The Incas, or Incas, were ancient Indians of South America. It belongs to the American branch of the Mongol race. The Quechua language is used. "Inca" means "descendant of the sun." It lives mainly in the middle of the Andes, with its center in the City of Cusco in Peru. The Incas are a branch of the Quechua tribe of the Andes of South America and speak The Quechua language. Like the Aztecs, the Incas were a fairly young tribe that began to expand outwards from the 13th century onwards and established what was historically customary as the "Inca Empire."
The Inca Empire (Quechua: Tawantinsuyu) was the ancient empire in South America from the 15th to the 16th centuries, and the largest empire in the pre-Columbian Americas,[1] the political, military, and cultural center of the Inca Empire was located in Cuzco, Peru today. The center of gravity of the Inca Empire was distributed in the Andes Mountains of South America, and its main ethnic group, the Incas, was also the founder of the three major civilizations in the Americas, the Inca civilization.
The ancestors of the Incas lived in the highland regions of Peru, and later they migrated to Cusco to establish the Kingdom of Cusco, a country that developed into the Inca Empire in 1438. Between 1438 and 1533, the Inca Empire used methods ranging from conquest by force to peaceful assimilation, so that the Territory of the Inca Empire covered almost the entire western part of South America (spanning Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina), and was a vast Indigenous American Empire. The power of the Inca Empire reached its peak during the reign of the monarch Vaina Kapak.
The main food of the Incas was quinoa and the potatoes of the 8,000-foot highland (the potato originated in Lake Titicaca). The Incas grow more than 1,500 different potatoes, taking advantage of the different climates of the terraces. Compared to the Old World, the Incas were not rich in meat and ate roasted guinea pigs. Potato chips and chicha were specialties of the Incas.
The economic model of the Inca Empire was similar to that of a planned economy. Although there is evidence of foreign trade in the Inca Empire, axe-monies circulating in the northern part of the Inca Empire, and barter in some regions, there were no obvious market economy characteristics within the Inca Empire. The people's houses and the goods in them belong to individuals, but the land, buildings and everything else belongs to the state. Most of the male owners of the family followed a traditional economic model, were required to pay taxes on items such as crops, textiles, etc., as well as military and military service, and were obliged to participate in all public works of the Inca Empire, such as buildings or paving roads. This model is also known as Mita (Inca). In return, the state will provide food in difficult times, build canals and terraces to improve production efficiency, and set up recreational festivals from time to time. The economy of the Inca Empire also relied on another model, which advocated the complementarity of the ecological environment and natural resources, and there was also an economic mutual assistance relationship between people.
In the buildings of the Inca Empire, the stones were polished and regularly shaped, the seams were so wonderful that the gaps between the stones and the stones on the walls could not even be put in with daggers, making it impossible to understand how the Incas had stitched them together. It is noteworthy that although the Incas understood the wheel (which the sun god Inti used), they did not use it in architecture. How the huge number of stones used for construction was carried is still a mystery. Also, although the Incas did not use wheels, they took advantage of the slopes of the Andes. They are believed to have had thousands of workers push stones up the slopes. Unfortunately, the Incas did not master the art of writing and did not leave any descriptive text.
The Incas used the distance from thumb to index finger, palm size, arm length, and arm span length as physical units. The most basic unit of length is Thatkiy, which is about equal to the distance of one step. More distances than it are Topo, equal to 6000 Thatkiy (7.7 km, and studies have shown to be 4.0-6.3 km). More is The Wamani, which is equal to 30 Topo (about 232 km). To measure the area, you need to measure the length of how many arm spans, such as 25-50, and then convert it to Topo, that is, 3,280 square kilometers.
The Inca calendar is closely related to astronomy. Inca astronomers understood the concepts of the vernal equinox, the autumn equinox, the summer solstice, the winter solstice, the zenith, not to mention the transit of Venus. However, they cannot predict solar eclipses. The Inca calendar can basically be divided into two calendars, yin and yang, which are almost parallel. Each lunar month has a specific festival or ritual. Each day of the week has no name, which may be due to the Inca calendar not subdividing the months into weeks. Similarly, each month does not indicate the corresponding season. In the Inca calendar, a day is not divided into hours and minutes, but is divided by the distance from the sun to the people.
