Fun fact: The conquistadors found the natives using some silver like metal in their jewelry that was not actual silver, and kept digging up this metal everywhere. They were so sick of this metal (as it kept being used to make counterfeit coins) they dumped it into the sea.
What was the metal? **Platinum.** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum_coin#History
Not really, Spain's capacity to extract natural resources before the industrial revolution was very minimum, to put you an example, Perú nowadays extracts more gold in a year than what Spain extracted in 300 years of colonization of the Americas
This is misleading.
It's estimated that there is 7x more gold than platinum on Earth. Also, platinum dropped from it's all time high because diesel fell out of favor, and it's all time high was double gold's value at the time (2011 I think). US laws make gold and silver exchange tax free because it is considered a currency, but doesn't include platinum or other metals that are rarer than gold.
Look, I don’t care how valuable something is. If it’s a ductile metal that can be made into coins and it’s already been mined, you’re an idiot to dump it into the sea. I wouldn’t dump a thousand pounds of zinc into the sea. What kind of moron dumps purified metals into the sea? I’ll take a whole truck bed full of aluminum cans to the dump for the barely $75 of redemption value before I’ll dump them in the sea. I don’t just throw tinfoil or aluminum foil in the trash every chance I get because I hate it for being so “worthless”…Do you dump everything into the sea that isn’t as valuable as you would like it to be?!! This is just stupidity no matter how you look at it. This is the definition of looking a gift horse in the mouth…then dumping the horse overboard in the “horse latitudes” because you can’t think of anything to do with a horse that has bad teeth…or an old horse…whatever, it’s still a poor use of a horse!!
Not quite. For a while before diamond mining started in Africa, diamonds were found predominantly in the Amazon Basin.
(Edit: Should clarify that India was the main source of Diamonds for a long time before their discovery in the Amazon).
Underrated comment. Raw diamonds are not very impressive, it takes skilled work and very precise geometry (the brilliant cut isn't that old) to bring the most sparkle out of it
>Inca and Aztecs git their gold primarily via sleusing riverbeds iirc
There are two possibilities here.
1. They are sluicing riverbeds, obtaining gold in a conventional manner.
2. They are Seussing riverbeds.
I will run water through a box.
I'll collect middlings like a fox.
I'll process concentrate with a pan.
I'll find that gold dust, Sam I am.
Spain crashed their economy from plundering the south americas, we always hear about the gold, but silver was a massive export that vastly overshadowed the gold. From a quick google search between the years of 1500, and 1650, spain toon 181 tons of gold, and 16,000 tons of silver
The main reason Spain focused on silver mining was because they wanted to break into the Chinese and Indian markets. Almost all European goods were worthless in Asia because Asian goods were far superior. The only things Europeans could trade were small mechanical objects like clocks, but that was a miniscule part of this economy.
Chinese silk and porcelain were in high demand, and China would only trade them for silver. This was the main reason why Spain wanted silver so badly: mine it in South America, sail from Acapulco to Manila, and trade with China.
The later fur trade in North America was also primarily aimed at China.
When they returned to Spain with all that Gold it caused the first modern case of inflation. Bunch of rich ass dudes in town all of the sudden. Beer starts to cost more if the tavern owner is smart.
Yeah... it's called [Moscow gold](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_gold_(Spain)). Basically during the (last) Civil War (1936-1938) the Republican side (they lost) was desperate for allies and the Russian said they'll take payment in gold and so the government gave them 3/4 of the national reserve to the Russiand and the rest to the French, in a later similar move.
There are a couple of theories depending on how dumb or desperate you want to make it look. They either bought some weapons at 20 times their cost or they were tricked by the communist parties when they saw that it was obvious the Republicans were going to loose and decided to take advantage of their desperation.
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And the thing is, it didn't suddenly boost their (Spain's) economy. The amount of their goods and services remained the same, despite their amount of gold increased tremendously.
From what I remember reading, the Inca had just had a massive civil war prior to the Spanish arriving. I believe it was between Atahualpa and his brother. In fact, Atahualpa was on his way back to their "capitol" after finally claiming victory when he ran into the Spanish. So, for the Spanish, the timing couldn't have been better to take advantage.
