Transcript for:
The Conquest of the Inca Empire

one day in November 15:32 the new world and the old world collided 168 Spaniards attacked the Imperial Army of the deepest in the highlands of Peru before the day was out they had massacred 7,000 people and taken control of the Inca not a single Spanish life was lost in the process why was the balance of power so uneven between old world and new and why in the centuries that followed for europeans the ones who conquered so much of the globe these are questions that fascinate professor Jared Diamond he is on a quest to understand the roots of power searching for clues in the most unlikely places he's developed a highly original theory that what separates the winners from the losers is the land itself geography it was the shape of the continents their crops and animals that allowed some cultures to flourish while others were left behind but can this way of seeing the world shed light on the events of 1532 how can geography explain the conquest of the world by Guns Germs and Steel for two years a band of Spanish conquistadors has been traveling in search of gold and glory they're not professional soldiers but mercenaries and adventurers led by a retired Army captain Francisco bazaar he's already made a fortune for himself in the colonies of Central America now he's taking his men south into unknown territory they are the first Europeans to have climbed the Andes and ventured this far into the continent of South America as they travel they find evidence of a large native civilization they've reached the edge of the mighty Inca Empire for Indians and Spaniards alike any encounter is a clash of cultures these Indians have never seen white men before and have no idea of the threat they represent they can't imagine that within a few days these strangers will turn their world upside down by the 1530s the Inca Empire was enormous it stretched along the length of the Andes from modern-day Ecuador to central Chile a distance of two and a half thousand miles but just five hundred miles to the north began the colonies of Central America and the Caribbean prized possessions of the Spanish Empire at the time the Spanish king controlled 1/3 of mainland Europe but Spain itself had only recently become a unified state having fought off 700 years of occupation by Islamic Moors it was still a rural society most of the conquistadors came from villages and small towns in the heart of the country towns like Trujillo where Pizarro grew up he spent much of his childhood here working as a swineherd in the fields nearby today he's remembered as a great warrior this statue dominates the main square in Tree Hill this family home has been turned into a museum Jared Diamond has come here to explore the world of the conquistadors and understand the secret of their success this is Francisco Pizarro a Spaniard who conquered the most powerful state in the new world the Inca Empire why did Pizarro and his men conquer the Incas instead of the other way around seems like a simple question the answer isn't immediately obvious after all Pissarro started out as a rather ordinary person and Trujillo here is a rather ordinary town so what is it that gay Pizarro and his men this enormous power why am i so interested in pasar rose conquistadors because their story is such a grimly successful example of European conference and for 30 years I've been exploring patterns of conquest Jared Diamond is a professor at UCLA in Los Angeles but most of his fieldwork has been done in Papua New Guinea this time there inspired him to explore the roots of inequality in the modern world to understand why some people have been able to dominate and conquer others looking back thousands of years he argues that farming gave some cultures an enormous head start and those who were lucky enough to have the most productive crops and animals became the most productive farmers agriculture first developed in a part of the Middle East known as the Fertile Crescent over time crops and animals from the Fertile Crescent spread into North Africa and Europe where they triggered an explosion of civilization by the 16th century European farms were dominated by livestock animals that had come from the Fertile Crescent none were native to Europe they provided more than just meat they were a source of milk and a wool leather and manure and crucially they provided muscle power harness to a plow a horse or an ox could transform the productivity of farmland European farmers were able to grow more food to feed more people who could then build bigger and more complex societies in the New World there were no horses or cattle for farming all the work had to be done by hand the only large domestic animal was the llama but these docile creatures have never been harnessed to a plow the Incas were very skilled at growing potatoes and corn but because of their geography they could never be as productive as European farmers horses gave Europeans another massive advantage they could be ridden to the incas the site of Pizarro's conquistadors passing through their land is extraordinary they've never seen people carried by their animals before some think they are gods a strange-looking men part human part beasts the horses that seemed so exotic that he cos had already been used in Spain for 4000 years in an age before motorized transport they allowed people to be mobile and control their land I can be I love Romano in donut Baretta when Javier Martinez not hurting cattle he gives displays of traditional Spanish horsemanship Baraka Sevilla this style of riding is known as Tonetta the emphasis is on control and maneuverability using bent knees to grip the sides of the horse and only one hand on the reins very different from the more formal style of medieval knights by the 16th century the unit the way of riding had become a dominant style the Spanish