alto Walpa. He was
27:18
Speaker 1: sort of a puppet for a little while, right, so
27:21
Speaker 1: he executes him. Pizarro has him strangled and then beheaded. Yep,
27:25
Speaker 1: that'll do it. It will. So you still need an
27:27
Speaker 1: Inca ruler if you're gonna rule the Inca because again
27:30
Speaker 1: Pizzarre only has about a hundred and sixty eight guys
27:32
Speaker 1: with him. Um, So he sets up another guy, another
27:36
Speaker 1: Inca UM who's strictly a puppet ruler. Yeah, Manko ku
27:41
Speaker 1: Back the second, Yes, and him the throne. He was
27:44
Speaker 1: a son of Juanna ku Back right, of course, So
27:47
Speaker 1: uh Manco rules for a little bit. But he also
27:51
Speaker 1: he notices some cracks in the Spanish power structure. Um,
27:57
Speaker 1: some new Spaniards have arrived. They're not the original hundred
28:00
Speaker 1: and sixty eight conquistadors. These are some new guys, maybe
28:03
Speaker 1: some carpet baggage you could call them, and they're not
28:05
Speaker 1: entirely happy with Bizarro and his rule. So Manko notices
28:09
Speaker 1: a fracture among the Spaniards, works to his advantage, and
28:13
Speaker 1: eventually escapes uh Lima, which is the new capital city
28:18
Speaker 1: of the Inca Kingdom under Spanish rule, and goes off
28:22
Speaker 1: and found his own city, which is successful for a
28:25
Speaker 1: little while. So how how many years is this? Okay?
28:28
Speaker 1: So it's a slow takeover, it wasn't you know? They
28:31
Speaker 1: didn't get off the ship with a hundred and sixty
28:33
Speaker 1: eight guys and oh no, no, they did no, no,
28:36
Speaker 1: but in like assumed control of the Yeah, I'm sorry,
28:39
Speaker 1: I misspoke with with within a year, so fifteen thirty
28:44
Speaker 1: two they land. By fifteen thirty six they've already killed
28:47
Speaker 1: Alta waalpa uh installed Manko the second as the puppet ruler.
28:54
Speaker 1: So they were essentially in power at that point, oh totally.
28:56
Speaker 1: And then by fifteen thirty six Manco flees and found
29:01
Speaker 1: a rival Incin state. Now that Incan state survived for
29:05
Speaker 1: thirty six years, and by fift seventy two the Spanish
29:09
Speaker 1: were very tired of all of the assaults and the
29:13
Speaker 1: sieges on Lima. Sure there were insurgencies going on, and
29:16
Speaker 1: they said, you know what, We're just gonna get rid
29:17
Speaker 1: of this rival um Inca state Vilcabamba um headed by
29:23
Speaker 1: Manko for a little while until um until the end.
29:28
Speaker 1: The last Inco was named tupac Amaru. Seriously, and the
29:33
Speaker 1: Inco when they stormed uh or the Spaniards when they
29:37
Speaker 1: stormed Vilcabamba, they captured tupac Amaru and beheaded him and
29:43
Speaker 1: effectively with that stroke ended Inca civilization forever. And they said, no,
29:48
Speaker 1: he's just a hologram. We got the wrong guy, right, Yeah, Uh, okay,
29:54
Speaker 1: So it was a bit of a I get it
29:56
Speaker 1: now that it was six years that makes sense. That
29:58
Speaker 1: was all. I really just condensed things into a very
30:03
Speaker 1: brief sketch and it needed more flushing out. Maybe I'll
30:06
Speaker 1: go back and flush it out. If not, if I,
30:09
Speaker 1: if I don't, you should go um read the account
30:14
Speaker 1: actually is a really great brief account of the downfall
30:18
Speaker 1: of the Inca from the Microsoft in Carta Encyclopedia. They
30:23
Speaker 1: had something good in there. Yeah, that's what you sent me. Yeah,
30:26
Speaker 1: that's good stuff. So they also got a little bit
30:30
Speaker 1: and more help because even with all these things going on,
30:33
Speaker 1: it's still less than two hundred men, you know, like
30:38
Speaker 1: even with the cracks and even with the collusion, and
30:40
Speaker 1: even with the guns and everything going on, it's still
30:43
Speaker 1: less than two hundred dudes. And it was a population
30:46
Speaker 1: of a million. So they needed a little bit of
30:48
Speaker 1: help from Europe's old friends. Smallpox. Yeah, this is what
30:53
Speaker 1: really led to the set the stage for the Inca
30:57
Speaker 1: downfall at the hands of a hundred and sixty eight
30:59
Speaker 1: coun kiss. They did not know about smallpox, They had
31:02
Speaker 1: no immunities against smallpox, they didn't live around livestock like
31:07
Speaker 1: the Spaniards did. They had alpacas and guinea pigs, but
31:11
Speaker 1: apparently they never carried smallpox. It's an old world disease
31:14
Speaker 1: that was introduced to the New World and it ravaged it.