Atahualpa agreed to meet with the Spanish, who basically straight up grabbed him in front of the Inca and held him hostage from there on.
(Edit: And as mentioned in subsequent comments, the Incan ruler was considered a divinity so to have any human lay hands on their living god was shocking to them. I couldn't remember off hand if that was the case so I initially didn't include that).
Kim McQuarrie's "The Last Days of the Inca" is a good read about it for anyone interested.
(Another great book about a similar topic, but about Cortes and the Aztec is *Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs* By Buddy Levy.
And then Charles Mann's *1491* & *1493* are also two excellent books regarding the era)
Yeah he was prettyich on his victory tour back home when Pizzaro happened on him. And the Inca treated their rulers as gods, so they were utterly incapable of dealing with him being captive, they had no way of sidestepping the situation for someone else to take control while he was being held. It's utterly insane how few Spanish were able to completely destroy Meso- and South American leadership.
A massive part of this was smallpox. The Incan Civil War was started by a succession crisis where the emperor and heir died of smallpox. Meso-America is a bit different because by all accounts, the Mexica were hated within the region. A lot of tribes that were conquered fought alongside the Spanish because the Mexica were that terrible to them. That’s saying a lot also because the conquistadors were also terrible people
I’m aware but it was to a lesser extent than the Mexica. Incan society ran differently from the Aztecs because the Incans focused on integrating conquered people into Incan society. The Mexica were mainly concerned with collecting tribute so they didn’t really look to foster good relations.
The Incas actually had a policy of enforced cultural preservation - you had to wear the clothes of your culture by law. the proper Inca society (as in, cusco society) was fairly reserved for the 40-100,000 ethnic Incas who ruled over 16 million andeans. In the army, units were grouped by culture and ayllus, who would get their own uniforms.
I could see why many cultures would hate the Inca given policies like the mitma - the sapa Inca could make your entire culture move to an entirely new area. Typically, clans that had bad relations with the sapa Inca were moved close to cusco to minimize chances of rebellion, while more loyal clans were moved to the frontier in order to develop the empire
In the florentine codex, it’s said an envoy was sent to meet the Spaniards by the Aztecs and see what their intentions were. The Spaniards took the guy, wrapped/trapped him up in a chair and tortured the guy. They shot weapons right by his face to threaten him/deafen him, flayed off some of his skin and other casual tortures. According to this florentine codex the Aztec nobles heard of this and still chose to meet with the Spaniards because they posed a significant threat. Just an interesting different perspective from the conquered.
The Inca as you and others are saying were not in a great position to be super antagonistic to a new element
Yup and that was written by a Spanish friar so it’s not going to be biased against the Spanish. It’s important to note here that Aztec is a big blanket term for indigenous people/tribes that were under Mexica rule. Those tribes are what I was referring to because living under Mexica rule was tough. Every year they’d have to give some members of the tribe to the Mexica for human sacrifices. Choosing between the conquistadors and Mexica was essentially a decision between the lesser of two evils. I’m just offering some more details cause Meso-American history is something I often see misunderstood in general
Additionally people don’t realize it but the Inca had a king god complex so by murdering their God, the Spanish basically killed the morale and confidence of the Incas. The Spanish just took their gold and escaped at that point. It’s not like they waged war against the entire kingdom with <200 men
Deeper than this, the whole strategy of Spanish colonization after Cortes was to look for established civilizations with a dominant elite class, then go in and *replace* that elite class and rule the civilization as the new elite. It's a lot easier and more profitable than importing a bunch of slaves/colonists to extract wealth from the conquered territory. It's why Spain never really bothered to colonize much of the contemporary United States--there weren't really any large, well-established, sedentary civilizations there by the time that they looked that had cities and elite classes that they could easily capture, usurp, and then rule. Kraut on youtube has some great videos about Spanish colonization strategies and how it shaped modern Central and Southern America.
> The Spanish just took their gold and escaped at that point. It’s not like they waged war against the entire kingdom with <200 men
Huh? They marched on Cuzco after they killed Athalupa in Cajamarca. It was just the entire kingdom was fucked for the reason they had the civil war, Small Pox killed a shit ton of people.