cavalry this is how the conquistadors would have ridden their horses it's an amazing display of a big animal being controlled by a person precise control stopping and starting attorney Javier told me that he has been riding since he was 5 years old and when I watched this I have a better understanding of where the competes two doors were coming from they were masters of these techniques and they learned these techniques for working with bulls but the techniques were also good in a military context as well and I can see that this control would let you ride down the people in the open people who had never seen horses before would have been absolutely terrified watching this it would be strange and frightening and that's even before one of these animals is rushing towards you riding you down about to Lance you and kill you news of the godlike strangers on their four-legged animals is taken by royal messenger to the Emperor of the Incas who's camped in the valley of cajamarca in northern Peru guarded by an army of 80,000 men atahuallpa is revered as a living God a son of the Sun itself he's in Cajamarca on a religious retreat giving thanks for a series of recent military triumphs when he hears about the progress of the Spaniards he chooses not to have them killed instead he sends back a message oh you mean me tell you what I've got that he invites them to join him in Cajamarca as quickly as possible after all / wanted the spaniards to come to the homonka and enter into a trap and to be sure that they would do so he played like a psychological game with them sending presents asking him to come at a while PI knew that the spaniards were not gods the intelligence reports speak of people wearing wool on their faces like a llama like an alpaca that is like an animal then they went from one place to the other wearing on top of their head a little pot that has never been used for cooking you need to be crazy to walk with a pot but you must be beyond salvation if you arrive to a camp and you don't use that pot to cook after work I had an idea that these were subhumans what could a few horsemen and 100 and soul experience due to the powerful inca virtually nothing but after whelp aspyn's don't realize that the spanish are armed with some of the best weapons in the world at the time of the conquistadors spain had the biggest army in europe orchestrated from the imperial capital Toledo for more than 700 years the Spaniards had been at war fighting against the Moors and other European armies there was an arms race in Europe to survive the Spaniards needed to keep up with the latest in weapons technology by the 1530s the HAR caboose was an important part of the Spanish arsenal gunpowder had originally come from China but it's used as a weapon was pioneered by the Arabs in European hands guns became lighter and more portable and were used for the first time by foot soldiers on the battlefield the haka bus was still a crude weapon but would go on to change the face of warfare to us moderns this gun doesn't seem useful for anything it's like a joke it's a Mystere about takes a long time to reload and while the shooters reloading in a sort and would come in and kill them but the Incas hadn't even gotten this far even this gun with its sound and with the smell and with a smoke and with every now and then a person that had manages to kill would have been terrifying to someone who had never seen this before this would have been shocked in all 15:32 style for all its bluster the technology of gunpowder was still in its infancy the real power of the conquistadors lay elsewhere with the production of Steel Toledo had some of the best sword smiths in the world but why were people here able to craft deadly steel weapons while the Incas were still making simple bronze tools there was nothing innate be brilliant about Europeans themselves that allowed them to be the ones to make high-quality swords just as with guns swords were the result of a long process of trial and error that began outside Europe people started working with metal in the Fertile Crescent 7,000 years ago and because Europe was geographically close to a Fertile Crescent Europeans inherited this metal technology but they took this technology on to a new level European soldiers demanded stronger longer sharper swings this is what a Toledo sword looks like when it's finished this particular one is modeled on the sword that Pissarro carried it's a fearsome weapon it's used for stabbing and it's also used for slashing and I can easily understand how the person wielding the sword could kill dozens of people within a short time swords like this rapiers represented a high point in a very sophisticated metalworking technology you think about what the qualities are that are needed in a sword first of all it has to be harder if the metal has to be hard enough to take a sharp edge and that requires steel that is iron infused with carbon and the more carbon you put into the iron then the harder the metal is but if you make it too hard then it's brittle and that's no good because as you hit somebody your sword would break and so you also need your sword to have a certain pliability and ability to bend and spring back into shape and it start by heating it to certain temperatures plunging it into cold water immense amount of experimentation it took centuries to get to the level of sophistication where you could get something so long and elegant and fine and deadly as the rapier the rape year with its extra-long blade was developed as a dueling weapon but became so fashionable in Renaissance Europe it was the sword of choice for any aspiring gentleman the word rapier derives from the Spanish term Espada para para and that means dress sword and for the first time in Spain we start to see people wearing the sword with their everyday clothing their civilian dress going about their