Episode 245: People of the Andes

Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve Episode two hundred and forty five, People of the Andes. Last week we finished with Hernan Cortes and the Fall of Old Mexico. Hernan Cortez is probably the most famous Spanish conquistador of the era, but there were others. If Cortez is in first place, then certainly Francisco Pizaro comes in a close second. Cortez is to the Aztec Mexica what Pizaro is to the Inca. The Inca were absolutely at their height of power

and authority when Pizaro arrived. And if you've never been, the Andes is one of the places on earth expressly designed for defense. So if anyone stood a good chance against Spanish encroachment, it should have been the Inca. Yet, as we will see, there are numerous parallels between the fall of Old Mexico and the collapse of the Inca. Today, I want to cover the basics. Who were the Inca, where do they live and what can we

say about their culture. One thing I should note at the outset is that compared to the Mexica and the Maya, we can say a lot more about the Inca. The reason is simple. While Natal, the classical Mexica language is effectively dead. Quechua, the language of the Inca, is still spoken in parts of Peru and Chile today. That language never died, so we can make connections more easily when it comes to the Inca than we could with the Mexica and sir with the Maya. So with all that being said,

let's get started. At first glance, the rugged lands of western South America probably look like a bad place to give birth to a grand civilization. Compressed within a narrow band along the Pacific Ocean lie the highest peaks in the western Hemisphere, a coastal desert that may go on for years without rain, and dense tropical jungles. As forbidding as the setting seems, a closer look shows

that the land contains a mosaic of productive micro environments and natural resources. The Andes Mountains form the continent's most commanding geographic feature, Running eight thousand kilometers along the length of the land mass. They ascend so rapidly that the mental divide lies only one hundred kilometers east of the shoreline at Lima, Peru. For a seasoned hiker, the climb up to the high passes takes about a week, but a passenger in a long distance taxi can get there in a couple

hours. The descent from the eastern snow caps to the upper reaches of the Amazon Jungle is even more precipitous in some places. To appreciate how geography has condensed the ecology, we can visualize a path across central Peru from ocean to forest. In a trip that would cover about two hundred kilometers by air, we would pass over twenty, yes twenty, of the world's thirty four major

life zones. In this compact vertical arrangement, which is not duplicated anywhere else on the planet, Distinct ecological belts may lie less than a hour's walk apart. The early inhabitants managed to flourish in the demanding conditions, for the Andes contain one of the richest ecological zones of any of its size in the world. People first entered the continent at least fifteen thousand years ago, when hunting and gathering were the way of life everywhere. Over the millennia, they devised

a wide variety of foraging, farming, and herding strategies. The marine fisheries of the Bone chilling inshore waters could be exploited with simple technology well Yama and alpaca herding became both a successful adaptation and a source of wealth for the mountain people, although people still foraged for some resources. After states appeared about two thousand years ago, all of their staple foods and industrial crops had been domesticated

by three thousand BC. They modified features of the landscape through irrigation, terracing, and draining wetlands. At the same time, they adjusted to the rhythms with their lives to the demands of the climactic cycles. Despite their successes, however, land in the Andes was never easy. Even in some of the most densely occupied highland zones, Crops honestly could still fail two years out of three, while earthquakes, floods, erratic rainfall, disease, and a host

of other natural forces periodically brought disaster to subsistence systems. The Inca Empire, which was very much a latecomer to the Andean civilizations, built upon a millennia of adaptation, tradition, and innovation in carving out their domain. For the most parts, it was a rural society, as most people lived in small

towns and villages and spent their time farming and hurting. Over the last five million years, the oceanic Nazca Plate has been sliding eastward, slowly, creating a deep trench off the coast of Peru and Chile, while raising the Andes Mountains. The highest snow cap in the America's Mount Akungagu is six thousand, nine hundred and sixty meters tall and lies along the Chile Argentina border. Plate tectonics have also created three active volcanic zones along the spine of the mountains from

central Columbia to central Chile. The Andes, as a result, are much richer in terms of mineral deposits than the central Mexican valley of Cidian abounds, and there are deposits of copper and tins scattered about, making Chile and Peru prime locations for mining stills a day. In terms of climate, there are two major trends in western South America. Number one, the eemperate zone in Chile from the south to the tropics in Columbia to the north, and two,

the arid west to the humid east. Offshore. The Chile Peru Trench provides a conduit for the frigid waters of Antarctica to flow north, making the waters rich in fish, everything from anchovies to sea bass. Both the rocky and sandy shores provided homes for many kinds of shellfish. In some areas, the remains of these are piled up to five meters deep in ancient sites. From the northern reaches to Peru to central Chile, the entire coast is essentially

