On one hand, we’ve got human sacrifices, mummies, and holy potatoes. On the other hand,
there’s neurosurgery, Machu Picchu, and advanced astronomy.
Put them together and you have the Incan empire – one of the most mysterious, baffling, and, dare we
say “nutty?” civilizations that still fascinates historians nearly five hundred years later. Today
on Nutty History, we’re uncovering the weirdest and wackiest of life under the Incan Empire.
You might be reluctant to have someone operate on your brain today, much less 500 years ago in
a mud hut home. But you’d actually be in pretty good hands. The Incas demonstrated an advanced
success rate of trepanation. In layman’s terms, that’s making a hole in your skull to reach the
surface of your brain. Uh, sounds easy, right? The Incas likely conducted this surgery to treat head
injuries or mental illness, and they held up to a 90% success rate. For comparison, your chances of
surviving this practice in the American Civil War were about 50/50. Move over, McDreamy. In
a not so medically modern custom, the Incas also practiced cranial deformation. Yes, it is as bad
as it sounds. This practice involved wrapping tight clothes around the heads of newborn babies
to mold their soft skulls into a more conical shape. The resulting cone-headedness was actually
a fashionable indication of status and nobility. Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder! Long
before Pablo Escobar came on the scene, the Incas were getting high on their own supply of the Coca
leaf. Advanced herbalists, the Incas used the Coca plant to lessen hunger and boost their energy.
If that name and those symptoms are ringing a bell, that’s because the Coca leaves are the key
ingredient of another popular substance – cocaine. No wonder they got so much done. The Incas saw the
Coca leaf as sacred, and generally reserved their stash for nobility, times of famine, or religious
and healthcare purposes. One notable exception was its regular use by Chasqui, Incan messengers who
travelled across the empire and chewed the Coca leaves for an extra pep in their step. To be fair,
the Chasqui were essentially relay racers who travelled on foot over 100 miles per day to
deliver memorized messages, so they might be entitled to a little performance enhancement.
If you thought praying to one god was time consuming, try twenty. The Incas were pantheists
which means they celebrated a ton of different gods. Within smaller communities, you might
worship local deities, with the understanding that all of those gods were subservient to the sun god,
Inti. Inti was essentially the Zeus of the Incan gods. Incas celebrated with an annual festival in
his honor, which was sort of like an even longer version of Mardi Gras. Prior to the celebration,
you were expected to fast and abstain from sex. Once it was party time, though,
you could celebrate with chicha, a corn-based beer. Of course, no Incan festivity is complete
without a sacrifice, and Incans would kill a llama for Inti and pull out its lungs as
a means of predicting the future. It might sound archaic, but then again, consider groundhog’s day.
While they commonly sacrificed animals, not all victims had four legs. Capacochas were ceremonies
that took place on important life events of the emperor or as a means of preventing
natural disasters. They typically involved the sacrifice of children, as they were seen as truly
pure beings worthy of being presented to live among the gods. These sacrifices weren’t quite
as gory as the notorious Aztec rituals. By that we mean that all organs stayed inside the body.
Instead, the Incas usually used strangulation, suffocation, a blow to the head, or live burial,
all of which still sound pretty traumatizing. On the bright side, as the designated sacrifice,
you would likely be given large amounts of chicha beer and Coca leaf to ease you peacefully into the
next life. Honestly, who doesn’t? We pay a lot of respect to the French fry, but the Incas were
actually the first civilization to cultivate the beloved potato on a large scale. Your McDonald’s
hash browns actually originated from the Andean farm communities about 7,000 years ago. Potatoes
weren’t just food to the Incas, they were objects of reverence. They would often bury potatoes
alongside their dead and considered them to have healing properties and help with childbirth.
Later on, when the Spanish conquistadors were looting the land for gold and treasure,
they instead uncovered stacks on stacks of…buried potatoes, which was probably a bit of a letdown.
Little did they know, Sour Cream & Onion Lays are basically as good as gold. Despite their initial
disappointment, the Spanish ended up taking potatoes with them on their ships to prevent
scurvy and ended up bringing them to the rest of the world. Thanks, Pizzaro! The Incas actually
subsisted on a mainly vegetarian diet. If you were eating meat, it was probably from a llama or
guinea pig. Cover your ears, kids…your childhood pet was best prepared by stuffing its insides with
hot stones and serving the entrails in a soup or a sauce. Would you like your fries with ketchup,
mayo, or guinea pig intestines? The Incas situated their headquarters in the Peruvian city of Cuzco,
but at the height of their power the empire stretched from modern day Columbia all the
way down to the southern tip of Chile. That’s more expensive than the Roman Empire. In order to keep
a better rule than Caesar, the Incas built roads to make the trek. And a trek it truly was. Unlike
other civilizations at the time, the Incas didn’t yet possess the crucial technology of the wheel.
