Part 2: Incas

Inca

Inca

• By the 13th Century, the Inca had established domination over the regional states in Andean South America

• In 1438, Pachacuti launched a series of military campaigns that greatly expanded Inca authority

• By the late 15th Century, the Inca empire covered more than 2,500 miles, embracing almost all of modern Peru, most of Ecuador, much of Bolivia, and parts of Chile and Argentina

Agriculture

Llamas

Terraced farm land

Agriculture• Intensive agricultural techniques

• Inca empire spanned many types of environments and required terraces to make farmland out of the mountainous terrain

• Chief crop was the potato• Herded llamas and alpacas for meat, wool, hides, and dung (used

as fuel)

Social Hierarchy

• Chief ruler was a god-king who theoretically owned everything and was an absolute and infallible ruler

• Dead rulers retained their prestige even after death• Remains were mummified and state deliberations

often took place in their presence in order to benefit from their counsel

• Were seen as intermediaries with the gods

Social Hierarchy• Aristocrats lived privileged lives including fine

foods, embroidered clothes, and large ears spools• Spanish called them “big ears”

• Priests often came from royal and aristocratic families• They lived celibate and ascetic lives• Influenced Inca society by education and religious rituals

Inca ear spools

Social Hierarchy

• Peasants worked lands allocated to them and delivered substantial portions of their production to the bureaucrats• Surplus supported the ruling, aristocratic, and priestly

classes as well as providing public relief in times of famine or to widows

• Also owed compulsory labor services to the Inca state• Men provided heavy labor• Women provided tribute in the forms of textiles,

pottery, and jewelry

New Technologies: Roads• Built an all-weather highway

system of over 16,000 miles • Ran “through deep valleys and

over mountains, through piles of snow, quagmires, living rock, along turbulent rivers; in some places it ran smooth and paved, carefully laid out; in others over sierras, cut through the rock, with walls skirting the rivers, and steps and rests through the snow; everywhere it was clean swept and kept free of rubbish, with lodgings, storehouses, temples to the sun, and posts along the way.” (Ciezo de Leon)

• Allowed the Inca government to maintain centralized control

Economic Exchange• Inca society did not produce large classes of merchants or

skilled artisans• Locally they bartered among themselves for surplus

agricultural production and handcrafted goods• Long distance trade was supervised by the central government

using the excellent Inca roads

Economic Exchange

• Gold, the Inca’s most valuable commodity, proved to be their undoing when Spanish conquistadors destroyed much of the empire in the early 1500s in search of gold

• The Spanish melted down almost all the gold so few works of art remain Arrival of Francisco Pizarro in

South America

Specialization of Labor• Large class of bureaucrats to support centralized government• Much fewer skilled craftsmen than other people of Mexica and

the eastern hemisphere• Some potters, textile workers, and tool makers

Religion and Education• Main god was Inti, god of the sun

• In the capital of Cuzco, some 4,000 priests, attendants, and virgin devotees served Inti

• Sacrificed agricultural produce or animals rather than humans

• Inca religion taught that sin was a violation of the established or natural order• Believed sin could bring divine disaster for individuals and

communities• Had rituals for confession and penance

• Believed in life after death where an individual received rewards or punishments based on the quality of his earthly life

Art and Writing

quipu

Art and Writing

• The Inca had no writing• Instead they kept records using

a quipu• A array of small cords of

various colors and lengths, all suspended from a thick cord

• By tying knots in the small cords, Inca could record statistical information

586 on a quipu