31:17
Speaker 1: That's right. That's what they believe killed Huaina Kupac and
31:20
Speaker 1: his name successor, which left the power vacuum in the
31:23
Speaker 1: Civil War. Um. They think it killed a lot of
31:27
Speaker 1: incomes who may have otherwise revolted against the Spaniards and
31:31
Speaker 1: fought them, and they inadvertently brought smallpox with them. Yeah right.
31:34
Speaker 1: It wasn't like early chemical warfare or anything like that. No,
31:39
Speaker 1: they had no idea about the existence of smallpox until
31:41
Speaker 1: they saw what was going on and became aware of
31:45
Speaker 1: smallpox and that the native populations had no defenses against it.
31:48
Speaker 1: Then maybe in the late eighteenth early nineteenth century Europeans
31:53
Speaker 1: started using it as biological war We covered that in
31:56
Speaker 1: something I remember tainted Blankets to the Native America ends
32:00
Speaker 1: and things like that. Cheez, yeah, because I mean once
32:03
Speaker 1: it got introduced, it just ravaged the America's just ravaged it.
32:08
Speaker 1: You can't even say decimated because we'll get too many
32:10
Speaker 1: emails from misusing it. But apparently somewhere between ninety and
32:15
Speaker 1: nine of the indigenous populations of America, which by some
32:20
Speaker 1: estimates was that a hundred million by the fourteen nineties,
32:24
Speaker 1: a fifth of the world population. Nine of that was
32:28
Speaker 1: wiped out within a hundred and thirty years of Columbus's
32:31
Speaker 1: arrival in the Indies. And that is how a hundred
32:34
Speaker 1: and sixty eight men can take over such a bass population.
32:39
Speaker 1: As Paul Harvey would say, that's the end of the story,
32:43
Speaker 1: or is it. Yeah? Okay, man, you're like, no, no, no,
32:48
Speaker 1: I got one more thing. No I don't Paul Harvey
32:50
Speaker 1: comes in and punches you into nice. Um. For those
32:55
Speaker 1: of you that don't know Paul Harvey. For those of
32:58
Speaker 1: you who are un your age sixty, yeah probably Now
33:03
Speaker 1: look him up. I'm not even gonna tell you who
33:05
Speaker 1: is this Paul Harvey. Yeah, look him up. Okay. And
33:09
Speaker 1: in the meantime, while you're looking things up, look up
33:11
Speaker 1: the h this article I wrote. Hopefully it'll be updated
33:14
Speaker 1: by the time this episode comes out. Um, just type
33:16
Speaker 1: in conquistadors c O N Q U I S T
33:20
Speaker 1: A D O R S in the search bar at
33:23
Speaker 1: how stuff worst dot com and it will bring it up.
33:26
Speaker 1: Since I said search, part's time for a message break,
33:33
Speaker 1: and now it's time for a listener mail. Yeah, and
33:37
Speaker 1: I gotta say I really love our jingle. Yeah, it's good.
33:42
Speaker 1: It was a great gift. It's Creed all right. So
33:45
Speaker 1: this is uh from a former quartermaster UM in the
33:48
Speaker 1: Coastguard who sort of bridge the gap between sextants and GPS,
33:55
Speaker 1: so he was rounded, you know, he saw both worlds.
