The Incas were a distinct people with a distinct language living in a highland center, Cuzco. They were an ancient people, but had been subject to the regional powers during the entire history of South American urban cultures. They began to expand their influence in the twelfth century and in the early sixteenth century, they exercised control over more territory than any other people had done in South American history. The empire consisted of over one million individuals, spanning a territory stretching from Ecuador to northern Chile.

Unlike the military empires in Central America, the Incas ruled by proxy. After conquering a people, they would incorporate local rulers into their imperial system, generously reward anyone who fought for them, and treated well all those conquered people who cooperated. So, in reality, the Inca "empire," as the invading Spanish called it, was not really an empire. It was more of a confederation of tribes with a single people, the Incas, more or less in control. Each of these tribes was ruled independently by a council of elders; the tribe as a whole gave its allegiance to the ruler, or "Inca." The "Inca" was divine; he was the descendant of the sun-god.

LOCATION

Map of the Incan Civilization at its peak

In the incan language, Quechua, their empire was known as Tawantinsuyu. This means "land of the four quarters." The empire and all four of the quarters which it was divided into met at the Incan capital Cuzco, Peru in South America. Today, pieces of the Incan empire still remain in different areas of the central highlands of the Andes. The Incas were a vast group, and the strongest of this were located in the highlands. By 1532 they had an accumulated mass of land that spanned from the Pacific coast across the Andes to the Atlantic coast and from central Chile to Ecuador.

LANGUAGE

Quechua, the language of the Incas, bears only a distant relationship to Aymará, the language spoken in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca. It is not known what the Incas spoke before Quechua was made their official language by the Inca Pachacuti in 1438. Because of their conquests and their system of population transference, Quechua eventually became the dominant language. It is to this day spoken by a large percentage of Peru's inhabitants.

AGRICULTURE

Agriculture was tough business in the Andes. The Incas actively set about carving up mountains into terraced farmlands—so successful were they in turning steep mountainsides into terraced farms, that in 1500 there was more land in cultivation in the Andean highlands then there is today. The Incas cultivated corn and potatoes, and raised llama and alpaca for food and for labor.

The population of the Inca Empire was composed primarily of farmer- soldiers. Agricultural routine was the order of their life, and under the guidance of ``professionals'' the entire Inca realm became a center of plant domestication. More than half of the products that the world eats today were developed or cultivated in the Andean area. Among these are more than 20 varieties of corn and 240 varieties of potato, camote (sweet potato), squash, a variety of beans, manioc (from which come farina and tapioca), peppers, peanuts, and quinoa (pigweed, which is the source of a cereal). By far the most important crop was the potato. Able to withstand heavy frosts, it was planted as high as 15,000 feet (4,600 meters); at these heights the night freeze was used for dehydration, as the alternating freezing and thawing squeezed out the moisture until the potato was reduced to a light flour, called chuño. Corn (sara) was cultivated up to an altitude of 13,500 feet (4,100 meters) and was eaten fresh (choclo), parched and popped (kollo), made into a hominy (mote), and, finally, made into an alcoholic beverage (saraiaka or chicha). To make the latter, the corn kernels were softened by the women. The saliva of the chewer converted the starch - an enzyme distillate - into a malt sugar which became a dextrose and was thus converted into alcohol.

In Inca times all tribes were on about the same technological level in their agriculture. Work was communal, and the most important implement was the taclla, a simple digging stick consisting of a pole with a thick fire-hardened point.

Arable land was not unlimited. Rain generally falls in the Andes between December and May, but there are often years of drought. Water had to be brought to arable lands by canals, many of which showed superb engineering techniques. Terracing of the land to prevent erosion was begun by the pre-Inca tribes and elaborated under the Incas.

Andean agriculture was sedentary; the slash-and-burn techniques practiced by the Mexican Indians and the Mayas, in which virgin forest land was constantly being cleared and planted, were not normally employed by the Andean peoples. The Middle American cultures had no natural fertilizer except decayed fish and human feces, whereas in Peru the coastal farmer had guano and the Andean farmer had taqui, the offal of the llama.