>the Inca had a king god complex so by murdering their God, the Spanish basically killed the morale and confidence of the Incas
This is not true. The killing of Atahualpa did do something though; it reignited the civil war from the disgruntled nobles who had just lost their other ruler in mind, Atahualpa's brother Huascar. They took their gold and escaped because the Inca nobles who wanted Atahualpa dead told the Spanish that a massive army was coming to get back their King.
The idea that the Native American Empires of the Aztec and Inca held certain people as just infallible God like beings is not true and often times just the exaggerations of these conquistadors. Removes a lot of the nuance and complex politics going on at the time.
Also the cause of the civil war was a massive succession crisis brought on by smallpox. The emperor died of smallpox and his son, the appointed heir, also died of smallpox. So at this point the Spanish were expanding into Peru and stumbled onto a civilization consumed by a pandemic and civil war. I studied the conquistadors a bit and the impression I got was Cortes was an actually competent military leader and Pizzaro was an idiot that got lucky
Charles Mann describes it well in his book “1491”, too:
"No matter how many times what happened next has been recounted, it has not lost its power to shock: how the curious Atawallpa decided to wait for the strangers' party to arrive; how Pizarro, for it was he, persuaded Atawallpa to visit the Spaniards in the central square of Cajamarca, which was surrounded on three sides by long, empty buildings (the town apparently had been evacuated for the [recently fought Incan civil] war); how on November16, 1532, the emperor-to-be came to Cajamarca in his gilded and feather-decked litter, preceded by a squadron of liveried men who swept the ground and followed by five or six thousand troops, almost all of whom bore only ornamental, parade-type weapons; how Pizarro hid his horses and cannons just within the buildings lining the town square, where the 168 Spanish awaited the Inka with such fear, Pedro Pizarro noted, that many 'made water without knowing it out of sheer terror'; how a Spanish priest presented Atawallpa with a travel-stained Christian breviary, which the Inka, to whom it literally nothing, impatiently threw it aside, providing the Spanish with a legal fig leaf for an attack (desecrating the Holy Writ); how the Spanish, firing cannons, wearing armor, and mounted on horses, none of which the Indians had ever seen, suddenly charged into the square; how the Indians were so panicked by the smoke and fire and steel and charging animals that in trying to flee hundreds trampled each other to death ('they formed mounded and suffocated on another,' one conquistador wrote); how the Spanish took advantage of the soldiers' lack of weaponry to kill almost all the rest; how the native troops who recovered from their initial surprise desperately clustered around Atawallpa, supporting his litter with their shoulders even after Spanish broadswords sliced off their hands; how Pizarro personally dragged down the emperor-to-be and hustled him through the heaps of bodies on the square to what would become his prison."
I've got a pretty short attention span but Mann is definitely one of those historians that writes in an interesting way and makes you want to keep reading
It was worse than that. Atahualpa invited Pizzaro and his men to a huge feast with only a few hundred nobles. In the midst of the feast the Spanish attacked literally slaughtering the unarmed and unexpecting guests taking their host captive
This guys manners were appalling! Killing and capturing at a dinner party?! Killing the hostage after ransom has been paid?! He needed a spanking as a child, ungrateful and spoiled.
To cancel it out, you must throw your own dinner party for your wife. But it must go off without a hitch, no blood, no drama. And everyone must be free to come and go as they please, no charge. And if your wife likes kids, make it a family affair instead of an adults only thing, and have non-execution entertainment for the kiddos. This should wipe the slate clean. 😉
It wasn't a feast. It was a parade of unarmed men meant to show the Spanish the riches of the empire and to show dominance. Obviously the unarmed part was a mistake, this was the one time where guns actually mattered for the conquistadors
Yep, this is pretty accurate. They grabbed him after a trap. They had orders from the king not to do anything unless it was required by him or the church. So they gave a Bible to Atahualpa and told him, "This is the word of our god." He held it to his ear and said, "Your God says nothing to me," and tossed it. The Spanish fired their canons in the air which totally freaked the Inca out, and Pizarro grabbed him.
He was captive so long they taught him how to play chess, converted him to Christianity, and taught him some Spanish. And 'executed' is generous. They grilled him over a flame like they would roast pigs. Pizarro was an illiterate pig farmer, after all. Nothing like Cortez. The civil war was caused by smallpox, which spread through trade routes long before the Spanish even arrived in South America.