a coastal desert where very little grows. Slightly further inland, it's possible to grow stable crops such as corn, squash, and cotton. Above the coastal zone is the warmer yungus zone, which produces crops like peppers and cocoa for chocolate. But the most productive zone is the Quechua band, defined as three thousand, one hundred to three five hundred meters above sea level. Here is where you would find native grains like quinwa, and here is where the potato

was born. Above this zone is the Sunni zone up to four thousand meters above sea level, which features cold hills, bridges, and deep valleys. Above this is yet one more zone, the Puna zone up to five thousand meters, which is the natural habitat for the only beasts of burden in the Americas before the arrivals of Europeans, Yamas and alpacas. Down the eastern Peruvian slopes lie the Upper Amazon Brew speaking from personal experience, is a truly remarkable

place. You can go from frigid mountains to humid jungles in a day. In some places, the upper edge of the Amazon is known as the Sia de Silva or eyebrow of the Jungle. During the height of the Incan Empire, it was cut and terraced there he could produce corn, cocoa, fruits, and peppers. While we do not have much information about how this zone fit into the Incan Empire, without a doubt it was important economically. To

the north are the coastal mangrove swamps and western woodlands of Ecuador. This would have been the border of the Incan Empire, for the Inca never managed to bring this region under its control. Traditional communities today in the Andes are based on kin groups called ailu. Members of this group believe that they share a common ancestor. They hold resources collectively and allocate according to family size and status. Whenever possible, a n ailu would have access to all the growing zones

in the Andes regions. Ailu usually contained two or three opposing parts or divisions you might think of them. Members typically take their spouse from the opposite division and thus keep resources within the larger group. The INCA used this same kin group system to take advantage of the varied natural environment and achieve self sufficiency.

Communities sought to distribute their members across the landscape. For every ailu. It was very advantageous to have different members of the kin group in all the different farming zones. Has also helped to maximize labor because the growing period in each of the zones was different. By using irrigation, farmers could move up their planting seasons and their especially in the higher zones, beat the frost. The

system was intelligent but very straightforward. Everyone would work on the land in the highest zone first and then keep moving down with the seasons. That way, Anaelu could be efficient with its labor pool and ensure that there were always fresh crops about to be harvested. Pastoralism augmented farming. Evidence suggests that drovers have been taking caravans of yamas and alpacas to the coast for thousands of years,

and we're certainly doing so during the Incan imperial period. Recently, archaeologists have made great strides and identify and explaining the major changes that occurred in Andean prehistory, or readily admit that we still have a long way to go and accounting for the emergence of complex society theories tend to focus on a few key issues in seeking for the explanations for the rise of early states. Among the most

important our population growth and the concentration of people in more urbanized settlements. As societies expanded and nucleated, their interactions made it harder and harder to maintain social order and obtain adequate food. On the other hand, the close interaction of large numbers of people, and this is the case generally everywhere, offered a

setting that fostered intellectual life and creativity. Increases of food production, specialization of labor, and coordination of labor for tasks ranging from erecting monuments to warfare were also crucial. When found together, they indicates a society had centralized leadership and that its members were interdependent for their livelihoods in ways that fed back on one another. Socially, the most important change was the appearance of inherited status differences.

This shift signaled differences in access to power and prestige that were ascribed at birth and laid the foundations for class society. Formalized ideologies explained humanity's place in the cosmos, provided rationales for life, But the beliefs also legitimized social inequality by proposing separate origins for the elite and common members of society. The religions

thus simultaneously bonded societies and justified disparities in rank and power. The beliefs were also given physical form in monumental architecture such as pyramids, palass and open spaces, in art, and in ceremonies that sometimes venerated the dead as if they were still among the living. In terms of political life, the creation of offices with specific duties allowed a privileged few individuals or kin groups to control the

accumulation of information and thus wield disproportionate power within societies. Those individuals gathered and guarded information, set policy, and made day to day decisions. All those actions were advanced by the invention of standardized recording systems. Each of these features was well established in the Andes more than one thousand years before the rise of Inca power. Following a period of slow development, things really started to take

off in the Andes about twenty five hundred BC. Around two thousand, five hundred, simple foraging began to give way to farming, and small scale corporate architecture starts to emerge, think like small pyramids. This era also saw major advances in craft technology. Pottery improved, metallurgy developed. The head of loom was invented. From one hundred to seven hundred CE, the first state and urban societies developed along Peru's northern coasts. By fourteen hundred CE, a group

