How did 168 conquistadors take down the Inca empire?

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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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

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 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, 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. 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

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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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 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? 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. 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 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 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

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?

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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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

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

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 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 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. 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. 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 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 thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot Com. Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla