The Conquistadors (34 page)

It was in this temperate zone of the high altiplanos that the main, or Imperial, Inca civilization emerged – very late, only just over a hundred years before Nemesis in the form of Pizarro and his adventurers arrived to destroy it. Since they developed no form of writing, not even picture-writing, there is no record of the cultures that preceded them. Nor was any verbal account of pre-Inca history passed on to the Spaniards, for, like the modern Soviet and Chinese communists, they re-taught the history of the Indians they conquered so effectively that, in the space of a single generation, all believed that the culture and life of the people stemmed solely from the Incas.

Thus it is only through the painstaking sifting of the evidence of numerous archaeological finds that we have gradually come to realize that the Incas, like the Aztecs in Mexico, absorbed and took credit for a relatively advanced culture already in existence. In fact, the Inca civilization, like most other civilizations, was the product of the past; both the building techniques and the highly organized, bureaucratically-controlled empire-cum-welfare state were developments of the Chimú and earlier cultures.

A visit to the
chullpas
of Sillustani, for instance, provides immediate evidence that even the technique of building with unmortared stone blocks was not an Inca development. The
chullpas
are tall stone burial towers of the late Tiahuanaco period. They cover a promontory overlooking Lake Uyamú, about thirty miles north-west of Puno, and the stonework of the few that still stand virtually complete shows the edge of the top course flared inwards to reduce wind resistance, the circumference of the top greater than the base, so that the whole tower looks rather like a tall drinking glass. Moreover, fallen blocks of stone show that the secret of stability without the aid of mortar, and the fact that they have withstood centuries of earth tremors, is a boss locking into a socket in the stone above, sometimes even a protuding rim. This is workmanship of an even higher order than anything in Cuzco, and it was done without the aid of metal, the stone being beaten into shape by primitive hammer tools of a harder stone.

In ceramics, too, pre-Inca cultures were superior, a fact which the Brunning collection of
huacos
(the pottery looted from the burial chambers of old cemeteries), newly housed at Lambayeque, demonstrates very clearly. Even in textiles, Inca design and weaving was not comparable with those old ceremonial mantles and head-dresses found preserved in the dry-air burial chambers at Paracas and now filling one of the most interesting rooms in the Archaeological Museum in Lima.

The Huaca Prieta midden in the Chicama valley of Northern Peru, the lowest
levels of which go back some 4,500 years, show the people of the coastal plain living off sea and land, with little leisure for anything more complicated than the struggle for existence. This is confirmed by many other discoveries in the coastal desert area; yet, little more than 2,000 years later, there is plentiful evidence of ceramics, of personal adornments – the earplugs that are such a peculiar characteristic of the Inca hierarchy, necklaces, bracelets, rings, crowns, the materials ranging from bone and shell to stone and gold – of metalwork, mainly in gold, which later developed techniques so advanced that they included welding and soldering, of weaving, and of stone carving. Agriculture covered many types of plant, used irrigation, and had, in fact, reached the stage where man had leisure for craftsmanship and design. He also appears to have had leisure for some form of religion, for it is in the finds of this pre-Christian period that the Chavín cat design appears, and by then he was building non-utilitarian structures of considerable size and complexity that can only have been temples used for religious purposes.

Development is now rapid, but always along the same lines. Ceramics pass through periods of distinctive patterns and designs. By the first millenium A.D. systems of irrigation have become very advanced, with aqueducts up to fifteen hundred yards long and almost fifty feet above the ground. Metalwork has reached the stage where gold is alloyed with silver and copper to produce complex designs. But it is in public works that we now see the development that led to the massive temples of the ‘Classic Period'. On the coast these temples were of adobe, with platforms, approach causeways and pyramids requiring a large organized body of labour. In the highlands, the construction was of dressed stone.

