1. Empire of the Sun: Land of the Incredible Inca
By Peter Kupfer
Imagine traveling back in time 500 years to a land where roads, temples, and
gardens shimmered with gold. Imagine a sacred city high in the mountains built
with huge boulders that were carved and moved with little more than brute human
force. Imagine a society that worshipped the sun and sacrificed its own children to
mark important events.
Now stop imagining because this world really existed. It was called the Empire of
the Sun and it was ruled by a remarkable people called the Incas.
The Incas were South American Indians who created one of the largest and richest
empires in history. At the height of its power, in the mid-1400s, the Inca Empire
stretched some 2,500 miles along the Pacific Coast and Andean highlands from
Columbia to central Chile. It ruled over nearly 100 nations and more than 10 million
subjects.
During their century-long reign, the Incas amassed extraordinary wealth. Temples
and other edifices, paved roads, and elaborate gardens were laced with gold and
silver. Their capital, Cusco, became the richest city in the New World. "The riches
that were gathered in the city of Cusco alone, as capital and court of the empire,
were incredible," wrote Father Bernabe Cobo, a Jesuit priest, in an early account of
Inca culture.
The Incas were great builders who loved stone almost as much as they revered gold.
Their greatest achievement was the magnificent city of Machu Picchu, an elaborate
complex of lodgings, temples, terraces with fountains, and shrines flanked by jungle-
clad peaks fifty miles from Cusco. Experts believe Machu Picchu was built around
1450 as a family home or summer retreat for the Inca Emperor Pachacuti and that
as many as 5,000 men were involved in its construction.
The temples and fortifications at Machu Picchu were built from vast, pillowy
boulders, some weighing 100 tons or more. As many as twenty men would spend an
entire year working on a single stone, chipping away, hoisting and lowering, and
polishing it with sand. The Incas used a so-called dry stone technique to build the
city. The stones were placed one against the next without any mortar to hold them
together, yet they fit so precisely that in many cases one cannot even wedge a knife
between them.
Unlike many other Inca structures and treasures, which were plundered and
destroyed by the Spanish conquistators, Machu Picchu survived largely intact
because the Spaniards were not aware of its existence. In fact the city remained
unknown to outsiders until 1911, when it was discovered during an expedition led
by American historian Hiram Bingham. Today it is one of the most popular tourist
destinations in Latin America, visited by hundreds of thousands each year.

2. The Incas are also famed for building an extensive road system that crisscrossed the
high mountain passes of the Andes. The 14,000-mile network enabled Inca rulers to
control their far-flung empire through efficient communications and transport. Rest
stations were built every mile and a half for official runners, who raced between
them carrying messages. In this way a team of runners could cover 150 miles a day.
The Inca road system was particularly impressive considering the formidable
terrain it traversed. This is how Ciezo de Leon, another early chronicler of Inca
culture, described it: “[It ran] through deep valleys and over mountains, through
piles of snow, quagmires, living rock, along turbulent rivers … everywhere it was
clean swept and kept free of rubbish, with lodgings, storehouses, temples to the sun,
and posts along the way."
The Inca road system rivaled the one built by the ancient Romans and was a
precursor of the modern highway system. It was built to withstand the extreme
weather conditions in the Andes — fierce winds, frequent floods, ice, and drought. It
was also built to last — many roads still exist today and are in remarkably good
condition.
In common with other Andean cultures, the Incas left no written records. Their
history is known chiefly from the oral tradition that has been preserved through the
generations by official “memorizers” and from the written records composed from
them.
According to those records, the Inca were originally a pastoral tribe who lived in a
small village in the Andean highlands, about fifteen miles south of Cusco. Around the
year 1200 their leader, Manco Capac, led the tribe to settle in Cusco and form a small
city-state.
In 1438 the Incas began a far-reaching expansion under the command of their
leader Pachacuti, whose name literally means "earth-shaker." Using methods
ranging from violent conquest to peaceful assimilation, they swallowed up nearly
100 nations speaking 100 different tongues. In the process they built the largest
empire on earth at the time. Their vast domain extended over nearly 100,000
square miles and included rich coastal settlements, high mountain valleys, rain-
drenched tropical forests, and the driest of deserts.
Pachacuti sent spies to the regions he wanted to conquer; they brought back reports
on their political organization, military might, and wealth. He would then send
messages to the leaders of these lands extolling the benefits of joining his empire,
offering them presents of luxury goods such as high quality textiles, and promising
that they would be materially richer as subject rulers of the Inca.
Most accepted the rule of the Inca as a fait accompli and acquiesced peacefully. The
ruler's children would be brought to Cusco to be taught about Inca administration
systems, then return to rule their native lands. This allowed the Inca to indoctrinate