called the Chimu had united the entire region. Next week, I'm going to talk about the political life of the Incan Empire, so I'll leave that particular thread dangling for just a moment, but suffice it to say that by one thousand CE, the Incas were still living in hundreds of fragmented societies. As I mentioned before, the language of the Incas was Quechua, but its speakers would have known it as run Assimi, or translated literally human speech. By

fifteen thirty two, Quechua was the Lingua Franca of the Andes. The Spanish and their writings referred to it as the main language of the land. The Inca, like the rulers of many ancient societies, promoted an official ideology. The tenets of state religion were intended to justify both incas supremacy and the supremacy of their rulers. However, like any time that politics and dogma collide,

they're bound to be contradictions. For example, the Inca worship the Sun, the divine line of kings, and sacred landmarks, but at the same time they consciously manipulated that same past to legitimize their rule. For the Inca tradition, history and politics were interwoven with belief. The Inca religion was quite decentralized, despite the fact that Cusco was the political capital of the Inca. Religious practice tended to revolve around local deities, shrines, and myths. Even into

the sixteenth century. The Spanish, as they were in Mexico, were slow to recognize the complexity of Inca religious belief and practice. To them, it all looked like devil worship. The Spaniards recognized that the Inca worship the sun and believed their rulers were divine, but not much beyond that. It took the Spanish about fifteen years to begin to unravel anything more complex than that.

Sadly, that was about fifteen years after the last major Son ceremony. I say sadly because I don't think there's a person alive today who would not want to know exactly what went on during that ceremony. Now, when we talk about Incan creation myths, most begin at lake and run something like this. In ancient times, before there was a light, the Creator or Alpachica, fashioned a race of giants to see if it would be good to make humans at that scale. He saw that they were too large, however, and

so he made humans in his own size. But they were filled with hubris and greed. So the Creator turned some to stone and others to diverse forms, and some were swallowed up by the earth or the sea, and he caused a great flood to cover the land, destroying all that was upon it save for three men, whom he saved to help him create humans anew. Obviously, you're going to notice a lot of connections between other creation myths. Later, on an island in Lake Titicaca, he caused the sun, moon

and stars to come forth. The Sun was jealous that the Creator had made the Moon brighter than he, so he cast ashes in her face. Thus she remains with her brilliants dimmed. The Creator then crossed over the dry land at Tiwanuka, where he carved and drew images of all the nations he thought to create on some larger stones. He ordered his two servants to memorize the names of the people and the places where they were to appear on the earth.

Then he sent one of them to the coast and the other to the eastern slopes. Waika himself took the central path, calling out the people from the lakes, springs, valleys, caves, trees, caverns, and mountains. He appeared to be a man of normal size, dressed in a white robe, hearing his staff and a book in his hands. At Cuzco, he called forth the Incan nobles, gave Cusco its name, and continued north.

Finally he reached the Ecuadorian coast, where he told his servants that his messengers would return one day, and then together they walked out over the water until they appeared beyond the horizon. Worship of the Sun was a centerpiece of official Inca religion. Incan emperor's claimed to direct genealogical link to the Creator through

the Sun, but of course there were other gods. The patron god of empire and conquest was called Inti. The Inca as I mentioned in the Creation myth, worshiped the moon as well, who was considered the wife of the Sun. Into Ilappa was the thunder god, but also the god of lightning, the rainbow, and basically all other meteorological phenomena. The Inca's annual calendar was based on solar cycles, while festivals were largely built around twelve lunar cycles.

The Incas knew that twelve lunar months fell short of a solar year, so they made a correction at the winter solstice. Historians aren't ane hundred percent sure about this, but they believed that the Inca used a thirty day month. Inc and ceremonies were tied to both solar and lunar cycles, as well as irregularly scheduled rituals. For example, Inti Rami or quote unquote warriors cultivation

took place in the month that coincided with the June solstice. Whatever month that happened to be that year, but the biggest festival was the Inca Festival of the Sun, which lasted eight to nine days and was considered a grand state ceremony. According to one Spanish official quote, they brought out all the effigies from Cusco's temples onto a plane at the edge of Cusco, toward the area where the sun dawned. The effigies with the greatest prestige were placed beneath rich

finally worked feather canopies, which had an elegant appearance. The space between the canopies formed an avenue of over thirty paces wide, and all the lords and other principal figures of Cusco stood in it. End quote. But as I mentioned, the Inca religion was not at all centralized. Across Peru. Still today are the remnants of hundreds of shrines and miniature temples. The Inca believed the land around them positively teemed with spirits. But fascinatingly, all of these