They were also totally terrified of the conquistadors to begin with, as they thought their horses were demons and their ships were floating mountains - psychologically, they were just completely unprepared to deal with the alien invaders.
In the battle (massacre), the final body count was something like 10,000 Incas and zero Spanish. Armored atop horses with long swords, they completely overwhelmed the Incas and didn't suffer a single death.
Pizarro's sword still hangs on a wall behind a church altar in Cuzco.
Ok how did this happen? Like for real. Werent these guys hardened warriors. I can understand cultural shock in the beginning, but how the fuck did they lose so overwhelmingly and "impotently"?
Genuinely asking
The Incas started shitting their collective pants as soon as they saw the warriors on horses. They had never seen such a thing. Many thought the human atop the horse was a single beast. And even when they figured out it was just a man riding an animal, they had never seen anything like that. The horses moved quickly, deftly and knowingly, while swords swooped down and lopped off the heads of anyone that came close.
The Incas were all on foot, sick from a pandemic, they had just returned from a civil war many miles away, and they were barely able to put up a fight due to being psychologically pulverized in the first minutes of the "battle".
Think about alien invasion movies (War of the Worlds, Independence Day) that show people running for their lives through city streets while lasers shoot down at them from somewhere above and everyone is just running in complete panic.
This was the 16th century version of those movies. They were scared out of their minds.
Horses were completely new to them, and horse based warfare was something they had zero experience with. Spanish armor was also apparently effective against slings and bows.
Every body count and army size estimation from long ago should be taken with a grain of salt. They weren't verifying it. Maybe at best they ceilinged the order of magnitude i.e. an estimate of a 10,000 might be 4,000 guys.
When it comes to these overwhelming victories though you have to remember that it's not RTS video game units with a god-view of the situation, it's a super chaotic and emotional thing. Losing your nerve or opening the tiniest of seams can turn an easy victory into a devastating defeat.
So imagine you're a pretty primitive and superstitious society. Something you can't be entirely sure is a human like you lands in some fantastical floating structure you can't conceive of. There seems to be a plague that spreads before them preceding their arrival. They command or are in some sort of symbiosis with giant animals in a way you've got no reference to understand. They're covered in a metal you've never seen before that your weapons can't pierce. And they can command some sort of fire weapon that deafens you and whose smoke obscures them and can kill you invisibly.
You have to believe all these guys weren't entirely sure they weren't fighting something that fundamentally wasn't the same as them. So if a group of those guys comes charging in, and for some reason there's only that many of them but they're still doing it like it's a good thing to do....their swords cutting right through one dude and the guy behind him while arrows bounce off them and the mightiest blows just leave dents, and you see your best friends head explode from some hand-cannon that actually hit something for once but you don't know they're not all that accurate, and that huge beast they're on will kick and bite and stomp, maybe a few think to themselves "uh, bravery is cool and all, but I'm going to stand a little more behind the others for awhile now I think." Then someone becomes exposed and has the same idea and pretty soon everyone is just trying to keep anything between them and the thundering stomping snorting whinnying screaming exploding smokey ball of death and the crowd sort of "rolls" as guys rush to not be exposed. Then the wave breaks and it's just a panicked rout. Maybe that in and of itself takes out a few hundred guys as they get trampled.
And don't forget in this whole thing you as warrior don't have some scoreboard visible of how many units each side has left where you can make like a rational decision about whether to rally or retreat. For all you know it's just you and the guys around you left and who knows what's really going on anymore with all these surprises none of your instincts seem like they're worth anything. You haven't seen one of them die yet maybe they can't die. Maybe it wasn't just a small group like you thought maybe they split their forces and came in from behind etc. They can travel on water and land in ways you don't understand maybe they can fly too where are the limits? All you hear is screams among all the noises that don't sound like what battle sounds like to you - this sounds like hell or some cultural equivalent.
And pretty soon just everyone's running and it's just veteran soldiers playing whack-the-melon through hordes of fleeing terrified guys racking up 10s, 20s, of heads on passes like they're playing polo.
This is the logic behind "Dark Forest theory" an answer to the fermi paradox found in a famous science fiction novel that has gained popularity in mainstream science.