SOCIAL ORGANISATION: THE AYLLU

The social structure of the Incas was extremely inflexible. At the top was the Inca who exercised, theoretically, absolute power. Below the Inca was the royal family which consisted of the Inca's immediate family, concubines, and all his children. This royal family was a ruling aristocracy. Each tribe had tribal heads; each clan in each tribe had clan heads. At the very bottom were the common people who were all grouped in squads of ten people each with a single "boss." The social unit, then, was primarily based on cooperation and communality. This guaranteed that there would always be enough for everyone; but the centralization of authority meant that there was no chance of individual advancement (which was not valued). It also meant that the system depended too much on the centralized authority; once the invading Spanish seized the Inca and the ruling family, they were able to conquer the Inca territories with lightening speed. Conquered people were required to pay a labor tax (mita ) to the state; with this labor tax, the Incas built an astonishing network of roads and terraced farmlands throughout the Andes.

At the base of the social pyramid of the Inca Empire was the ayllu, a clan of families living together in a restricted area and sharing land, animals, and crops. Everyone belonged to an ayllu; one was born into it and died within it. The commune could be small or large; it could even be a town. No individuals owned land; land was owned by the ayllu, or later the emperor, and was only loaned to each member for his use. Each autumn the land was divided again; the allotments were increased or decreased depending upon the size of the family. Planting and harvesting were communal.

At the age of twenty a man was expected to marry. If he did not, a mate was selected for him by the chieftain. Marriage for the workers was strictly monogamous, but all members of the ruling class had more than one wife.

Some women had a chance to leave the ayllu and better their life. These were the ``chosen women,'' who were selected because of their beauty or special talents and taken to Cusco or one of the provincial capitals. There they were taught weaving, cooking, and the rituals of the Sun, the state religion. Many of the ``chosen women'' became wives of officials, and some became concubines of the Inca himself.

THE STATE: TAWANTIN-SUYU

Tawantin-suyu, meaning four quarters, was the name given by the Incas to their state. Four roads, which went to the ends of each quarter, no matter how distant, came out of Cusco; each road bore the name of the suyu to which it ran. 1) Anti-suyu
included all the land east of Cusco; this domain contained the montaña and the jungle, and was continually harassed by attacks from the only partially pacified tribes of the area. 2) Cunti-suyu embraced all the lands west of Cusco, including the conquered
coastal empires, from Chan-Chan through the Rimac (now Lima Valley) down to Arequipa. 3) Colla-suyu was the largest in extent; located south of Cusco, it took in Lake Titicaca and regions in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. 4) Chincha-suyu contained
all the land and tribes which lay to the north, up to Rumichaca. Each quarter was ruled by an apo, or governor, related by blood ties to the Inca - and answerable only to him.

ORGANISATION BY TENS

The pattern of political and, in turn, economic organization was based upon decimal groupings of individuals. Although the system varied regionally, typically at the base was the puric, an able-bodied tax- paying Indian. Ten workers had what we
would call a "straw boss'' (the Incas called him coñka-kamayoc); ten of these groups had a foreman (pacha-koraka); ten foremen were ruled by another, ideally the headman (mallcu) of a large village. Ten thousand people came under a district governor (homo-koraka), and ten districts were under the governor ((apo) of the quarter. For every 10,000 people there were 1,331 officials.

THE INCA

The Inca was selected by a council of advisers of the royal lineage. There was no clear line of succession; the most competent of the legitimate sons of the Inca's principal wife (coya) was usually selected. The Inca had one real wife, but he maintained a menage of royal concubines; Huayna Capac is estimated to have had in the male line alone 500 descendants living at the time of the Spanish conquest. These formed the Inca' s own royal ayllu. It was from them that he chose his important administrators. The empire was one of the world's few real theocracies, for the Inca was not only ruler but also, in the eyes of his people, a demigod and the head of the state religion. The Inca Empire was a totalitarian state, and the Incas were absolute rulers whose power was checked only by the influence of custom and the fear of revolt.

TAXATION: THE MIT'A

Every puric was obliged to give a certain amount of work to the state. This tax-through-work service was called mit'a. Only the state and religious officials were exempt. Each ayllu cultivated fields within its communally held lands for the Sun and the Inca,
that is, for religion and the state. The crops from these fields, planted and harvested communally, were stored for official use. Another form of work service was prescribed for various projects: road building, bridge building, mining, and the erection of temples, forts, and royal residences. All was under the supervision of professionals. Accurate records of work service for each community were kept on a knotted string - the quipu. In addition to work service, every puric formed part of an agrarian militia and was liable to military service at any given moment. When he was absent on a military campaign other members of the ayllu cultivated and harvested his allotment of land.