shrines are not randomly placed, not random at all. The Inca based everything on the Temple of the Sun in Cusco. From there, they literally on a map, drew lines emanating out in different directions. All of the smaller shrines fall on one of these lines. Now, as to human sacrifice, suffice it to say that the Inca did not practice human sacrifice as regulariously as

the Mexica. That being said, they did practice human sacrifice. For the Inca, however, human sacrifice was a limited religious component, generally practiced only during the festival of the Sun, after a major military victory, or after the death of an emperor. Certainly, that's still a lot of human sacrifice, but one might, of course argue that one human sacrifice is too many. But it's not even close to the level that the Mexica engaged in such

practices. Likewise, the rationale for human sacrifice isn't laid out as well for us in the Inca sources as it is in the Mexican sources. The best we get in Peru are fleeting references to needing to join the Creator, the Sun, and other deities after death. For the vast majority of people, though, life revolt around kin, not major festivals or human sacrifices. These

were the people with whom you shared social ties and economic risks. Most of the highland societies headed by hereditary local lords called kuraka, now as I will discuss more next week. In any portion of the empire, the Inca themselves and I mean the ethnic Inca, were at the top of the social pyramid. While the Inca conquered and subjugated new peoples around them, just like the Mexica, they did not incorporate them into the imperial structure. There was the

Inca and then there was everyone else. The Inca were at the top of the social pyramid, and from there what mattered was your proximity to the royal family. The closer you were, the higher your status. From there, your value actually broke down based on your stage of life. The Inca did not keep track of people's specific age. Rather, they kept track of where they were in their stage of life, though in the middle stages were of

the highest status. Because the Inca very much valued labor, the Inca also valued large families. Women were encouraged socially to have as many children as the land might support. This was, of course a pre industrial society. As a result, more were hers meant that more land could be put into cultivation, and we have no evidence that the Incan Empire ever suffered from some of the overpopulation problems that confronted. Late medieval Europe. Women in fact, worked

pretty close up to childbirth from the moment the mother went into labor. However, she was prohibited from visiting the farm fields for religious reasons. Children were treated sternly from the word go. Famously, newborn infants were dipped into icy streams as a sort of rude welcome to their old and somewhat inhospitable mountain world.

Consider the following account quote. Every morning, when the baby was wrapped up, it was washed in cold water and often exposed to the night air and do The mothers never took the babies into their arms or on their laps, either when giving suck or at any other time. They said that that made them cry babies, and encouraged them to want to be nursed and not stay in the cradle. The mother reared the child herself, never gave it out to nurse, even if she were a great lady, unless she were

ill. During this time, they abstained from sexual intercourse, considered that it spoiled the milk and caused the baby to grow weak. End quote. Now, as usual, the children of the nobility were treated differently. If you were an inca young boy you'd receive the most formal education available. You'd learn the use of weapons, how to speak a Quechua, religious historical studies,

how to read and write. If you were the son of a local non Inca noble, then you would be sent as a hostage to Cuscoe to ensure the good behavior of her father. However, once in Cuscoe, you generally received the same education as the sons of Incan nobles. Both boys and girls went through the rights of passage in their early teens, which marked their transition from childhood to adolescence. A girl celebrated individually at her first menstruation, which

occurred then by the age of thirteen or fourteen. Although a girl's ceremonies were less elaborate than the boy's collective affairs, they were equally valued. She was required to fast and seclusion for three days, on the last of which she received just a little raw corn. On the fourth day, her mother washed and dressed her in fine clothes made for the occasion. The relatives then came to visit for a couple of days, during which the girls served them food

and drink. Her most notable uncle gave her an adult name, counseled her to live right and serve her parents well. Favorite names in Incan society generally emphasize beauty and purity. For example, there were names like q Lore which means star, wrong too which means egg oslo which means pure, Shimpo which means mark, and gold which means auri. The ceremonies concluded as he the

uncle and the other relatives gave her gifts according to their means. Boys maturation ceremonies were probably very simple for common people, but were extremely elaborate for the sons of Inca aristocrats. The right of adolescent passage was celebrated once a year for a community in Cusco. This always coincided with the December Solstice festival. Boys would reach the age of about fourteen were given their breechcloth at this time,

which was woven by their mothers. They also received adult names during these rites. Preferred name for Inca boys in English this time are things like condor, snake, and hawk. Marriage marked the passage into full adulthood. The marriage ceremonies were simple and varied from one Ayulu or clan to the next. Generally, there was some form of gift giving ceremony. The groom presented the future mother in law with a bag of cocao leaves, and when she accepted

it, the marital bond was done. The new couple would then take up residency in their own household. The Inca views on afterlife were different from the Mexica. In the Andes, a person's status changed when he or she died, but they didn't descend or ascend into a sort of heaven where hell. Instead, the spirit of the ancestor still inhabited the land, which is why the streams, valleys, and so on and so forth had quasi magical properties.