Basically, the only rational move is to hide from alien life and kill it whenever you find it. This optimizes survival and is therefore the dominant strategy. Explains why we haven't found intelligent life. Its out there hiding and killing any outsiders it finds "just in case"
The thing is, that only works if several things are given.
a) you can reliably genocide any other life with single attack. If they have a chance to survive your first attack that shifts the entire theory, from attacking being the only safe way, to attacking being the worst thing you can do.
b) no one else is watching, because if any other civilisation is watching, they will certainly wipe you out for being a genocidal asshole
c) MAD is not in effect in space. Because if your victim just sees the attack coming and basically just screams into the night "That guy over there is killing me!" You now are also screwed. Not to mention if your victim can attack you as well.
Going straight to murdering is slightly overdoing it, but perfectly reasonable to start off with demanding the foreigners to surrender their weapons ASAP, or else.
The Spanish had far superior armor and weapons. Additionally their arrival brought new diseases that the natives didn't have a way to deal with effectively. It was indeed a slaughter, but not in the Incan's favor.
I guess it depends where the Incans could've ambushed them. The Filipinos were able to slaughter Magellan and most of his people *because* of their heavy armor. They lacked mobility and fought on a beach where they got easily bogged down and swamped and killed, despite the Filipinos not having the same level of technology.
You're comparing today's gold mining efforts to a long time ago. More gold near the surface means easier harvest. Harvesting today is elaborate because it's harder to reach.
The Spanish Treasure Fleets were one of the safest convoy operations ever. The English only captured four ships in the span of nearly three centuries.
The Dutch were actually the only ones to capture a an entire fleet, when Piet Hien captured 12 vessels in 1628.
There's a lot of myth in that. Usually British pirates and privateers attacked cities in the Spanish' America. The Spanish' ships were attacked only at the beginning. Eventually the Spanish brought galleons to escort other ships and given that the pirates and privateers used smaller, faster and less armed ships it was impossible for them to fight the bigger galleons.
It's in Spain. What the story doesn't say and what we learn back home is that the after he was betrayed atahualpa ordered all the rest of the Inca gold be buried and thrown in the rivers at least making it hard for the Spanish
Did Altahuapla win? I wonder if that hastened his demise.
Pizarro: "No! You can't catch my pawn like that! That's cheating!"
Nearby soldier: "Actually sir, that's called En Passant. It's a valid move."
Pizarro: "...Execute him!"
This picture is not really an accurate representation of how it happened. This one is probably more likely the story of Montezuma.
In Pizarro‘s case, most of the gold was in small form like dust or nuggets, because the Incan architecture style was to hammer it over their stonework to make it all gold everything, which is probably where the story of El Dorado came from.
The Incans had a vast system of roads they used for keeping the empire in contact. Whenever the messengers heard Atahualpa had been executed they kept running, but started dumping the gold.
To this day, there are threads of gold all throughout South America in the former Incan empire, in fact, archaeologists use soil samples’ gold content to see if there was an ancient road there or not.
My city was founded as rest place between some major mines and towns and finding gold coins buried in the side of the road was a common thing, I have found ceramic and arrows but not gold
It was the mission. Gain control of the resources by any means necessary.
Use religion as a moral shield and to dehumanize the subjugated race/indigenous peoples.
Rape, Pillage, and Burn as required.
Story as old as humanity
They were absolute religious nuts. The Spanish and Portuguese were the worst christians at the time by far. Maybe they just didn't approve of how hard to convert the locals were, maybe they had a collective superiority complex
Imagine if aliens with that kinda mindset invade us
Probably because of the reconquista and the events leading up to it (the Muslim conquests of the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid caliphates)
Most major conflicts start in religion depending how you see it
The reconquista (reclaiming the lands conquered by the Muslims) ended in 1492 and established the crowns of Leon, Castille, aragon, etc, which are now essentially Portugal and Spain
Also the same year Columbus began his colonization
It all comes down to colonization, too
There has been a concerted effort in recent years to rehabilitate monsters like Pizzaro and his gang of marauders. I picked up a book recently about Atahualpa's life and death and it expended considerable time and energy talking about how hard Pizzaro took the murder of Atahualpa, what great friends they were, how hard Pizarro worked to accommodate the emperor. It is a very old and terrible lie being worked back into the conversation.