everyday business they didn't do that in the Middle Ages this is something new in the sixteenth century and it's saying I have arrived I am a gentleman I am upwardly mobile and I claim ancestry from the Knights of the Middle Ages it was very much a symbol of the conquistadors aspiring greed the thing that drove them through all their hardships the thing that made them go to the Americas was their lust for gold their lust for self advancement and the rapier absolutely symbolized that overbearing avarice on November 15th 1532 Pizarro's band of adventurers enters the valley of Cajamarca they've been told that Arthur ALPA is waiting for them here but they're not prepared for the sight that greets them in the hills beyond the town of cajamarca is the Imperial Inca army 80,000 men in full battle order the conquistadors own journals bear witness to their first impressions their camp looked like a very beautiful city with seen nothing like it in the Indus until thing and it scared us because we were so few and so deep in this land Pizarro sends a party of his best horsemen into the heart of the Inca camp they are led by Captain de Soto they are gambling that alfalfa will allow them to pass through the camp unharmed and agree to meet them visit that are very important psychological purpose to intimidate the Inka in front of his people challenging him with the horse but first didn't react to Soto's presence as if nobody had entered the room once the the horse comes I to I with the Inca think I still come showing that the horse has no impact on him calling Soto's Bluff the captain advanced so close that the horses nostrils disturbed the fringe of the Incas forehead but the Incan never moved and then after brief silence comes at a well past explosion Hamas hike it is won immunity data he was telling them the time has come for you to pay I understand this as the time has come for you to pay with your lives but hiring me it is one to Basha Manik it is one so - I understand was nervous enough to come back with fear to the camp and as we know the Spaniard spent the night before in extreme fear the conquistadors have made their camp in the town of cajamarca many of them are now convinced they are facing oblivion a hundred and sixty-eight soldiers a thousand miles from any other Spaniard facing an army of 80,000 Incas Theo Vasa slept that night we kept walking the Square from where we could see the campfires of the Indian army it was a fearful sight like a brilliantly star-studded night Pizarro and his most trusted officers debate their options for how to deal without the Hualapai some advise caution but Pizarro insists their best chance is to launch a surprise attack the next day it's a tactic that's worked successfully in the past twelve years before Pizarro went to Peru another famous conquistador Hernan Cortes had gone to Mexico and encountered another formidable civilization the Aztecs he conquered the country by kidnapping the Aztec leader and exploiting the ensuing chaos Cortez's story was later published and became a best-seller a handbook for any would-be conquistadora it can still be found in the great library of Salamanca University in northern Spain this wonderful library here can be thought of among other things as a repository of dirty tricks because in these books are the accounts of what generals had been doing to other generals for thousands of years in the past and across much of Eurasia and here from this library we have a famous account of the conquest of Mexico with all the details of what Cortes did to the Aztecs and what worked that was a model for Pissarro to give him ideas what exactly to try out on the Incas whereas the Incas without writing had only local knowledge transmitted by oral memory and they were unsophisticated and naive compared to the Spaniards because of right but if books were so useful why couldn't the Incas read or write to develop a new system of writing independently is an extremely complex process and has happened very rarely in human history it was first achieved by the Sumerian people of the Fertile Crescent at least 5,000 years ago they pioneered an elaborate system of symbols called cuneiform possibly as a way of recording farming transactions ever since almost every other written language of Europe and Asia has copied adapted or simply been inspired by the basics of cuneiform the spread of writing was helped enormously by the invention of paper ink and movable type innovations that all came from outside Europe but were seized upon by Europeans in the Middle Ages to produce the ultimate transmitter of knowledge a printing press the written word could now spread quickly and accurately across Europe and Asia the modern world would be impossible without the development of writing but there's another part of the world where a new system of writing was invented independently in southern Mexico at least two and a half thousand years ago native people developed a way of working with symbols that evolved into the Mayan script but if the Maya had writing why didn't it spread south to the Andes and help the Incas become literate for diamond the answer lies in the shape of the continents here are Europe and Asia forming the continent of Eurasia a giant continent but it stretched out from east to west and now from north to south the American continent is long from north to south now from east to west very narrow at Panama where it narrows down to less than a hundred miles the two continents are of the same length without 8,000 miles and maximum dimensions but Eurasia is 8,000 miles from east to west and the Americas are 8,000 miles from north to south it's as if these continents were rotated 90 degrees of each other diamond has already shown that crops and animals could spread easily east and west across Eurasia because places at the same latitude automatically share the same day