CRIME

Because everyone had everything they needed, people rarely stole things. As a result, there were no prisons. The worst crimes in the Inca empire were murder, insulting the Sapa Inca and saying bad things about gods. The punishment, being thrown off of a cliff, was enough to keep most people from committing these crimes. Adultery with a Sun Virgin wasn't worth it. The couple was tied up by their hands and feet to a wall and left to starve to death. If one made love to one of the Inca's wives, they would be hung on a wall naked and left to starve. Smaller crimes were punished by the chopping off of the hands and feet or the gouging of the eyes.

COLINISATION: MIT'A-KONA

The system devised by the Incas to organize and assimilate newly conquered territory was an extension of the idea of work service. As soon as any region was conquered, the unreliable part of the local population was moved out and a safe Quechua-speaking population was moved in; these latter were the mit'a-kona (called mitamaes by the Spaniards). Local customs, dress, and language of the conquered population which remained were allowed, but officials had to learn and use Quechua. It was the duty of the mit'a-kona to bring Inca culture to the newly conquered peoples. The mit'a-kona were of three orders: military (to guard frontier stations), political (to win over the population and coordinate the conquered peoples), and economic. Often, when a planned Inca highway ran through an entirely depopulated area, mit'a-kona were placed there to provide upkeep for roads and bridges and to extend the suzerainty of the Inca Empire. The mit'a-kona were given social and economic benefits much like the benefits accorded the soldiers of the Roman legions when serving in distant lands. So complete was the Inca integration of the Andes, Montaña, and coast, that even today the entire area retains the mark of Inca culture. Seven million people still speak Quechua dialects, the ayllus are maintained in the form of comunidades; and the Inca culture continues to be manifest in music, agricultural practices, and the character of the people.

ROADS, BRIDGES AND COURIERS

Of all the urbanized people of the Americas, the Incas were the most brilliant engineers. The Huari-Tiahuanaco performed amazing feats of fitting gigantic stones together, and the Nazca designed mind-numbingly huge earth-drawings that still exist today. But the Inca built massive forts with stone slabs so perfectly cut that they didn't require mortar—and they're still standing today in near-perfect condition. They built roads through the mountains from Ecuador to Chile with tunnels and bridges. They also built aqueducts to their cities as the Romans had. And of all ancient peoples, they were the most advanced in medicine and surgery.

Roads, bridges, and the courier system were the tactical elements which held the empire together. The Incas took over the roads of earlier civilizations and developed more than 10,000 miles (16,000 km) of new all-weather highways (capac nan). Since pre-Columbian Peruvians did not have the wheel, the roads were constructed for foot and llama caravans. Still, the coastal road was a standard 24 feet (7.3 meters) wide; it was 2,520 miles (4,055 km) in length, running from Tumbes at the northern boundary down to Purumuaca at Rio Maule in Chile. The Andean road, since it crossed mountainous terrain, was narrower; it varied between 15 and 24 feet (4.6-7.3 meters). Its length was 3,250 miles (5,230 km), and it had no less than a hundred bridges, either of wood or stone or fiber-cable suspension; four bridges alone crossed the chasms of the Apurimac River. Distance markers were used every 41/2 miles (7.2 km) and rest stations for travelers were placed alongside the road every 12 to 18 miles (19-29 km). In addition, the communication system had smaller stations for couriers (chasquis); the chasquis ran in relays, each covering a mile and a half (2.4 km). It has been proven that this chasqui system was able to convey a message over 1,250 miles (2,000 km) in five days.

RECORD KEEPING: THE QUIPU

586 on a quipu

Official records and the folk stories of the Incas were kept by ``rememberers. '' Neither the Incas nor any other South American cultures had writing - in any form. Instead, the Incas used a mnemonic device called the quipu, from the Quechua word for a knot. This consisted of a main cord from which dangled a series of smaller colored strings into which knots were tied. The quipus were accompanied by a verbal comment without which the meaning of what each quipu conveyed would have been unintelligible. The record keepers knowing the theme of each quipu were called quipu- camayocs. Each governor of a
province had attached to his person many such quipu-camayocs, who kept an accurate account of population, tribute, and soldiers. A decimal count was used, there even being a symbol for zero (an empty space). The Spanish conquerors, the conquistadors, much admired this system.