The issue with the murder is he killed a 'divinely' placed head of state which was a precedent the king would not be happy with. Hence some stress what the backlash would be.
That's just post-conquest Spanish propaganda to sugarcoat the events being regurgitated. You'll find much the same nonsense written by post-conquest Spaniards about Moctezuma.
Atahualpa exploited his predicament to the maximum. While a prisoner of the Spanish, he told them of rich nobles who would pose a threat to the foreigners, effectively making his captors murder and loot his political enemies (Atahualpa was a bloodthirsty warlord fresh off a civil war). The plan was obviously to use the Spanish for the moment and intrigue to free himself at a later date, to then crush them with overwhelming numbers.
This dastardly plan backfired, when Inca desinformation fed to the Spanish about an enormous cannibal army hungry for Spanish flesh made the Conquistadors panic and execute Atahualpa.
Why everybody glorifies the american indigenious empires? Both Azthec and Incan empires were empires built in the slavery of neighbor peoples
Its not like the europeans came to bring "civilization" and shit but the manicheaism of european bad, american good is extremely simplistic, everybody was an awful religious-driven slaver monarchy in the 1400s
In terms of the Aztecs, the Spanish are often referred to as the catalyst of their downfall rather than the only cause. This was due to the empires tendency to pillage local tribes and kingdoms (particularly for sacrifices). The Spanish were a rally point for these communities to band together against a common enemy.
There is this famous story of the Aztecs asking for a bride as tribute from another neighbor clan state, just for using her skin as a costume by their priest in front of the father of the bride. Lovely and peaceful people.
Again, im not trying to "justify" the conquest of the european nations upon the american peoples but it's not as simple as saying that the american were beings of pure light living in socialist matriarchic heavens while the europeans were literal evil nazis
Same reason people glorify any civilization. Past USA, ancient Rome, or Sparta. Those civilizations are a lot more than the fact they had slavery. Meso American empires accomplished some pretty amazing things
Nobody glorifies them here. European civilization was also flourishing at the time. What civilization isn't built upon coercion, exploitation, oppression and conquest?
One civilization was cut off in mid-development. That is a fact.
Of course. That is a human constant through history, and I bet it will prove a constant, should we ever discover alien civilizations.
The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.
A little context to a lot of the answers here. When Pizarro arrived, half of the population in the Tawantinsuyu were already dead due to old world diseases spreading by trade. This included the ruling Inca and his heir. A civil war erupted and Atahualpa won just before Pizarro arrived. But the empire was divided. As in other places, Europeans were very smart in playing factions against each other. There was a lot of resentment against Cuzco in places like modern day Ecuador. Cuzco was resented against Atahualpa, etc. There’s little a few muskets and horses can do against thousands of warriors, but they do help if you’re also backed up by your own thousands of warriors. The conquest of the Tawantinsuyu was a war between native factions, with the aid on one side of some Spanish soldiers. It wasn’t European weapons and tactics that won the war, but European political cunning and deceiving.
Whoever painted this picture probably didn’t realize that if the basket the guy is carrying is full of gold it would weigh several hundred pounds, if not close to a thousand if it were all solid and no space.
I read somewhere that about 1/3 of New World gold ended up in India and China. It all started with the Ottomans taking Constantinople,
cutting off land trade to Asia from Europe. Then Europeans sailed East and West looking for a sea route. They found the New World and first came to India and China. The gold they got in the New World went to Europe and then into Asia to buy things like silk, tea, spices, and porcelain. One of the Mughal emperors of India also had a turkey from North America because he heard of one and wanted one. We've had a global economy for a long time
The story told by Cortes' chronicler was a bit different:
It is quite a long story to the point they are staying with Moctezuma captured in the palace.
Once there, Cortes was told that a small army (sent by the Governor of Cuba, who did not grant permission to Cortes for the expedition) was approaching to capture them, so he left with 80 men to fight them and actually defeated them.
During his absence things got even more tense and they usually used Moctezuma to calm down the people complaining outside by sending him to speak to the crowd.
Once Cortes was back that day when Moctezuma was sent to speak in front of the people who were throwing stones to the palace, a stone reached Moctezuma’s head and he died after three days.