So, they had to traverse their 3,250-mile empire on llamas, or worse, by foot. To
put that distance into perspective, that’s a bit longer than a trip from New York to San Francisco.
Rather than a movie and a nap on a five-hour plane ride,
you could expect to hike extreme altitudes in the Andes mountains, crossing canyons and
gorges via rope bridges. Hopefully you had a slender llama that didn’t tip the scale.
The Incas centered their lives around astronomy, using the moon and the stars to track weather
patterns and determine the best times for planting and harvesting. They also used
astronomy to create their calendar, and believed the sun, moon, and stars were all divine beings.
They interpreted eclipses as deities in distress and saw comets as negative omens. Which feels like
a logical reaction to seeing a chunk of icy rock fall through the sky. That can’t mean good news,
right? While they didn’t have a written alphabet, the Incas kept receipts.
They used a quipu, or knot record, to communicate and record important information. The quipu
used knotted strings of various lengths and colors to record dates, statistics, accounts,
and stories. The next time you’re feeling too lazy to write an email,
imagine tying a bunch of shoelaces together just to make the number 17.
The whole thing was highly portable, making it the must-have mobile device of the Incan empire.
So majestic that it’s often labelled as the eighth wonder of the world,
Machu Picchu is the most well-known display of the Incas architectural prowess. It is generally
believed that Inca ruler Pachacutec ordered the construction of Machu Picchu as his personal
estate. Almost 10,000 feet above sea level, the gigantic mountain-top city would be enough to give
any Emperor a new groove. Machu Picchu is crafted in the classic Incan style with polished dry-stone
walls. Incan masonry used bronze, stone, and copper tools to cut rock at its natural fracture
line. The rocks were sculpted to fit together so closely that even a knife could not be slid in
between them. With their impressive engineering, Incan buildings and monuments had an incredible
seismic resistance which kept them stable during earthquakes. Many Incan structures have lasted
centuries to present day, which is especially remarkable given that they had no mortar,
and again, no wheel! The Incas really give DIY a new meaning.
Boy or girl, babies were welcomed into Incan society as another set of hands to work the
fields. Mothers were expected to continue their agricultural work during pregnancy and immediately
after childbirth. With such a high infant mortality rate, most families didn’t invest much
in their children during infanthood. They didn’t even bother to name the babies, calling all
newborns by the term “wawa.” As for entertainment, the Incan version of a playpen was essentially
a pit dug into the ground. By the time they were two, children were expected to be helping
their parents around the house or faced severe discipline. Babies these days are so spoiled.
The Incan process of picking a spouse was pretty basic – a boy would present a gift of coca leaves
to his future father in law. But Incas had pretty modern options for an ancient civilization.
A couple could choose to have a trial marriage, where they could essentially play house for a
while to see how they meshed. Men and women could have sex during this time, and as long
as no children were produced, the couple could walk away and each start fresh with someone new.
Honestly, it sounds better than Tinder. Men and women actually shared a fairly equal
role in Incan society, as both had to work in the fields as partners. But the constant call
to war for Incan men could leave the women with slim pickings. The higher population
of females overall resulted in the allowance of polygamy, but only for the aristocracy.
You live, you die, you…become a mummy and return from the dead? Mummification was a common burial
practice in Incan society and demonstrated respect for their ancestors and past generations.
The Incas would essentially freeze dry the dead bodies. Living in the mountains, the temperature
would drastically drop at night, which provided a nature-made freezer for cadavers galore!
But rather than resting for eternity, Incan mummies had a pretty active afterlife.
Mummies were often removed from their resting place to consult on important decisions or partake
in special occasions such as harvest ceremonies or marriages. Because nothing says romance like
the shriveled corpse of your dead Aunt Helen, am I right? Children that were sacrificed were
also mummified and placed on mountain tops or sacred sites as shrines. These little displays
also served as a not-so-friendly reminder of Incan control over conquered areas. A mummified
ten-year-old definitely seems more effective than a “Beware of dog” sign. So, what do you think?
Would you sign up for a bit of human sacrifice and a lot of long llama rides for the chance
to live in Machu Picchu and eat potatoes every day? Let us know in the comments how you’d fare
living in the Incan empire, and what nutty history you’d like to hear about next time.