Special quipu-camayocs were responsible for maintaining a record of Inca accomplishments. Through them, history was selected and manipulated. The accomplishments of whole generations of conquered tribes were blotted out so that the Inca claim of having founded the great Andean civilization could not be contradicted.

RELIGION

In the Inca concept, religion and state were one. Viracocha was the creator god, the one source of power; he was aided in his divine administration by servant gods, the most important of which was the sun god, Inti. The sun god became the symbol for
the Incas; his name was always invoked, and his image was the motif of the official religion. There were also gods for all natural phenomena. Inca religion consisted of numerous decentralized cults, but the most enduring centered on the huaca, a magic and
holy object or spirit. Huaca had many ramifications: a lake, river, or mountain was a huaca; a temple could be a huaca; often huaca was associated with agriculture, and stones gleaned from fields in cultivation were gradually transformed into a temple
which became huaca.

Religion was practical and life was religion. Agriculture was holy, and anything connected with it became huaca. Belief in immortality was general. The nobleman, no matter what his morals, went back to live with the Sun and had warmth and plenty. The common man, if virtuous, went to the same abode; if not he writhed in a sort of hell (oko- paca) where there was cold and hunger.

Religion and custom guided conduct. Reduced to a single moral precept, the rule for good conduct was: Ama sua, ama llulla, ama chella - ``Do not steal; do not lie; do not be lazy.''

ART

Inca art forms had a tendency towards austerity. Weaving, especially in vicuña wool, was of the highest quality, but it lacked the inventiveness of the weaving of coastal peoples. The cutting of semiprecious stones was a widely practiced art, although the Inca stonecutters depended on the coastal trade for shell and stones.

Goldsmithing was an Inca specialty. Almost all the gold mines worked in historical times had been previously mined by the Incas. Smiths who worked gold and silver lived in a special district and were exempt from taxes. The best examples of their art have not survived, since all went into the crucible of conquest; but according to the Spaniards who first saw it, Cusco seemed ablaze with worked gold. Some of the buildings were covered with gold plate imitating Inca stone work. The grass-thatched roofs of some of the temples had strands of gold that mimicked the grass; a setting sun would catch the gleam of gold and suggest a golden roof. The fabulous Curi-cancha, the golden enclosure which enjoined the Temple of the Sun in Cusco, had a golden fountain; actual-size representations of maize plants with leaves and ears of gold were ``planted'' in an earth made up of clods of gold, and there were twenty life-size golden llamas grazing on golden grass in the golden enclosure.

ARCHITECTURE

The most awe-inspiring of Inca contributions to material culture was in architecture. Inca architecture had not the subtlety of the Mayan, with its profuse ornamentation; nor had it the emotional impact of the Aztec; but Inca engineering and structural daring - the grandiose concept of its cities and the handling of rock mass - finds no rival in either the New World or the Old. The number and size of Inca structures, even in ruins, is simply overwhelming. Sites such as Machu Picchu, perched in a saddle 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) high between two Andean peaks, gives an idea of what Inca urban planning must have been.

In constructing a foundation, the natural outcrop of rock was cut out and stones, without mortar, were set in to make the building part of its natural surroundings. Inca architecture had great plasticity. The Inca artisans built with sun-baked brick when rock was not available; they could also use precisely cut stone in pattern, or they could build in massive form, with huge rocks.

The pucara, or fortress, of Sacsahuaman that guarded Cusco is a case in point. It is without doubt one of the greatest structures of its kind anywhere. Fifteen hundred feet (460 meters) in length, it is composed of three massive tiers of stone walls, which
have a combined height of 60 feet (18 meters). The walls are broken into 46 salients, retiring angles, and buttresses. The cyclopean foundations contain stones which weigh more than 30 tons; these stones have beveled edges. The 300,000 or more
stones that form the fortress are irregularly polygonal and locked so well structurally that they have defied innumerable earthquakes as well as the attempts of man himself to dislodge them. The fortress, replete with fighting towers, underground passages, habitations, and an intricate system of water distribution, was begun in 1438 and finished in 1508; it took 30,000 workmen over 70 years to complete it.