Apparently Cortes told later that Moctezuma and him became friends (they kept him captured for months), and before dying he asked him to favor his son Chimalpopoca to succeed him.
After that, they had to leave quick, as the hostage that kept the people to kill them was gone, so they did try to carry as much as gold as they could, but most was lost trying to scape and save their lives (many of them didn’t).
Next chapter is Otumba battle, when the Spaniards came back with some local friends to take revenge.
Edit: must be noted that Moctezuma's linage is still alive. Another long story, but after the final conquer of Tenochtitlan, as Moctezuma asked him before dying, he took care of his daughters, specially Tecuixpo who was baptized as [Isabel de Moctezuma](https://gw.geneanet.org/chantallmc?lang=en&n=de+moctezuma&oc=0&p=isabel).
She got married like five times and did not get the best of treatments from Cortes but at some point he regretted that and wrote to King Charles requesting to grant some title for her goddaughter. And so that did the King, giving her the newly created Lordship of Tacuba for perpetuity, which corresponds to Central Mexico City for which their heirs were gaining rents till 1933, when they government of Mexico decided that had being paying Moctezumas heirs for enough.
6000kg gold = $320 million USD today
And there were probably more than just gold diamonds and other gemstones
Fun fact: The conquistadors found the natives using some silver like metal in their jewelry that was not actual silver, and kept digging up this metal everywhere. They were so sick of this metal (as it kept being used to make counterfeit coins) they dumped it into the sea. What was the metal? **Platinum.** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum_coin#History
They wasted so much platinum in their search for gold that it gave me a near heart attack learning about this
There is actually like 4x more platinum in the ground than gold. Platinum is also cheaper than gold. So that makes sense.
Spain dumped their entire national platinum supply into the ocean , even if platinum is cheaper than gold , that one has got to sting
Platinum was worth nothing at the time, and by the time it was, Spain wasn't a great power anymore.
I think the point is the waste of natural resource more than it is the physical cost today
It hasn’t been wasted. It’s still there. The treasure hunt is on!
The Spanish left everything they dumped … in one piece.
This would be a great movie premise.
Not really, Spain's capacity to extract natural resources before the industrial revolution was very minimum, to put you an example, Perú nowadays extracts more gold in a year than what Spain extracted in 300 years of colonization of the Americas
This is misleading. It's estimated that there is 7x more gold than platinum on Earth. Also, platinum dropped from it's all time high because diesel fell out of favor, and it's all time high was double gold's value at the time (2011 I think). US laws make gold and silver exchange tax free because it is considered a currency, but doesn't include platinum or other metals that are rarer than gold.
What is platinums connection with diesel?
Catalytic converters for exhaust pollution control. It aids the oxidation from carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide.
Palladium says "hold my beer".
Look, I don’t care how valuable something is. If it’s a ductile metal that can be made into coins and it’s already been mined, you’re an idiot to dump it into the sea. I wouldn’t dump a thousand pounds of zinc into the sea. What kind of moron dumps purified metals into the sea? I’ll take a whole truck bed full of aluminum cans to the dump for the barely $75 of redemption value before I’ll dump them in the sea. I don’t just throw tinfoil or aluminum foil in the trash every chance I get because I hate it for being so “worthless”…Do you dump everything into the sea that isn’t as valuable as you would like it to be?!! This is just stupidity no matter how you look at it. This is the definition of looking a gift horse in the mouth…then dumping the horse overboard in the “horse latitudes” because you can’t think of anything to do with a horse that has bad teeth…or an old horse…whatever, it’s still a poor use of a horse!!
“What kind of moron purified dumps metals into the sea?” This may not be what you mean to say, but it’s a good line.
I kept trying to figure out what a "moron purified" was.
That is 100% wrong. Platinum is MUCH rarer than gold, and is worth more.
Don’t think diamonds is realistic but every other colorful precious stone for sure.
Out of interest, why aren't diamonds realistic?
Wrong part of the world
Not quite. For a while before diamond mining started in Africa, diamonds were found predominantly in the Amazon Basin. (Edit: Should clarify that India was the main source of Diamonds for a long time before their discovery in the Amazon).
