Read Online The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie - Free Book Online
Authors: Kim MacQuarrie
Tags: History, South America
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perhaps less than one hundred miles in diameter into an immense empire stretching for thousands of miles.
The empire stitched together by the Incas—who as an ethnic group never numbered more than one hundred thousand individuals—was, however, only the latest in a long series of kingdoms and empires that had risen and fallen in the Andes and on the coast for more than a thousand years. Sometime between 12,500 to 15,000 years ago, the first people had arrived in South America. Their ancestors presumably had crossed the Bering Strait land bridge and had worked their way down through North and Central America. The continent was still in the grips of the last ice age, and for the next three thousand years or so men and women made a living from hunting and gathering while using a variety of stone tools. As the ice age slowly retreated, the fauna and flora gradually changed and then, around 8,000 B.C ., the first evidence of agriculture appeared—archaeologists have found the remnants of cultivated potatoes in what is now northernBolivia. Eventually, during a five-thousand-year period between 8,000 and 3,000 B.C., people in what is now Peru learned to domesticate both animals (llamas and alpacas) and food crops (potatoes, corn, quinoa, beans, peppers, squash, guava, etc.), abandoned the hunting and gathering lifestyle, and settled in permanent villages and towns. As more food was produced, local populations increased. And then something odd began occurring on the coast.
Peru’s coastal plain is a narrow strip of land about 1,400 miles long and averaging less than fifty miles wide, hemmed in on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the east by the Andes. It is extremely dry along most of its length, and in many areas rain doesn’t fall for years at a time. The desert strip is penetrated, however, by more than thirty river valleys that carry water from the Andes down to the Pacific. In these valleys both fertile soil and water are abundant—prime real estate for the first agriculturalists. The Humboldt Current, meanwhile, which sweeps northward along the coast, is also one of the richest seas in the world for fish. Beginning in about 3200 B.C., —roughly during the same period when the Egyptians were building their first pyramids—people on Peru’s northern coast began building terraced mounds alongside large plazas, ceremonial architecture, and large-scale settlements. The unusual thing about these people is that they farmed little and instead relied upon fish from the sea. In certain lowland coastal valleys, meanwhile, other groups who
did
farm began building their own large settlements and urban architecture.
Fast forward another three thousand years and the gradual process of population growth, competition for arable land, an erratic climate, advances in food production, and the conquest of adjacent river valleys led to the formation of the first state, or kingdom, that of the Moche ( A.D 100–800) on Peru’s northern coast. * Life for the Moche kingdom’s inhabitants was quite different from the lifestyle of the first farmers, who by now had existed for thousands of years in Peru. The latter, for example, had originally produced only enough seed for their own use as food and for planting the following growing season. In general, they paid no taxes and were beholden to no one. By the time the first kingdoms arose, however, farmers were now required to produce a surplus of food or labor over and above theirpersonal needs. They were then required to relinquish that surplus in order to support a ruler and an emerging upper class. Over thousands of years, on different parts of the coast and in different areas of the Andes, a growing number of Peru’s inhabitants had gradually become peasants, or taxpayers, a new class of human being. “Civilization” had thus begun, which in its incipient form can be defined as the development of a complex social order based upon the division of labor between rulers and
The empire stitched together by the Incas—who as an ethnic group never numbered more than one hundred thousand individuals—was, however, only the latest in a long series of kingdoms and empires that had risen and fallen in the Andes and on the coast for more than a thousand years. Sometime between 12,500 to 15,000 years ago, the first people had arrived in South America. Their ancestors presumably had crossed the Bering Strait land bridge and had worked their way down through North and Central America. The continent was still in the grips of the last ice age, and for the next three thousand years or so men and women made a living from hunting and gathering while using a variety of stone tools. As the ice age slowly retreated, the fauna and flora gradually changed and then, around 8,000 B.C ., the first evidence of agriculture appeared—archaeologists have found the remnants of cultivated potatoes in what is now northernBolivia. Eventually, during a five-thousand-year period between 8,000 and 3,000 B.C., people in what is now Peru learned to domesticate both animals (llamas and alpacas) and food crops (potatoes, corn, quinoa, beans, peppers, squash, guava, etc.), abandoned the hunting and gathering lifestyle, and settled in permanent villages and towns. As more food was produced, local populations increased. And then something odd began occurring on the coast.
Peru’s coastal plain is a narrow strip of land about 1,400 miles long and averaging less than fifty miles wide, hemmed in on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the east by the Andes. It is extremely dry along most of its length, and in many areas rain doesn’t fall for years at a time. The desert strip is penetrated, however, by more than thirty river valleys that carry water from the Andes down to the Pacific. In these valleys both fertile soil and water are abundant—prime real estate for the first agriculturalists. The Humboldt Current, meanwhile, which sweeps northward along the coast, is also one of the richest seas in the world for fish. Beginning in about 3200 B.C., —roughly during the same period when the Egyptians were building their first pyramids—people on Peru’s northern coast began building terraced mounds alongside large plazas, ceremonial architecture, and large-scale settlements. The unusual thing about these people is that they farmed little and instead relied upon fish from the sea. In certain lowland coastal valleys, meanwhile, other groups who
did
farm began building their own large settlements and urban architecture.
Fast forward another three thousand years and the gradual process of population growth, competition for arable land, an erratic climate, advances in food production, and the conquest of adjacent river valleys led to the formation of the first state, or kingdom, that of the Moche ( A.D 100–800) on Peru’s northern coast. * Life for the Moche kingdom’s inhabitants was quite different from the lifestyle of the first farmers, who by now had existed for thousands of years in Peru. The latter, for example, had originally produced only enough seed for their own use as food and for planting the following growing season. In general, they paid no taxes and were beholden to no one. By the time the first kingdoms arose, however, farmers were now required to produce a surplus of food or labor over and above theirpersonal needs. They were then required to relinquish that surplus in order to support a ruler and an emerging upper class. Over thousands of years, on different parts of the coast and in different areas of the Andes, a growing number of Peru’s inhabitants had gradually become peasants, or taxpayers, a new class of human being. “Civilization” had thus begun, which in its incipient form can be defined as the development of a complex social order based upon the division of labor between rulers and
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