length and a similar climate and vegetation but the American continents were the opposite of Eurasia the journey from one end of the Americas to the other is a journey from north to south a journey through different day lengths different climate zones and dramatically different vegetation these basic differences hindered the spread of crops and animals as well as people ideas and technologies the people of the Andes were chronically isolated without access to writing or almost any other innovation from elsewhere in the Americas by contrast Pizarro and his men were geographically blessed as Spaniards they enjoyed the benefit of technologies and ideas that had spread easily across Eurasia the events 15:32 were clearly influenced by deep causes over which no individual Spaniard or Inca had any control the shape of the continents the distribution of plants and animals the spread of Eurasian technology these were facts of geography and almost every turn of the drama geography was tilted in favor of Europeans if the morning of November 16th 15:32 Ottawa has agreed to meet the Spaniards in the town of cajamarca and since his entourage ahead of him but he makes a fateful decision that his soldiers should not carry weapons the Indians of musicians and dancers they were soldiers but unarmed why would a Tulpa unarmed his own soldiers why because he was in the festivity he was celebrating he wasn't going to war he was going for a celebration so that the whole people could see how the alleged gods would run away in fear the fact that some people believed that the Spanish were gods would play better in the hands of attalos a purpose if I know they are not gods and I've defeated the god then of course everybody will be with me but what if I defeat the God with no show of force at all I am beyond the gods a lotta falta and his men enter cajamarca the Spaniards are waiting hidden from view there were five or six thousand men and behind him the figure of atahuallpa seated on a very fine litter lined with feathers and embellished with gold and silver many of us pissed ourselves out of sheer terror the square is filled with atahuallpa people but there's there's not one Spaniard outside atahuallpa asks where are these dogs one of his right hands answers they have run away because they are afraid of the Magnificent Inca of course the whole crowd listen to this and believe that this was the case representante vosotros in nombre de la christian death bizarro sends out his priests to confront camino de la verdad the conquistadors are obliged to try and convert native people before any resort to violence in kassapa macaca connie in destroying me no Concannon d-theta touring man an opporunity to a poder preceded mi c or sus palabras estan excreta Sonesta libro among KP after walpa has never seen a book before he doesn't know what to do with it you might do you man I'm a pastor cake man angry Muskogee KP can chew commodities in the apparel Zalgiris panelists in students Prospero's general hospital las casas videos and that mom with the crowd absolutely unprepared horses come was massive ten just imagine the scene in Cajamarca the Incas hadn't seen horses before and these aren't ordinary horses these are Spanish horses fierce big fighting horses they could get in amongst men they were trampled men and they made the most excellent platform from the horse you could stab down to the left stab down to the right you could cut you could scythe hacking all about you if only the Incas had known that what you had to do against cavalry would stand firm then they'd have been all right they had superior numbers but they didn't know that they fled they broke ranks and then the horsemen could get in amongst them and they cut there was an Inca God called viticulture and he was a white man and he was the god of thunder and they thought these men with their aqua verses were the very incarnation of Viracocha Inca force was in his litter helped by his carriers as soon as they were able to do it the spaniards went after the litter and they started killing the carriers one carrier would fall and another one would replace only at the very very very end of the tragedy the little started to move because there were no more carriers left as the litter falls Pizarro himself captures a father his plan has worked to perfection AAHA well pers taken to a makeshift prison in the Royal quarters of cajamarca he thought we were going to kill him but we told him no Christians only killed in the heat of the battle outside thousands of Incas are dead the rest of the army has retreated to the hills in spite of a massive imbalance in numbers Spanish horses swords and strategy have proved decisive but the Spaniards possessed another weapon they didn't even know they had a weapon of mass destruction that had marched invisibly ahead of them today the war against infectious disease is waged at biological research centers like Portland down in southern England they produce vaccines here against the world's deadliest viruses in the 16th century there were no vaccines and there was no protection from the rampant spread of infectious disease twelve years before Pizarro arrived at cajamarca a Spanish ship sailed to Mexico on board one of the slaves was suffering from the first signs of a fever he was the first person to bring a deadly disease to the American mainland the disease was smallpox within weeks the smallpox virus would spread from a single source to infect thousands of Native Americans smallpox gets into the body when you breathe in the particles and they attached themselves to the back of your throat and the inside of your lungs about two to three days into the illness then the classic rash appears and in its worst forms this takes over the whole of the body with initially pimples and then enormous blisters until a hole of the skin starting with the hands and the face