It is these temple structures, and the
huacos
found in the burial chambers, that have enabled archaeologists to achieve some success in defining the various cultures, many of them extremely local, as might be expected in the development of desert territory wholly dependent upon mountain water delivered by river. Each of the coastal cultures was, in fact, an oasis separated from its neighbour by sand and bare rock hills of absolute aridity. Neither Inca rule, nor Spanish rule, not even independence, has changed the situation. The city complexes have now become big hacienda complexes – that is all. And since the materials for pottery were ready to hand it is hardly surprising that, here on the coast of Peru, the potter's art was developed to a very high degree, producing some of the most remarkable ceramics to be seen anywhere in the world. Not only are the designs intricate and unusual, including the uninhibited use of erotic forms, but the polychrome colouring, possibly affected by differences in firing and ageing, includes a great variety of tints. The cemeteries have yielded up a golden harvest of these ceramics, many of them in mint condition, and dedicated private collectors have opened their own museums. Grave robbing on such a scale, however, has greatly complicated the archaeologist's task.

Prior to the Inca empire only two cultures appear to have spread throughout Peru. The first was the Chavín culture, with its cat motif, covering the middle of
the first millenium B.C.; the second was the much more pervasive Tiahuanaco culture, covering almost the whole of the first millenium A.D. It spread through Huari to the coast around 800 A.D., and during the next two centuries overlaid and virtually obliterated the art of that area. This was a dynamic period in which the artistic aspirations of the Indian people reached their peak, in ceramics, jewelry and textiles, in architecture on the grand scale, all indicating a degree of political and economic unity sufficient to liberate a large labour force for non-productive work.

In the Sierra the evidence of a very advanced stone-masonry craft is still there for all to see, particularly at Tiahuanaco. The setting of this megalithic complex is unique, for it lies twelve miles south of Lake Titicaca on a bleak Bolivian
puna
13,000 feet above sea level – an extraordinary place in which to find the ruins of a civilization. The terraced pyramid of the Acapana and the great courtyard of the Calasasaya suggest a ceremonial centre. The standing stones of these and other buildings are boldly carved; so, too, is the ‘Gateway of the Sun', which is a single ten-foot high block of masonry. There are more remains in the lake itself, on the islands of the Sun and the Moon, and to the north-west of the lake stand the much later
chullpas
of Sillustani; all stone, nothing but stone, in a flat grass land at breathless altitude, and overhead the wide clear skies so typical of the Titicaca area. It is hardly surprising that archaeologists have taken Tiahuanaco as descriptive of the whole period, for the artistic influence of these people is noticeable in most areas of Peru. The pyramid-courtyard sites of the coast indicate a highly organized society, but they were still no more than the ceremonial centres of relatively scattered communities, for it is only in the period immediately preceding the Inca empire that they became a part of large city complexes. The most outstanding example of this development is Chan-Chan, just north of Trujillo in the coastal desert. Though it was conquered by the Incas and is much damaged by rain and the passage of time, you can still drive for a long time through the six square miles of its ruins, the mud enclave walls of the ten units still towering above the flat expanse of gravelly desert to which, in the absence of water, the whole area has reverted. The little grave cubicles of the cemetery areas have all been raided, and the adobe covering of the mud-brick walls is runnelled by the erosion of occasional rainstorms. It is a very dead city, echoing to the sad sound of the waves, as though the Pacific were beating against the last great wall, instead of nearly two miles away. It is difficult, in the eerie solitude of the place as it is now, to visualize what it was like when the reservoirs were intact and the carefully-planned streets, with their houses, terraces, and gardens, were full of people.

Chan-Chan was the capital of the Chimú coastal empire, which at the time of the Inca conquest included most of the northern valleys. From the Motupe, south as far as the Casma, these river oases were linked by roads spanning the desert areas that had previously isolated them. Other, smaller states, developed further south.

They, too, had their inter-linking roads and centralized forms of government. It was this that enabled their Inca conquerors to weld the whole country so rapidly into a single empire under a pyramidical governing bureaucracy whose apex was the Sapa, or Unique, Inca.

