The last Inca bridge master

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241206-the-last-inca-bridge-master

by andsoitis • 2 years ago

146 51 2 years ago

Hilift2• 2 years ago

Remarkably, the Inca managed to forge this vast society without the wheel, the arch, money, iron or steel tools, draft animals capable of ploughing fields or even a written language.

No horses until they were reintroduced by the Spanish. Minimal mobility. California had 500 distinct tribal groups before the Spanish arrived. The increased mobility allowed disease to wipe out about 90% of the indigenous peoples in North America before 1600.

AlotOfReading2• 2 years ago

Some of this information is a bit outdated.

Horses were reintroduced by Spaniards, but precolumbian mobility was not what we'd call minimal today and adoption of horses in the plains was deeply tied to political changes from Spanish colonialism in the southwest. As one example, people would make annual pilgrimages hundreds of miles across the desert from modern Phoenix to the gulfs of California and Mexico. People in the Northeast would travel hundreds of miles on their waterways for social visits. There was a vast trade network spanning the continent from the arctic down to South America, and the Pacific to the Atlantic.

Epidemic disease also didn't spread in advance of European contact. The demographic shattering diseases that led to those (fairly questionable) population loss figures happened after sustained European contact. Some regional disease slightly preceded contact, but we think they were fairly minor events demographically. Textbooks and popular media haven't caught up with the new work in this area though, like: https://doi.org/10.7183/0002-7316.79.3.487

throwup238• 2 years ago

Epidemic disease also didn't spread in advance of European contact. The demographic shattering diseases that led to those (fairly questionable) population loss figures happened after sustained European contact.

Yup, the biggest killer - smallpox - was probably introduced by Pánfilo de Narváez‘s expedition to arrest Cortez’ while he was already well into his campaign to conquer the Aztecs, decades after Columbus. Europe and North Africa were experiencing their own sporadic outbreaks at the time and it’s likely that a slave named Francisco Eguia brought it over Several of the indigenous people in the Caribbean were already wiped out because of the awful conditions of their enslavement by this point.

Unbefleckt2• 2 years ago

From my reading I understand that the Aztecs and Inca people never met, how did this trade network span the continent?

netdevphoenix• 2 years ago

Find it curious how people in the US tend to give a questionably huge role of disease to the population loss of the first americans

Terr_• 2 years ago

Well, what's the better explanation? If it was internecine warfare, the victors would be around. If it was colonial attackers, we'd have more records.

We have good documentation for it happening in the other direction, where some areas had diseases which struck Europeans so badly that they didn't want to immigrate and raise a family there.

potato3732842• 2 years ago

Because when they learn the origin of each of the 13 colonies in grade school that's the way Massachusetts and New England (which get a lot more time than some of the other because they were one of the first and US democracy traces its roots do the Pilgrims) get taught because it's the easy way.

There is a kernel of truth to it. The Pilgrims did kinda luck into settling an area that was somewhat depopulated from recent disease (but they also picked just about the most shitty area in the region so it wasn't exactly densely populated to begin with). But that line of causation gets over-played because nobody wants to stand in front of a bunch of teenagers and split hairs between various flavors of christian extremists and the circumstances by which they came to "own" the land they settled.

Hilift2• 2 years ago

In 1500 there were 60 million north american natives. In the early 1600s when the English settled, there were six million, most due to disease. It wasn't a single event of course. The smallpox epidemic of 1862 killed far more native peoples in California than settlers. Smallpox killed 66% of all native people in British Columbia (20,000) in that event.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1862_Pacific_Northwest_smallpo...

mmooss13• 2 years ago

I wonder what enabled the Inca to imagine all of these things, from bridges to quipos to an enormous empire - and then to develop the culture, the skills, the technologies, and forge the political support for the investment, all on large scales.

It's not just one person's idea at one time. It takes generations and a whole society. How do you even spread those ideas across such a wide area without literacy?

crooked-v• 2 years ago

They had quipu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu) as fairly extensive civil records. The Spanish colonizers destroyed most of them out of a belief they were religious objects.

madhadron• 2 years ago

I wonder what enabled the Inca to imagine all of these things...

Probably the same way as the Chinese, Romans, Persians, Hittites, Assyrians, Olmec, Mexica, and all the other large scale political polities of the world.

How do you even spread those ideas across such a wide area without literacy?

Most of the world has been illiterate for most of history. Even after the invention of writing, most practical knowledge was orally transmitted. Writing was for warehouse records so you could prove that the peasants really did owe you that ox.

mmooss13• 2 years ago

Then how was it done? Do you disagree with the article about these issues? And why be dismissive?

alganet• 2 years ago

Why not?

Humans did a lot of impressive things before writing all over the planet. Oral tradition is powerful, even for today's technological standards.

mark3363• 2 years ago

I am Peruvian, it was just a lot of hard work. The culture was already there. Quechua was there before the Inca. Their was organization before Inca, as there were tribes which were organized. The Inca just took them over and re-organized. The Inca were also geniuses. They just figured it out.

mmooss13• 2 years ago

Thanks for your perspective.

it was just a lot of hard work

If that was true, then many would have done it instead of only one.

Their was organization before Inca, as there were tribes which were organized. The Inca just took them over and re-organized.

Organizing a small scale is commonplace; everyone does it. It's the large scale that only the Inca managed.

The Inca were also geniuses.

Must have been! But in what way? And it can't just be one person; you need a whole culture (especially with limited communication, the Inca depedended on locals everywhere understanding the concepts, methods, etc.) - what was special about that culture? Where did it come from?

Unbefleckt2• 2 years ago

The quipo scholars were literate, it was just terribly inefficient system compared to physical representations of language we are familiar with. It still beats having no records at all though, Shows just how powerful preserving and passing knowledge is.

m0llusk• 2 years ago

That is a complex question that is not well understood. There actually was a kind of writing system in the form of knotted strings. These were considered sacred objects and invaders destroyed as many of these as they could, the result being an almost total break with the previous sacred order.

mmooss13• 2 years ago

The knotted strings are the quipus that some comments are talking about. They were for accounting, not words.

vharuck• 2 years ago

It can be surprising to learn what civilisations accomplished before inventing a writing system for their language. I was amazed when I found out that Japanese didn't have a writing system until the 4th century AD despite 600+ years of agricultural empires and Shintoism. And even then, their writing system was just adapting Chinese characters nobles had to learn so they could deal with mainland Asians. They used the symbols that either meant the same thing as their words or sounded similar.

(I'm probably getting some of that wrong or not clarifying enough, and am eager to learn from those who'd correct me.)

someone7x• 2 years ago

I saw this on Nova once, it is amazing to see it made.

https://ca.pbslearningmedia.org/asset/eng06_vid_incabridge/ is the best link I could find for it.

snthpy• 2 years ago

Amazing. Thank you

bcraven• 2 years ago

I'll add this too:

https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Inca:_Masters_of_th...

Jago Cooper is superb and I love all his stuff. The Easter Island documentary is one of the best I've ever seen.

xbar• 2 years ago

Calling the end of the Inca civilization a collapse fails to convey a fair bit of history.

I expected a term that suggests destruction by invasion.

The last Inca bridge master

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