6 things that made the Incas cool

While the Aztecs ripped out the hearts of the people on the tops of the pyramids, and the Mayan rulers pierced their tongues and genitals to prove their divinity, forty thousand Incas ruled over almost fifteen million people of their empire. They ruled prudently and expediently, creating a theocratic totalitarian empire in which no one died of hunger. This could not be imagined even by the Spaniards, who conquered this people.

We talk about what made the Incas so cool, and what ultimately killed them.

Divine legitimacy

The Incas rose and created their own empire in the XI century (it lasted until the XVI) as a result of a combination of certain circumstances. They were one of the peoples of the Quechua Indians who lived in the territory of the present state of Peru, and circumstances forced them to become the most warlike of their brethren.

Originally, the Inca capital, Cuzco, was a frontier fortress that protected other Quechua Indians from the aggressive Chunk tribe. Because of their position on the border with their warlike neighbors, the Incas had the strongest and most constantly fighting army. But one army was not enough, and the Incas also excelled in the art of diplomacy, creating an alliance to fight the Chunks.

One day, after a great battle, when the Chunks were finally defeated and destroyed as an enemy, the Inca ruler Pachacutec Yupanqui did not hesitate long and with the help of the available army captured the allied cities, creating a primary empire. The state grew and under the next rulers became comparable in size to the Roman Empire.

In their power, the Incas relied not only on military power. As skilled diplomats and politicians, they relied on the ideological and religious justification of their power. They claimed to be the children of the sun God, who had come to earth to save people from chaos, famine, and barbarism. In legends and stories, they created the image of divine people who taught others agriculture, art, and other gifts of civilization.

As is often the case with such statements, this was nowhere near the truth. Initially, the Incas were nomads in general, and their many knowledge and skills were drawn from the experience of previous civilizations in South America.

Theocratic totalitarianism and Native American Communism

At some point, the propaganda began to work properly, and the Inca people became the ruling class, a kind of supreme caste of the empire. Being an Inc meant being an elite. They did everything to ensure that their power was unshakable, creating an amazing fusion of rigid theocratic totalitarian governance and a protective, even caring, state system.

To begin with, they declared themselves children of the sun, and all their actions were infallible and correct by definition. But at the same time, the Sapa Inca, that is, the "Only" ruler, had to be able to do everything that his subjects were able to do. When it was time to plant the potatoes, the inca and his children would personally go out into the field and plant the first tuber using a gold digging stick. When it was necessary to cut the lamas, the first lama was also cut by the ruler. Thus, the subjects saw that the Inca knew their problems and was close to them, despite his divinity.

The Incas created an amazing vertical of power. At the very bottom was a pureh, a peasant, the head of a family, who worked in the fields and public works. The five purekhs chose their own head, and the ten purekhs did the same. From the heads of dozens, the head of a hundred was chosen. And now he was under Kuraka, the hereditary ruler. And often this ruler was not from the Incas, but from the conquered peoples, since the Incas tried to leave the representatives of the local elite in place, only putting one of the Incas behind each of them, like an older brother who should guide the younger.

However, there were two more surprising moments that characterize the entire Inca empire. First, the peasants had practically no personal freedom — their entire life was subject to certain stages, and even if the peasant did not find a wife until the age of twenty-five, he was married by the decision of a local official.

Under pain of death, it was forbidden to close the doors when the family was having dinner, since the official had to be able to look in on the peasant and see what he was eating, whether he was starving, and whether he had any surplus food. Peasants were also forbidden to move to other parts of the empire. Each region had its own clothes, and if a peasant in one dress was met in an area where they wore another, he could be executed.

But there was also a downside: if a peasant had a misfortune-illness or hunger — he was treated for free, and food was given out from the imperial warehouses. In general, the Incas had no equivalent of a domestic currency, only an external one, for trading with their neighbors. And even food and basic necessities were not exchanged, but distributed by order of an official from the imperial warehouses.

The most surprising thing was that if a peasant was forced to steal food because of hunger, it was not him who was executed, but the official who allowed such a thing. If an official was convicted of corruption — he was publicly executed, throwing a huge stone on his back, crushing it into a flat cake, as a warning to other embezzlers.

Accounting and accounting system

Kipukamayok

This picture was supplemented by universal accounting and reporting. All the information about the harvest and other important things was carefully counted and recorded using a knotted letter-kipu. On the rope-base, additional ropes were hung, in which a fairly large amount of data was encrypted using color and different nodes. The largest kipu known to us weighs six kilograms.