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE

At its height, the Inca civilization crashed into the European expansion. In 1521, Herman Cortés conquered the Aztecs; this conquest inspired Francisco Pizzarro to invade the Incas in 1531. He only had two hundred soldiers. However, he convinced the ruler of the Incas, Atahualpa, to come to a conference at the city of Cajamarca. When Atahualpa arrived, Pizzarro kidnapped him and killed several hundred of his family and followers. Atahualpa tried to ransom himself, but Pizzarro tried to use him as a puppet ruler. When that failed, Pizzarro simply executed him in 1533. Over the next thirty years the Spanish struggled against various insurrections, but, with the help of native allies, they finally gained control of the Inca empire in the 1560's.

Many reasons can be offered for the fall of the Incas, but the sudden conquest of a mighty empire by only a handful of Spaniards is still hard to comprehend. The Indian empires of Central Mexico had already succumbed to the Spaniards, who under Hernán Cortes had invaded Mexico in 1519. However, the Incas were unaware of such events, inasmuch as there was no direct contact of Aztec and Maya with Inca. The white man's presence became known only in 1523 or 1525, when a Spaniard named Alejo Garcia led an attack with Chiriguano Indians on an Inca outpost in the Gran Chaco, a dry lowland to the
southeast of the Inca realm. In 1527 Francisco Pizarro appeared briefly at Tumbes on the northwest Peruvian coast and then sailed away, leaving behind two of his men. Shortly afterward, Ecuador was devastated by a pestilence (possibly smallpox)
brought by one of them.

Huayna Capac died in 1527. He is said to have felt that the empire was too large to be governed only from Cusco. Succession to the Incaship was immediately disputed between Huascar, residing in Cusco, and Atahualpa, the favorite of Huayna Capac's 500 sons, living in Ecuador. A five- year-long civil war which devastated the empire ensued between the two half-brothers. Atahualpa's final victory occurred only two weeks before the second arrival of Pizarro. The victorious chief was resting at the provincial capital of Cajamarca in what is today northwestern Peru, surrounded by 40,000 veterans and planning to march to Cusco, there to be formally acknowledged Inca.

Pizarro arrived at Tumbes on May 13, 1532; he began his march toward Cajamarca with 177 men, of whom 67 were cavalry. Atahualpa knew all this; his intelligence reports were precise, but the interpretation placed on these reports was fatuous. He was told that the horses were no good at night; a man and animal were one, and when the horse or rider fell they were useless; guns were only thunderbolts and could be fired only twice; and the long steel Spanish swords were as ineffectual as a woman's weaving battens. In any of the hundred narrow defiles of the Andes through which the small Spanish detachment climbed, it could have been annihilated.

When the Spaniards occupied Cajamarca they sent out an invitation for Atahualpa to visit them in the city, which was walled on three sides. No one has yet been able to explain satisfactorily why Atahualpa allowed himself to walk into an ambush. He was well aware of Pizarro' s strength, and ambush was a much-used Inca military tactic. Perhaps other factors, not sensed by the Spaniards, guided the Inca in his movements. At vespers on Nov. 16, 1532, Atahualpa marched into the square of Cajamarca, displaying all the panoply of power. Although he was surrounded by thousands of his followers, the Inca and his men came, as Pizarro wished, unarmed. There was an unintelligible parley between a Christian priest and the Inca demigod; then the Spaniards set upon the Indians. The whole action took thirty minutes; the only Spanish casualty was Pizarro, wounded in the arm while defending Atahualpa, whom he wished to take alive and unhurt.

After that, except for fierce local skirmishes at several places, there was no serious resistance until 1536. Atahualpa, imprisoned, bargained for his life by agreeing to fill twice with silver and once with gold the large room in which he was kept, but it was not enough. On the pretense that Atahualpa planned to launch an attack once they were loaded down with their loot, the Spaniards kept Atahualpa in custody and eventually charged him with ``crimes against the Spanish state.'' They formally tried and executed him by garroting, a form of strangulation, on Aug. 29, 1533.

The shock of all these events reduced the Inca people to a state of strange timidity, and the Spaniards easily advanced southward over the great Inca highway to Cusco, which they captured on Nov. 15, 1533. From there, by organizing their new realm, they soon turned Spanish conquest into Spanish domination.