and then spreading down to cover the rest of the body is taken over by the smallpox blisters from that time on the patient is highly infectious because of each of those blisters is packed full of smallpox particles then if you burst a blister the fluid will come out and large numbers of viruses will be spilled onto whatever it touches 10 to 12 days later his friends would begin to be taken ill and then tend to all day after that their friends that kind of rate means the disease spreads exponentially its rate of increase gets bigger and bigger and bigger than more people infect it until eventually it will cause tremendous devastation in the population the first smallpox epidemic of the new world swept through Central America and reached the Inca Empire wherever it went the virus decimated native populations making them easier prey for Spanish conquest but why were the germs so one-sided why did the Spaniards pass their diseases on to the Incas and not the other way around this is the Sorrows secret weapon pigs and cows sheep and goats domestic animals remember that Pissarro was a swineherd he grew up in huts like this in intimate contact with domestic animals breathing in their germs drinking the germs in their milk and was from the germs of domestic animals that the killer diseases of humans evolved for example our flu evolved from a disease of pigs transmitted by a chickens and ducks we acquired measles from cattle we acquired smallpox from domestic animals so that these worst killers of human people were a legacy of 10,000 years of contact with our beloved domestic animals during the Middle Ages infectious diseases swept through Europe and claimed millions of lives but paradoxically repeated epidemics made Europeans more resilient in each outbreak there were always some people who were genetically better able to fight off the virus these people were more likely to survive and have children in the process they'd pass on their genetic resistance over centuries whole populations acquired some degree of protection against the spread of diseases like smallpox a protection the Incas never had when smallpox has taken to the New World nobody knew world had ever seen a disease like this before so the number of people who are susceptible was much greater there was no natural immunity and so therefore the number of people who could both contract the disease and then spread it and then I moved to receive it once it had been spread was much higher more people would die and more people would be susceptible to catch it in the first place he would spread rapidly throughout the population and the death toll would be enormous why had a Native Americans encountered smallpox before and why didn't they have any deadly diseases of their own to pass on to the Spaniards it's simply because they didn't have the same history of contact with fallen animals the Incas had llamas but llamas aren't like European cows and sheep they're not nope they're not kept in large herds and they don't live in barns and huts alongside humans there was no significant exchange of germs between llamas and people the key to diamonds argument is the distribution of farm animals around the world aside from the llama all the large farm animals were native to Eurasia and North Africa none was ever domesticated in North America sub-saharan Africa or Australia as a result the worst epidemic diseases were also native to Eurasia and North Africa and were then spread around the world with deadly effect there's been a long debate about the number of indigenous people who died in the Spanish conquest of the new world some scholars think there may have been a population of 20 million Native Americans and the vast majority perhaps 95% were killed by old-world diseases a continent virtually emptied of its people after the initial shock of his capture Ottawa became a cooperative prisoner he learned to speak Spanish and play chess with his captors the spaniards realized he was more useful to them alive than dead he was allowed to reestablish his court in prison as long as he ordered his people to accept Spanish rule he also ordered them to melt down a vast amount of treasure Bizzaro had promised a tough alpha his freedom in return for the gold it proved to be an empty promise having handed over 20 tons of gold and silver Atif wampa was no longer useful to his captors he was garroted to death in the same square where so many of his followers had been slaughtered eight months earlier with Ottawa did the conquistadors went on to colonize the rest of Peru the lying on the power of their Guns Germs and Steel gold from the Spanish colonies was brought back to Seville in southern Spain there's little activity on the Guadalquivir River today but in the sixteenth century this was among the most important busiest ports in the world a steady flow of ships carrying treasure from the Americas helped Spain become one of the richest nations on earth the conquistadors had changed forever the relationship between old world and you I came to Spain to answer a question why did Pizarro and his men conquer the Incas instead of the other way around there's a whole mythology that that conquest in the European expansion in general resulted from Europeans themselves being especially brave or bold or inventive or smart but the answers turn out to have nothing to do with any personal qualities of Europeans yeah the sorrow and his men were brave but they were plenty of brave Incas instead Europeans were accidental conquerors by virtue of their geographic location in history they were the first people to acquire Guns Germs and Steel by the end of the 19th century European powers had ventured beyond the Americas and colonized Africa Australia and much of Asia the process that began at cajamarca had reached its logical conclusion European Guns Germs and Steel were the shaping the world you