Cusco
Topa Inca Yupanqui has come to visit his father Pachacuti for dinner. Topa
Inca sits in his father's house drinking his chicha beer and partaking of food
They talk about the old times, about the state of the Empire, and share
tobacco. Halfway through, they get up to relieve themselves before settling in for a second round.
Finally Topa Inca begs his leave. The hour has grown late. He tells his father
they must meet again, this time at Topa Inca's residence. Perhaps his father will visit him at his estate in the mountains.
It's a perfectly normal visit between father and son, you know, except for one
small thing: both men are dead. Yeah, they have been for decades.
These are mummies still fulfilling social obligations as they did in life
And this was a dinner party for the dead
We're in a strange place in the century-long history of the Inca Empire.
Apart from a few territorial gains, most of its establishment and expansion has already occurred. The current Sapa Inca, Huayna Capac,
rules the Empire at the height of its power, but Huayna Capac will be the last
uncontested emperor of the Inca. Yet before we discuss its fall
let's take a moment and examine the Empire at its height, how it operated, and what life was like.
Because this is one of the most unique
societies in history and it's worth dropping in on a day in the life of the Inca Empire.
So our day begins not in the capital of Cusco
but in the conquered city of Quito in modern Ecuador. And it starts with a party.
thousands of people crowd the plaza laughing, eating, drinking cheap beer, and
staring at the Incas who have just thrown this lavish feast. Because this is no ordinary party.
It's the feast before the labor tithe. Among the crowd sits one man, not an Inca but a local of Quito.
He's a father, a husband, a brother and an artisan, but to the Inca he is a knot.
See, a few years ago,
he married, which to the Inca makes him both a full person and a part of the Imperial labor pool.
The Inca's world view is based on complementary pairs: Man and woman. Sun and Moon.
One who breaks ground and one who sows seeds. And this means someone is not a member of society
until they form a household. Not to mention, a married man can leave his home for months at a time
doing labour service while his wife cares for his home and fields.
The year before, a census taker had come to the man's valley, recording on a knot-work quipu
how many households existed and what each person did in the Empire. People are sorted by age,
sex, and the kind of work they can perform. He counted elderly men who couldn't walk separate from those
who could. He listed little boys as young as four as trap setters, and their sisters as gatherers.
He counted women old enough to carry burdens and others who were physically or mentally disabled. Though
the man farms most of the year, due to the Incas insistence that all households must be self-sufficient in food production,
his people are particularly talented goldsmiths. And that's likely what he and nine other households in this group will do for the Empire.
Because the Empire works in
Base-10. The goldsmith is counted as one of ten households of goldsmiths that report to a local leader, and that leader
along with nine others reports to a man who's in charge of marshaling those hundred households.
And it goes on like that up to groups of ten thousand. Each has its own leader, most of them local, that report to the
Inca representatives who live in Quito or the way stations on the Inca Road.
Thus can a hundred thousand Inca mostly living in Cusco rule over ten million people. But not always
easily. This feasting masks attention.
Quito is a new addition to the Inca Empire. And though the man can see some benefits, such as having more food than his
ancestors did, and the Empire had improved security by stopping regional warfare,
locals don't like the imposed Sun God worship, resent the labor tax, and still feel the effects of the forced
relocations. When the Inca came, they divided the land and llama herds into three parts, taking one for the Inca
aristocracy, one for their priests, and finally gifting that last third to the locals for sustenance.
When the crops failed, people went hungry. An Inca official steps up calling for silence.
He reads out the assignments: A division of stonemasons will repair the stretch of road between two peaks.
Another will fix the Emperor's local terraces. The weavers, the Inca's most prized and privileged artisans, will make clothing for the Inca
aristocrats. The potters, the least prized, will manufacture bowls and pots.
Some will be assigned military service. And for the man and his goldsmiths, he will make gold and silver ritual objects
destined for Cusco. The man and his group take the Inca Road to a nearby way station that includes storehouses,
workshops, and temporary housing, and
Inca officials issue him the materials he needs as well as a portion of food to sustain him through the crafting of the three golden
llamas he now owes the Inca rulers. The sooner
he finishes this task the sooner he can return home, but he knows the Inca covet fine objects,
so he takes his time and does it right. When he's done,
he hands the objects over to a courier and makes his way home.
This courier is doing his service as well, running parcels up and down the Inca Road.
But he only runs one segment from a single way station to another
before he hands the llama off to another runner who takes the next leg during his service.
This teenage boy has carried khipu messages, precious small objects, and even a fish caught fresh off the coast
destined for the Emperor's plate in Cusco. Through this system an object can make it from Quito to Cusco in three days, a
distance of over a thousand miles.
One of these golden llamas is
destined to be united with a teenage girl, a very special teenaged girl whose father has volunteered her for a great honor: to be sacrificed.
Human sacrifice is common in the Empire,
but generally on a small scale. And this girl now traveling the road dressed in fine garments and carried on a litter is not afraid.
She and the teenage boy she's paired with will spend their final year in luxury.
Her family will be rewarded, and after a year, the two will marry and go to a ceremony in the mountains. There,
they'll drink chicha until they pass out, whereupon they'll be strangled, bludgeoned, and buried as an offering to the Sun and Moon.
They will be a
complementary pair as the Sun and Moon are, and they will be buried with the little llama and other gold and silver offerings.
Gold, the sweat of the Sun; and silver, the tears of the moon. She does not fear this fate
however. Her death is not an ending,
but merely a transition to another phase. The dead are always with the Inca.
She has herself poured chicha into the grave of her grandmother.
And this lesson is reinforced when they pass a royal procession going the opposite way
carrying the mummy of Pachacuti on his way to his son's mountain estate. Now,
the dead emperor has a surprisingly active social life.
He eats and drinks, his attendants pouring chicha into a channel in the earth. A man urinates on his behalf.
He appears at religious ceremonies at the Solstice, and spirit mediums make his will known when the emperor and other officials consult his wisdom. AND,
he retains all his property.
His attendants are in fact his descendants. When an Inca ruler dies,
his entrails are removed and burnt, the ashes joining those of his ancestors in a hollow golden statue in the golden courtyard.
His body is freeze-dried in the Andean air. And
much like his body, his power divides as well.
His political power goes to his successor,
a son chosen by his primary wife. And his primary wife (also his full or half-sister - an arrangement that prevents too many claimants)
will become the most influential person in the Empire when their son takes the throne.
The emperor, on the other hand chooses a son to run his affairs when he transitions to death.
That son and his line will inherit all of the Emperor's wealth and estates, or rather,
they will control and run all the wealth on behalf of the deceased emperor, who will continue going about his life, after all.
Death is not an ending. Pachacuti's spirit is still alive,
vital, and powerful in his mummy and in the sacred landscape.
So his attendants carry him to the mountain estate which he engineered to complement the beautiful landscape, and on to visit his son.
But if Pachacuti's spirit exists, it may be troubled. Things in the Empire are not quite working
well. His grandson is finding the labor system cumbersome, and because all the royal lands are owned by mummies,
he's building Quito into a second capital and pushing out the borders just to get some land for himself. And
when Pachacuti last saw him, Huayna Capac
asked for his advice on a strange phenomena.
Pale men wearing clothing of metal had appeared on the coast in ships, and it was said that they had brought sickness with them.
Back in Quito, the goldsmith felt a pain in his back.
Huh, had, um had that courier looked pale and a little more tired than he should?
Strange small marks start appearing on the goldsmith's skin: some kind of pox. And with such small things
two empires fall.
Special thanks to educational tier patrons Ahmad Ziad Turk, Joseph Blaim, and Gerald "Spencer" Dinan.