33:57
Speaker 1: It's very interesting. Yeah, that's quite a transition, al right, guys,
34:00
Speaker 1: great podcast. I was a quartermaster in the U. S.
34:02
Speaker 1: Coast Guard and worked with charts and navigation. My last
34:05
Speaker 1: duty station was aboard the buoy tender US Coast Guard
34:08
Speaker 1: Cutter sund and Deluth, Minnesota. Our area of responsibility was
34:14
Speaker 1: Lake Superior, and I feel fortunate to have participated in
34:18
Speaker 1: the transition from positioning buoys using sextance to using TPS.
34:22
Speaker 1: GPS was new at the time, and because there was
34:25
Speaker 1: a built in error to the signal, had to be
34:27
Speaker 1: removed by a differential military system. A few civilian applications
34:31
Speaker 1: were using it at the time. The GPS unit that
34:34
Speaker 1: we had only provided a lad tude latitude and longitude,
34:38
Speaker 1: which we then plotted on a chart to get our position.
34:41
Speaker 1: Because our charts were using old datum um, they were inaccurate,
34:45
Speaker 1: and in some instances the GPS coordinates had us driving
34:48
Speaker 1: the ship over land um. Although GPS was quicker and
34:52
Speaker 1: in most cases more accurate than sex Stance, we didn't
34:55
Speaker 1: fully trust it yet, so we had to plot out
34:57
Speaker 1: the position of each buoy with sex Stance and the
35:01
Speaker 1: GPS to compare the two. After a couple of more
35:04
Speaker 1: years comparing the two, and after the charts were updated
35:07
Speaker 1: with a more accurate datum, we eventually switched to all
35:10
Speaker 1: GPS position. Do you remember that pavement album what is it?
35:13
Speaker 1: Westing By? Must getting sextant yet? B sides? Great? One?
35:18
Speaker 1: Is it? Yeah? Look at it? And every time we
35:21
Speaker 1: hear the word sex and I think about it. When
35:24
Speaker 1: navigating in the Great Lakes, we use radar and bearings
35:27
Speaker 1: to fixed objects on land to charter position and use
35:30
Speaker 1: GPS coordinates alongside the traditional methods of navigation as a check.
35:35
Speaker 1: GPS became very valuable to navigating and software improved to
35:39
Speaker 1: plot the position on an electronic chart. Even back then
35:43
Speaker 1: I could see all the writing on the wall. The
35:44
Speaker 1: new the Coastguard would probably replace Quartermasters with GPS units
35:49
Speaker 1: in the future. In two thousand three, the Coastguard stopped
35:52
Speaker 1: training quartermasters and soon after the existing quartermasters were offered
35:57
Speaker 1: different positions within the Coastguard and they smashed all sexidence.
36:02
Speaker 1: Now we can all go out there and say that
36:04
Speaker 1: we learned today what a quartermaster does or did they
36:07
Speaker 1: didn't smash the sexdence. By the way, um, navigating by
36:10
Speaker 1: means of sextant, radar and visual bearings is becoming a
36:14
Speaker 1: dying arc. But I'm proud to have been proficient in
36:16
Speaker 1: navigation and feel fortunate to have experienced of transition from
36:20
Speaker 1: old to new, old school to new fair winds and
36:22
Speaker 1: following sees Jared Park's former quartermasters second class US Coast Guard.
36:29
Speaker 1: By the way, I should mention you've got a lot
36:31
Speaker 1: of flak for not knowing what orienteering was orienting for
36:36
Speaker 1: maps podcast. Yeah, and and I posted the brown map
36:42
Speaker 1: to I don't want to use I need that because
36:45
Speaker 1: everybody on Twitter's ask him and like, yeah, please do
36:48
Speaker 1: it right now. Yeah, thank you. I will tweet that directly.
36:51
Speaker 1: So thanks to Jared for that at email. Yeah, thanks Jared.
36:53
Speaker 1: Body to make yourself obsolete, Uh, if you have made
36:57
Speaker 1: yourself obsolete in some way, um or have contributed to
37:01
Speaker 1: the obsolation of uh, anything that's pretty interesting stuff create obsoletion, right, sure, yeah,
37:09
Speaker 1: I think it's right orienting. UH we want to hear
37:13
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