Kipukamayok, who was in each community, did the counting, and eventually all the data flowed to the capital, where the Great Inca could at any time get information about how many potato tubers were collected in some Inca Viper in the past year. As such, the Incas did not use writing, and there is even an assumption that it was specifically banned.

Medicine and construction

The Incas were great organizers, taking all the most useful things from previous civilizations and raising it to an amazing height.

For example, complex surgical operations were known long before the Incas, but in their reign they became literally works of art. Inca medicine was free of charge and used sophisticated tools, such as vessel clamps. And to sew stitches on wounds, surgeons used the heads of large soldier ants. Such an ant was brought to the wound, forced to bite it, and the torso was torn off. The remaining head reflexively clenched its jaws, and the wound was thus sealed.

In construction, the Incas used cyclopean stones, which sometimes reached the size of a three-story house, and weighed several hundred tons. At the same time, they were adjusted to each other so that it is still impossible to put a razor blade through the gap between them. Amazing buildings were often covered with gilding, and around the temples created whole sculptural compositions of pure gold, since this metal was considered sacred and was called "the offspring of the sun".

When the conquistador's scout Francisco Pizarro told the commander that in the Inca city there are gardens of golden trees, on which golden birds sit, there are life-size golden llamas around, and there are golden corn shoots in the fields, the commander ordered to pour cold water on the narrator, thinking that he was overheated. But in the end, it turned out to be true.

Imperial roads and postal services

The magnificent cities with golden gardens were connected by a well-developed road network with a total length of almost thirty thousand kilometers, and the longest highway was almost six and a half thousand kilometers long. At the same time, the roads were made of stone slabs, up to eight meters wide, slightly rounded so that water drained from them into special channels.

If the road passed through the desert, they built a wall so that the path was not covered with sand, and if it was over a mountain, they built tunnels and made suspension bridges over the precipices. At the same time, the ropes were changed every year, although their strength was such that when the Spaniards came and stopped changing the ropes, one such bridge collapsed only after five centuries of operation.

Every two and a half kilometers, an inn was set up, where the traveler could get a bed and food. There were also Chaski messengers who ran to deliver messages encrypted in a quip, to which the messenger had a key — a small poem. When a messenger ran up to the station, he would blow on the conch shell, and another messenger would run out at the sound. They ran together for a hundred meters, while a poem and a kipu message were being passed. The speed of the run was such that the messengers covered a distance of two thousand kilometers in five days. At the same time, they chewed coca leaves, acting as a dope.

Weapons and traditions of war

The weapons of the Incas differed little from those of the other Indians of the region. As protection, they used wooden shields, the elite also had breastplates made of copper, which the Incas, unlike the Aztecs and Mayans, knew. Wooden or, rarely, copper helmets were worn on their heads.

The Inca ranged weapons were slings and bows, as well as throwing spears with javelins. In close combat, they used spears, axes, and hammers. The favorite weapon of the imperial warriors was a makan mace with a star-shaped pommel.

The weapons of the Great Inca himself were made of gold. He, too, went to war, and also fought with a makan with a golden pommel, and threw golden shells at his enemies with a sling.

But the most striking thing about the Inca army was its organization and well-thought-out strategy. The Incas did not attack just like that, declaring war three times before-this was done so that the enemy would gather troops from all the villages and hide in a fortified city, which could then be taken and not be chased through the mountains by a bunch of partisans. They preferred to attack at a time when the harvest was already ripe, but not yet harvested. So the army received food on the enemy's land, and the soldiers ate captured corn and potatoes in front of the salivating besieged.

But most of all, the desire to resist the enemy elite was discouraged by the fact that its representatives were left alive and even in their own warm place, so the opponents often surrendered without a fight.

Problems and the demise of the Empire

Capture of the Inca Emperor by the conquistadors

What could have destroyed such a powerful empire, where forty thousand Incas ruled fifteen million people? The problem was precisely in that very rigid vertical of power. As soon as the conquistador Pizarro captured the Great Inca, all power was immediately paralyzed, and only after the vile murder of the ruler began the war against the Spaniards. And of course, the conquistadors were also very lucky-they came at a time when the empire was being shaken by the consequences of the civil war, where two Inca brothers were fighting for power.

The amazing civilization that built Indian communism still attracts researchers, because many treasures and several lost cities have not yet been found.