Not to some extent, farming practices in parts of the Andes haven't changed much since fifteen thirty two. The final year of the Inca land was divided out based on the size, needs, and prestige of the Ayulu or clan. One Spanish source in fifteen thirty two wrote that each newly married couple received a quote tupou of May's land that was supposed to be the amount necessary to

feed the couple for a year. In modern terms, if we do the math, a tupoo comes out to about one point five acres or one half a hectare. The Inca were also different from the Mexica in that they had beasts of burden alpacas and yamas. To that end, most of their clothing was made of wool from their animals. And that being said, there's very little evidence to almost no evidence that either animal was consumed regularly for its meat.

The elite might consume alpaca on special occasions, but by no means was it a regular occurrence. Now, thinking about the economy, local autonomy remained the ideal, but it was not always possible. Depending on what eco zone you were in, you might not be able to produce everything for your family. This is where the greater Ayulu comes in. Exchange networks in the Incan Empire were based on connections between eco zones, so, by no means was

this capitalism. This was a form of cooperation intended to assure mutual revival goods. We're not really traded, and certainly not traded for luxury items. They were exchanged for other essentials and often just within your kin group or clan. And a particular good example of this is a form of cooperation that was help during military service. We will discuss the inc And military system more next time,

but when inc And peasants were called up for military service. The expectation was that if their neighbors were not called up, then they would assist in cultivating the fields of those who went. So production never dipped. Outside of farming, household life revolved around family care, cooking, and weaving. Now these are all one hundred percent essential items, and as a result, within the household, the woman was the minute figure. The idea was that each

household would produce whatever it needed. When that was not possible, people leaned on familial connections through the ayulu. A typical inc and household included husband, wife, their children, an unmarried or widowed adult kin. During the days, the women and girls spent a lot of time collecting wood or yama dung to be used as cooking fuel. Again, this was not a task that

was in any way looked down upon. Fire was essential to life in the Andes, so these female tasks revealed as just as important as male farming duties. Potatoes and kenwalk were the essential staples of the Highland diet. They were flavored with herbs and peppers from different ego zones, while stews with fish were also popular, But meat, as I mentioned, was reserved for special occasions.

Tools were produced, but generally produced only for local use. To the best of our knowledge, there was no larger market exchange for produced and finished goods like metal tools. Now. I'm going to go into this more next time, but I wanted to talk a little today about how the Incas structured their rural societies. Here is one account from a Spanish priest during the era

immediately after Pizarto's conquest. Quote. When the Inca settled a town or reduced one to obedience, they would set up markets on its boundaries and divided the fields an arable land within its territory into three parts in the following way. One they assigned to religion and the cult of his false gods. Again, this is a quotation from a Spanish priest. Another he took for himself.

A third they left for the common use of the people. It has not been possible to determine whether these parts were equal in any towns and provinces. However, it is known that in many places the division was not equal, but depended on the availability of the land and the density of the population. The Inca had the same division made of all the domesticated livestock assigning one part

to religion, another to himself, and another to the community. He did the same with the grazing lands and the pasture in which the live stock was pastured, so that the herds were indifferent pastures and could not be mixed. End quote. Now, when it comes to how they set up their rural society, the good news is that the Inca didn't have a large urban population to support in Cusco, nor could they ever have hoped to move bulk goods

over great distances in the Andes to sustain such a population. So this wasn't like a Rome situation, wherein the capital becomes a sort of parasite on the provinces. What the Inca wanted was it necessarily tribute goods. So they're also different from the Mexica in that regard. What they wanted was labor. The Incan conquests gave new lords access to millions of new workers, and their goal was to maximize this labor. The Incas chose to intensify the highland economies they

knew best and left the more integrated systems largely alone. Traditionally, as a result, the Inca economy by historians has been described as quote supply on command end quote. When the Inca conquered upheaval, they took over the land, then they sort of gave back or least back the land in return for labor duty. This is essentially similar and the same as the French corvet system, which'll talk about eventually when we get to the French Revolution, which designated the

heads of household for rotating labor service. In Quechua, the system is called mitta, which translates literally to quote take a turn end quote. So in the Incas system, the labor provided was the tax. Individuals provided a number of hours of labor each year in lieu of cash or goods in kind. To make things work. Officials required current information about the size of the tax paying population and the natural resources at their disposal. This labor tax was levied