According to archaeological excavations, the Inca Empire at that time had bronze vessels and tools of labor such as knives, sickles, and axes, and its smelting and casting technology was quite sophisticated. The paintings on the ceramics of the Inca Empire have countless motifs, including animals, birds, waves, cats and geometric figures.
In Panama in 1511, there was a legend about the Southern El Dorado that brought devastating disaster to the Inca Empire. This statement reached the ears of the Spanish colonist Basco Nunez de Barber, who immediately set out for Panama. The group of people brought by Barber was very greedy, and their harassment annoyed a local Indian chief, so he encouraged them to go further south in search of the gold they were frantically thirsting for. The chief told them that in a mysterious southern country, there was so much gold that even the dishes and utensils of daily life were made of gold. But Balber was later framed and executed, and the golden dream could not come true.
It was not until ten years later, in 1522, that another Spanish colonist, Pascual de Andagoya, began his first southward expedition, and Andagoa heard more detailed descriptions from the Indians during his journey. Because the place where he met the Indians was on the banks of the Birú River, the name "Biru" was soon used to refer to this coveted El Dorado. Seduced by Andagoa's narration, Francisco Pizarro decides to look for Biru.
In 1526, Spanish invaders, led by Francisco Pizarro and his brothers, discovered the Inca Empire south from Panama. Apparently, they reached a very wealthy land, most likely the legendary El Dorado of Europe. Pizarro was subsequently approved by the Spanish Emperor to colonize the area. When they returned to Peru in 1532, two sapa Inca heirs, Atahualpa and Vascal, were vying for the throne, and the virus they had spread had greatly weakened the empire.
Pizarro had no army of thousands of horses at all, his army consisted of only 168 men, 1 cannon and 27 horses. The heavily armed Spanish cavalry had a great advantage over the Inca army, which was still using equipment that was even more backward than Europe in medieval times, and the Spaniards learned a lot of combat skills when they rebelled against the Moors. With this tactical and equipment superiority, the Spaniards bought hundreds of thousands of indigenous allies. The Battle of Puná (near present-day Ecuador's west Bank city of Guayaquil) broke out between the two sides, and Spain won a great victory, where Pizarro founded the city of Piura. Hernando de Soto arrives in the city of Cusco and meets Atahualpa, who has won the civil war. Pizarro and many of his men attacked the Inca army after negotiations broke down, taking the Inca king prisoner and executing 12 of his bodyguards.
Pizarro demanded that the Inca people fill his warehouses with huge amounts of gold to redeem their Sapa Inca, Atahualpa. The Inca people paid the ransom, but Pizarro deceived them and refused to release Atahualpa, and soon after, on charges of plotting to kill his brother and opposing Pizarro and others, Atahualpa was executed and the Inca Empire collapsed. Almost all of the gold and silver of the Inca Empire was plundered by the colonists.
After the Spaniards colonized the Inca Empire, Pizarro supported Atahualpa's brother Manco Capak II as a puppet, and some time later, Manco Capaque II resisted the Spaniards and took advantage of the dispute between Pizarro and a partner, Diego de Almagro, over the division of the spoils, and took advantage of the dispute between Pizarro and a partner, Diego de Almagro, to retake the city of Cusco at one point, with Bilcabamba as the center. Manko Kapak II founded the new Inca kingdom in Birkabamba and held Birkabamba with his descendants for 36 years before falling in 1572. The last Sapa Inca, Tupac Amaru, was captured by the Spaniards and sentenced to death. It was in 1572 that the Inca Empire was completely occupied by Spanish colonists.
The natives of the Inca Empire resisted the Spanish colonists for a long time. In order to plunder the gold and silver of the Inca Empire, the Spanish colonists began to massacre the Incas, and used the most indiscriminate means - to spread the plague. According to statistics, 60%-94% of Incas are infected with smallpox. According to statistics, the fatality rate of smallpox to Native Americans is between 80% and 90%. The population of the Heyday of the Inca Empire is still debated. It is estimated that the population of the Inca Empire was about 4,000,000 at its lowest and likely to exceed 37,000,000 at most. Smallpox is just one of the epidemics that invaded South America. Typhus began to spread in 1546; Influenza and smallpox broke out in 1558; Smallpox was rampant again in 1589; Diphtheria spread in 1614; Measles spread in 1618 – these plagues devastated not only the Incas, but also the Inca culture.
Under the bloody massacre of the Spanish colonists, another Native American civilization disappeared!