3. the former ruler's children into the Inca nobility, and, with luck, marry their
daughters into families at various corners of the empire.
The Inca Empire was an amalgamation of languages, cultures and peoples. The
components of the empire were not all uniformly loyal, nor were the local cultures
all fully integrated.
The official language of the empire was Quechua, although hundreds of local
languages and dialects were spoken. The term Inca comes from the Quechan word
for ruler or lord, and was used to refer to the ruling family in the empire. The Incas
called their empire Tawantinsuyu, or Land of the Four Quarters, which comes from
the fact that the empire was divided into four suyus, or provinces, whose corners
met at Cusco.
There were many different forms of worship within the empire, but Inca rulers
encouraged their subjects to worship Inti — the sun god — who they considered to
be the father of their king, the Sapa Inca.
The Incas believed in reincarnation. Death was a passage to the next world that was
full of difficulties. The spirit of the dead needed to follow a long dark road, and
during the trip they would need the assistance of a black dog that was able to see in
the dark. Most Incas imagined the afterworld to be very similar to the Euro-
American notion of heaven, with flower-covered fields and snow-capped mountains.
It was important for the Incas that they did not die as a result of burning or that the
bodies of the deceased were not incinerated. That’s because they believed that a
vital force would disappear and threaten their passage to the afterworld. Those who
obeyed the Inca moral code — ama suwa, ama llulla, ama quella (do not steal, do not
lie, do not be lazy) —"went to live in the Sun's warmth while others spent their
eternal days in the cold earth."
The Incas also made human sacrifices. In 1527, for example, as many as 4,000
servants, court officials and others were killed upon the death of an Inca ruler. The
Incas also performed child sacrifices, known as capacocha, during or after important
events, such as the death of the Sapa Inca or during a famine.
The Inca also practiced cranial deformation, which was achieved by wrapping tight
cloth straps around the heads of newborns to alter the shape of their soft skulls into
a more conical form. The practice was reserved for the children of nobility as a way
of distinguishing them from people in lower social classes.
The center of Inca life was Cusco, a city nestled in a mountain valley 10,000 feet
above sea level. The Incas transformed it from a modest village into an extravagant
and meticulously constructed city laid out in the shape of a puma. Inca nobles
strolled around on sandals with silver soles protecting their feet from the city’s hard
streets.

4. Cusco’s most impressive structure was the wondrous Temple of Gold, which
boasted an ornamental garden where the clods of earth and maize plants, complete
with leaves and corncobs, were fashioned from silver and gold. A flock of twenty
golden llamas and their lambs grazed nearby, watched over by solid gold shepherds.
In the Empire of the Sun everyone was expected to contribute to the empire. Land
was divided in three. One third was worked for the emperor, one third was reserved
for the gods, and one third the people kept for themselves. All were required to pay
taxes as tribute.
Money existed in the form of work — each subject of the empire paid "taxes" by
laboring on the myriad roads, crop terraces, irrigation canals, temples, or fortresses.
In return, rulers paid their laborers in clothing and food. Silver and gold were
abundant, but they were only used for aesthetic purposes, not as money.
Inca cities centered on great plazas where they threw vast parties for neighboring
chiefs. Festivities continued for days on end, sometimes lasting a month. Dignitaries
were fed and given gifts of gold, jewels, and textiles. Only then would the Inca make
their requests for labor, to increase food production, to build irrigation schemes, to
terrace hillsides, or to extend the limits of the empire.
The Inca could not write. Tax collectors and bureaucrats used knotted strings,
known as Quipu, to record numerical information. Varying lengths, colors, knot-
types, and positions, enabled them to store enormous quantities of information in a
small amount of space.
The Incas based physical measurements on human body parts. Fingers, the distance
between thumb to forefinger, palms, and wingspans were among the units used. The
most basic unit of distance was thatki, or one pace. The next largest unit was the
tupu, measuring 6,000 thatkiys, or about 4.8 miles. Next was the wamani, composed
of 30 topos (roughly 144 miles).
The Inca calendar was tied to astronomy. The twelve lunar months were each
marked with specific festivals and rituals. There apparently were no names for days
of the week, and no subdivisions of time into weeks at all. Time was not reckoned in
hours or minutes, but rather in terms of how far the sun had traveled or by how long
it takes to perform a given task.
The Inca made many discoveries in medicine. They performed successful skull
surgery, which involved cutting holes in the skull in order to alleviate fluid buildup
and inflammation caused by head wounds. Anthropologists have discovered
evidence which suggests that most skull surgeries performed by Inca surgeons were
successful. In pre-Inca times, only one-third of skull surgery patients survived the
procedure, but survival rates rose to 80–90 percent during the Inca era.