on the head of households called the hatoun runa. These were married men who belong to an age category that corresponded to about twenty five to fifty years of age, so middle age. All in all, this mounded to somewhere between fifteen to twenty percent of the empire's total population, which was required to provide two to three months of work per year. This was the backbone of the Incan Empire and their political structure. Rome was based on tribute cash or in

kind. The Incan Empire based itself on compulsory labor. Even though the labor tax was assessed for the head of household, traditionally everyone in the family helped with the job to get it done more quickly. All taxpayers were supposed to render some kind of labor, but in practice many were exempt from the traditional labor service. The Urus who lived on the edges of Lake Titicaca were an example of a whole people who were exempt from labor service. Sadly, the

Inca chose to exempt these people because they considered them totally inept. Instead, these folks provided you know, cash or a tributing kind, mostly cloth, even those communities who provided absolutely nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing. The Urus provided cloth, but some communities just couldn't get stuff together enough to provide any sort of service. But the Inca still made those people provide labor.

And I mean that. There are examples of whole communities being forced to provide full baskets of lice, which were of course immediately discarded, And the Inca did this just so that these folks could learn the value of imperial service. What we know is that over time this corvet like system became increasingly specialized as the income became more adept at learning what their subjects were good at. Now, of course, it's really hard to say exactly what everyone did.

Not every job left a mark for archaeologists to study. Forty percent of people performed portage services or acted as guards at various guard posts, and this obviously left no archaeological imprint on the land. We do know that one out of every nine compulsory workers made pottery, which historians love and are able to track quite easily. Furthermore, one of roughly every four hundred workers was assigned to go to Cusco, though precisely what they did when they got their historians aren't

sure. Some people worked on large collective farms. These were called farms of the State and farms of the Sun. Farms of the State grew food for royal administrators and for the army. Farms of the Sun supported the temple and the priests. The products of these farms were separated both physically and administratively. As the quotation I read earlier indicates, the vast majority of The labor on

these farms was provided by the compulsory labor system. Now, farms of the Sun were supposed to be set aside in every province, and both Sun and state farms were distinct from royal and aristocratic lands worked by the peasants. The most extensive of these farms historians know of were at Cochabamba in Bolivia. As many as fourteen thousand workers labored on fields there at one time. These massive farms were divided into seventy seven narrow strips across the valley, with groups assigned

to each strip. Alpacas and llamas were a major part of the economy. However, in this situation, the Inca couldn't just conjure up new herds. Instead, they had to maximize animal husbandry in the places that had already existed. Again, as with the farms, there were private herds, herds of the state, and herds of the Sun. It's very difficult to tabulate total numbers today, but let's give it a try. In fifteen sixty seven, a sort of middle of the road local lord had about fifty thousand animals at

his disposal. Thus an estimate of hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of alpaca and yama in total across all the herds of the state, and sun is no way out of the question. In order to try to increase these numbers, the INCA did make efforts to try to introduce flocks into areas where they had been unknown previously. But how successful these efforts were, well, we just can't say. The primary use of all these herds was for the

military. Armies on the move regularly used trains of thousands of yama's and alpaca to pack supplies, and then they could be used as meat when they were no longer needed. Reportage. While the INCA had the manpower and beasts of burden to move goods over great distances, they did not have the capacity to move everything without stopping. The Incan state needed different items at different times across

what was a very long empire. It was too difficult to move items from one central location across jungle mountains and desert to another in one fell swoop, so the INCA developed a vast storage system to provide a bridge between production and need throughout the empire. Most of state storehouses, called kolko, were built in one of three places. One near Cusco, two along main roads, and three next to state farms. A Peruvian historian gives us a sense of

the scale that was involved. Quote, in the more than twelve hundred leagues of coast they coverned, they had the delegates and governors, and many lodgings in great storehouses full of necessary things which were for provisioning the soldiers, because in one of them there were lances, and in others darts, and in others sandals, and then the other remaining arms that they had. Moreover, some storehouses were filled with rich clothing, and others with more goods, and

others with food and all manners of supply. In this manner, once the lord was lodged in his housing and his soldiers nearby, not a thing, from the most trivial to the greatest was lacking, because it could be provided. Certainly. When the Spanish saw all of this, they were impressed. A contemporary road as follows. Quote from the fortresses above Couscoe, one can see many houses, and many of these are the houses of pleasure, and the rest of past rulers, and others are of the leaders or chiefs of