The first Inca was Manco Capac. We have no date for this ruler, or for the seven Incas who succeeded him; it is generally assumed that they covered the period 1250 to 1438. They are believed to have originated at Cuzco in the Central Highlands, though there is a local belief that they came from the islands of Lake Titicaca. Bingham's theory that they came from Machu Picchu has now apparently been disproved, the mountain city being attributed to the late Inca period. Throughout the whole period of empire Cuzco remained their capital. The basis of conquest was organization, the Inca himself the divine symbol of the sun god they worshipped, his tight bureaucratic circle of officials belonging to the eleven royal
ayllus
and in part the product of his own loins through concubinage, the line of descent continuing through incestuous marriage with one of his sisters – the Coya or legal queen.

There is no evidence that the Inca empire was in any way the result of population pressure. As with the Nordic races, the expansionist urge was probably the result of climatic conditions. They were highlanders, with an excess of vitality and energy, and their animal resources were limited to the llama, the alpaca and the vicuña. Where the coastal people developed a moon cult, having a natural fear of the sun in the desiccated aridity of their desert strip, the Incas on their high grasslands looked to the sun as the source of warmth and light, of the melted snow water that kept the grasslands green for their flocks. Economic gain was almost certainly the original motivating force, reinforced by the development of a power complex under their great empire-builder, Pachacuti. The perfection of their organization, both political and military, really begins with this Inca, who incorporated, and developed to suit his own purposes, the patterns of culture already existing, particularly that of the Chimú empire.

It was in 1445, less than a hundred years before the Spaniards arrived, that Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (the ninth Inca) began the conquest of the Titicaca regions. Thereafter, expansion proceeded at a fast rate. Propaganda was used and the system of military roads provided the life line. But organization was the basis of conquest. Conscription provided an army in which discipline was severe. The officers were all from the élite of the Inca's own household, and since they looked to him as the patriarch of the family and were dependent upon him for their position in a tight-knit society, he could count on their absolute loyalty. The common soldiers were well armed with bronze battle axes, or maces, with wooden hafts and stone or bronze heads, with slings, lances and throwing spears, and bows and arrows in the case of those from the eastern lowlands; for protection they had wooden shields covered with leather or cloth, cotton or cane helmets, and quilted armour.

Each newly-captured province was reorganized on the Inca pattern, with Inca officials superimposed upon the existing local officialdom, whose loyalty was assured by the removal of their sons as hostages to Cuzco. Quechua became the official language, sun worship, with the Inca the divine incarnation of the deity, the official religion. If, in the face of these abrupt changes, the population proved recalcitrant, they were removed en bloc and re-settled in an area that had already been pacified and which, through indoctrination, had become entirely docile;
their place was taken by hard-core settlers, absolutely loyal to the regime, known as
mitimaes.
The system was virtually foolproof, particularly as the Incas were conquering first a mountain people, valley by valley, and later, the more thickly populated coastal strip, where each river oasis had developed its city-state, or at least some central organization controlling irrigation and water supplies. Taxation followed conquest, and since one-tenth of the population was conscripted for the Inca armies, and it has been estimated that their bureaucratic system required 1,331 officials per 10,000 of population, increased productivity was essential.

This was achieved by ruthless exploitation of the labour force, by rapid development of the irrigation and terrace cultivation systems already in existence, and by intensive use of fertilizers, particularly the deposits of guano on the coastal islands where the seabirds that produced this vital form of land-enrichment – mainly a species of pelican and gannet, also cormorant – were protected. As in all agrarian societies dependent on large-scale irrigation systems, the social system required severe authoritarian government backed by ritual and divine compulsion. Thus, temples and fortresses buttressed each newly-acquired province, side by side with the municipal buildings of the bureaucracy. But though Inca building was on a huge scale, it was essentially functional, and neither in the quality of its masonry, nor in its artistic design, did it surpass, or even equal, the work of the earlier cultures.