5. Scientists have long been puzzled by the ability of sandal-clad Incas to survive and
thrive at high altitudes. The Andes are the second-highest mountain range in the
world, after the Himalayas, and daily life for many Incas was spent at altitudes up to
15,000 feet. Even with today’s advanced mountaineering clothing and equipment, it
is hard to cope with the cold and dehydration experienced at those altitudes.
The Incas revered the coca plant as being sacred or magical. Its leaves were used in
moderate amounts to lessen hunger and pain during work, but were mostly used for
religious and health purposes. When the Spaniards realized the effects of chewing
the coca leaves, they took advantage of it. The Chasqui or messengers chewed coca
leaves for extra energy to carry on their tasks as runners delivering messages
throughout the empire. The coca leaf was also used during surgeries as an
anesthetic.
One explanation for the empire’s rapid expansion was the cult of ancestor worship.
When a ruler died, his son received all his earthly powers — but none of his earthly
possessions. All his land, buildings, and servants went to other male relatives. A new
ruler, therefore, had to create his own income — and the only way to do that was to
grab new lands, subdue more people, and expand the Empire of the Sun.
Ironically, it was the Incas’ great wealth that ultimately led to their demise. When
word of the abundance of Inca gold reached Spanish conquistator Francisco Pizarro
he set out to conquer the empire. His first two expeditions ended in failure as a
result of native resistance, bad weather, and lack of provisions, but a third one
succeeded.
The turning point came in 1533 with the capture and subsequent murder of Inca
Governor Atahualpa, the last Sapa Inca. The Spaniards duped Atahualpa into
meeting with them in a "peaceful" gathering, but instead they kidnapped him and
held him for ransom. Atahualpa offered the Spaniards enough gold to fill the room
he was imprisoned in, and twice that amount of silver — the equivalent of more
than $250 million. The Spaniards accepted the ransom, but instead of setting
Atahualpa free they strangled him and marched on Cusco.
Although the Spaniards had a relatively small force — fewer than 400 men —they
were far better trained and better equipped than their foes. They also benefited
from the support of thousands of natives who wanted to end the Inca control of
their territories.
The Incas went into battle with the beating of drums and the blowing of trumpets.
They wore helmets made of wood, copper, bronze, or animal skin, some of which
were adorned with feathers, and carried shields made from wood or hide.
The biggest factor in the Incas’ defeat, however, was not warfare but disease. Small
pox and other infectious diseases that the Spanish brought from Europe ran

6. rampant among the Incas, who lacked immunity from these diseases. Experts
believe these diseases wiped out nearly two-thirds of the native population.
Despite its glory, the Inca Empire was brittle, held together by promises and threats.
When Pizarro executed the last emperor, it rapidly collapsed. Catholic priests
demanding allegiance to a new Christian god soon replaced the Children of the Sun.
As they had for thousands of years, the hardy peoples of the Andes adapted. They
took what they must from their new masters, and held onto as many of their old
ways as they could.
The last Inca stronghold was conquered by the Spanish in 1572. Spanish culture,
religion, and language rapidly replaced Inca life, and only a few traces of Inca ways
and culture remain today.
Almost all of the gold and silver work of the empire was melted down by the
conquistadors. Ceramics were painted with numerous motifs including animals,
birds, waves, felines, and geometric patterns. Ceramics portrayed basic scenes of
everyday life, including relationships and scenes of tribal warfare.
The plundering of Inca riches continues today with the pillaging of sacred sites and
blasting of burial tombs by grave robbers in search of precious Inca gold.