all the land, who now reside in the city. The others are houses or storehouses full of blankets, wool, weapons, metals, and clothes, and everything that has grown or made within this realm. And there is a house in which are kept more than one hundred thousand dried birds, for from

their feathers articles of clothing are made. There are shields, beams for supporting tents, knives and other tools, sandals, and armor for people of war, in such quantity that it is not possible to comprehend how they had been able to tribute so many different things end quote. These storehouses epitomized ink and state planning. The overall design of the system greatly facilitated accounting, since it was easy to determine and catalog the items in said storehouses. Storehouses came in

two models, circular or rectangular. Of course, it goes without saying that these two models were contoured to the land so as to ensure that they were always as close to the road as possible. Exactly how much of which supplies were kept in the storehouses remains a bit of a mystery, although logic dictates that food was probably the highest percentage good in any storehouse at any time. Remarkably, the incas storage system continued to run and function for decades in some

areas even after the empire collapsed. It's very difficult to say how much of an impact on the household economy the state labor system had. Certainly, if you lived in an area designated as either a state farm or a farm of the sun, you were going to have to move. That would have been a major disruption, but for everyone else the disruption was probably minimal. In many cases, any disruption was probably offset by the relative security the empire provided.

Valleys and terraces, which prior to the Inca were too tempting of targets for local marauding groups, became effective locations for intense agriculture. There probably would have been a labor shortage or at least a pinch during the planting and harvesting periods. After all, state farms and sun farms would have needed planting and harvesting at the same time as communal plots, so families were probably, to

use a modern term, a bit short staffed during those two periods. Again, how much this affected people during the time that the Inca ruled is very hard to say. Certainly, though, when the Spanish arrived, they discovered a civilization far beyond mere subsistence levels. One conquistador wrote as follows quote. In one cave they discovered twelve centuries of gold and silver, of the size

and appearance of those of this country, extraordinarily realistic. There were pitchers half of pottery and half gold, with the gold so well said into the pottery that no drop of water escaped when they were filled, and beautifully made. A golden effigy was also discovered. This greatly distressed the Indians, for they said it was the figure of their first lord who conquered this land. They found shoes made of gold, of the type women wore like half boots.

They found golden crayfish such as live in the sea, in many vases, on which were sculpted and relief, all the birds and snakes that they knew, even down to spiders, caterpillars, and other insects. All of this was found in a large cave that was between some outcrops of rock outside Cusco. They had not been buried because they were such delicate objects. The Inca commanded thousands of metalsmiths, weavers, carpenters, sandal makers, potters, and

dyers, amongst other more specialized craftsmen. The INCA do not seem to have created many works just for display, in contrast to the Mexica INCA production centered around creating simple objects for mass consumption. That these products were so consistent suggests that there must have been some state control and state supervisors. But I don't

want to confuse you. This wasn't a Soviet style command economy. Most of these goods were still produced and consumed locally, but controlling INCA obtained most of their goods by compelling a certain amount of labor from artisans rather than a specified amount of tribute. The most common material made by artisans in those circumstances was cloth, cotton, and wool. The INCA did not force their people to

come up with the raw materials for these goods. However, each year, families of weavers received wool from these state stockpiles, which they then spun into cloth. This wasn't an overly complicated process. In the Andes, prepared wool was spot into cloth using a simple distaff, which requires a lot of skill but not a lot of technological innovation. Most inc and weavers then used a simple horizontal loom consisting of two rods attached to poles set in the ground.

Like other civilizations, the Inca had very different levels of quality for their finished cloth. The coarsest of this was called choosy. A single length of choosy served as a bed roll and blanket. More elegant, finer cloth was called chompi and was made from both cotton and finer woolves The military was probably the major consumer of cloth and other woven goods such as bags. The Incas also consumed large but still unknown quantities of textiles for religious activities, especially sacrifices.

Textiles were also used expressly for political purposes. For example, the only way a non Inca could wear a garment made from the finer cloth chambre was if an Inca gifted it to them. Clothing therefore signified group identity and social status. Quote. The men and women of each nation and province had their insignias and emblems by which they could be identified, and they could not go around without this identification or exchanged their insignias for those of another nation, or they

would be severely punished. They had this on their clothes with different stripes and colors, and the men wore their most distinguishing insignia on their heads. Each nation was identified by their head dress end quote. In the cold, both sexes dressed in layers of simple, untailored wool clothing. Cotton then, was much more common in warmer weather. The production of so many textiles required tens of thousands of people working at coordinated tasks. The raw materials came from state

or church farms, or herds, or gathered resources. In some instances, the weavers and herders lived nearby. Elsewhere, the raw materials were accumulated, stored, and dispensed to the artisans as needed. Many of the tasks involved in making textiles were restricted by gender, but just about everybody in the family could get involved in some way. Young boys, for example, collected bird feathers, and girls the dye stuffs. Different kinds of cloth were woven by

women and men. While male weavers wove many of the finer grades of cloth and the feathered textiles. The women's made the finest and most valued compeis for sacrifices, idols, and the ruler himself. Other women holding special rank also

made textiles. The wives of lords, even those of the inca themselves, also wore fine cloth, As one Spaniard reported, quote, there was no one who was an administrative official who did not send the Anca every year a set of garments made for his person by the hands of the official's wife end quote. To meet the nearly insatiable demand or clothing, the Inca set entire communities to weaving. Sometimes this might mean as many as one thousand households in

a community working on weaving. The Inca were also skilled metal workers. People had been working metal in the Andes for thousands of years before the Incan Empire was established, so the Inca were drawing on existing knowledge. This is not like the end of the Bronze Age, when iron workers brought the tradition with them as they moved. The Inca used a lot of simple copper tools,

like needles, and some of these were even bronze smelted with arsenic. These items were not particularly prized, suggesting that they were common obviously, though the Spanish didn't come to Peru looking for copper needles. What they wrote home about was the gold. The Inca, especially in Cusco, had massive amounts of gold. The entire interior of the Temple of the Sun was covered in gold plates. Each nearly a yard by a yard in length. Consider this account.

Quote. These buildings were sheets with gold and large plates on the side where the sun rises, but on the side that there was more shaded from the sun, the gold in them was more debased. The Christians went to these buildings, and with no aid from the Incas, who refused to help, saying it was a building of the sun and they would die, the

Christians decided to remove the ornament with some copper crowbars end quote. The conquering Spanish removed seven hundred of these plates, each weighing around two kilograms, and melted them down. Today, the gold alone, not the artistic value, which would have been immense and incalculable, would be at eleven million dollars. Because the Spanish hunted down inc and gold treasures so thoroughly, only a few

pieces survive from museum collections. When it came to mining, the Inca made a blanket claim to all mineral resources, but that was more of an assertion of sovereignty than reality. Quote. Some of these mines were worked at the expense and under the auspices of the Inca themselves, and others constituting the majority were worked at the expense of local lords of the districts in which the mines were located. This was so that they would have things to give as presence

to the Inca. End quote. Mining techniques were simple and extremely dangerous. Chafts were tiny and only one person could enter at a time. Fall Ins were common at the time, but this was the only way to extract any sort of metal ore. Given that the Inca obtained a tribute through hours of labor, you can bet that they assigned workers to the mines without much regard for their personal safety. Now, for most people, mining was a seasonal

job. At higher elevations, workers just couldn't work in the winter months, and in general everyone needed to be available to work the fields during planting and harvesting, which greatly restricted when mining could happen. However, during the Incan Empire, local lords generally and slowly lost control over the mines. These, like state farms, were transferred to imperial control. Now, historians and archeologists love, and I do mean underline love pottery. Trust me, it's all

over any book from the ancient world. I'm not going to bore you, but just understand the Inca. We're very evative when it came to ceramics. Cusco style polychrome pottery is the archeological benchmark throughout the Andes. When you go to a museum and you see a piece of South American pottery with ornate geometric designs, it's almost certainly Incan. They also made those distinctive vessels with the flared rims, so these have like long, skinny necks that flare out at

the top. In addition to being pretty, Inca pottery was also a high technical quality and regularity. Hence most of the pottery from the Incan Imperial period looks the same. Still, you should know that the Inca did not consider ceramics an essential job on their hierarchy. It is listed below weaving, featherwork, and metallurgy. Now, finally, the Anko we're also fantastic stone workers. And what I mean here is that the Inca we're about on par with

the ancient Egyptians. They crushed stone, they broke it, and they fitted it perfectly. Their techniques were essentially ancient. But that being said, despite repeated earthquakes, most inc And buildings remain undamaged still today. So I'm going

to leave it there for this week. Next week we're going to talk about the foundations of the Inca Empire and take a really close look at its political and military structure, because those are the things that are going to be highly relevant when it comes to Pissaro's invasion, which we're going to get to in very short order. Here now, as I always say, in the link in the show notes, or a couple of ways that you can support the

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there's a free trial that's available there. Link is in the show notes, And if you're interested in any additional content, teaching resources are otherwise check out the links to the website Western CI podcast dot com. So, with that being said, until next week,