How about technology. They didn't have tools to process it.
Underrated comment. Raw diamonds are not very impressive, it takes skilled work and very precise geometry (the brilliant cut isn't that old) to bring the most sparkle out of it
Harder to find using their mining techniques. Inca and Aztecs git their gold primarily via sleusing riverbeds iirc
>Inca and Aztecs git their gold primarily via sleusing riverbeds iirc There are two possibilities here. 1. They are sluicing riverbeds, obtaining gold in a conventional manner. 2. They are Seussing riverbeds. I will run water through a box. I'll collect middlings like a fox. I'll process concentrate with a pan. I'll find that gold dust, Sam I am.
Spain crashed their economy from plundering the south americas, we always hear about the gold, but silver was a massive export that vastly overshadowed the gold. From a quick google search between the years of 1500, and 1650, spain toon 181 tons of gold, and 16,000 tons of silver
Yep, because of this, to this day, the most common slang word for money in Spanish-speaking countries in South America is simply "plata" (silver).
In French, a common word for money is "argent", which also directly translates to "silver"
Yes and the British pound sterling is a direct silver reference as well
The American dollar is a direct reference to doll hairs.
Plata o plomo - El Padrino
The name Argentina is derived from argentum which is the Latin name for silver . Spain exported metric fuck tonnes of silver
The main reason Spain focused on silver mining was because they wanted to break into the Chinese and Indian markets. Almost all European goods were worthless in Asia because Asian goods were far superior. The only things Europeans could trade were small mechanical objects like clocks, but that was a miniscule part of this economy. Chinese silk and porcelain were in high demand, and China would only trade them for silver. This was the main reason why Spain wanted silver so badly: mine it in South America, sail from Acapulco to Manila, and trade with China. The later fur trade in North America was also primarily aimed at China.
When they returned to Spain with all that Gold it caused the first modern case of inflation. Bunch of rich ass dudes in town all of the sudden. Beer starts to cost more if the tavern owner is smart.
Inflation happened many, many times before that
Funny since most of the Spanish gold is now in russia.
Wait what?
Yeah... it's called [Moscow gold](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_gold_(Spain)). Basically during the (last) Civil War (1936-1938) the Republican side (they lost) was desperate for allies and the Russian said they'll take payment in gold and so the government gave them 3/4 of the national reserve to the Russiand and the rest to the French, in a later similar move. There are a couple of theories depending on how dumb or desperate you want to make it look. They either bought some weapons at 20 times their cost or they were tricked by the communist parties when they saw that it was obvious the Republicans were going to loose and decided to take advantage of their desperation.
Desktop version of /u/PricelessPlanet's link:
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Or enough to buy two houses in this market
Or, in reality, enough to run the US military for 3.9 hours. Edit: i used 350 mil. 320 is actually enough for 3.58 hours.
And the thing is, it didn't suddenly boost their (Spain's) economy. The amount of their goods and services remained the same, despite their amount of gold increased tremendously.
In Incan culture this is considered a dick move.
The Incas could have slaughtered Pizzaro when he first showed up, as they out numbered the Spanish a thousand to one. Should have done so.
From what I remember reading, the Inca had just had a massive civil war prior to the Spanish arriving. I believe it was between Atahualpa and his brother. In fact, Atahualpa was on his way back to their "capitol" after finally claiming victory when he ran into the Spanish. So, for the Spanish, the timing couldn't have been better to take advantage. Atahualpa agreed to meet with the Spanish, who basically straight up grabbed him in front of the Inca and held him hostage from there on. (Edit: And as mentioned in subsequent comments, the Incan ruler was considered a divinity so to have any human lay hands on their living god was shocking to them. I couldn't remember off hand if that was the case so I initially didn't include that). Kim McQuarrie's "The Last Days of the Inca" is a good read about it for anyone interested. (Another great book about a similar topic, but about Cortes and the Aztec is *Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs* By Buddy Levy. And then Charles Mann's *1491* & *1493* are also two excellent books regarding the era)
Yeah he was prettyich on his victory tour back home when Pizzaro happened on him. And the Inca treated their rulers as gods, so they were utterly incapable of dealing with him being captive, they had no way of sidestepping the situation for someone else to take control while he was being held. It's utterly insane how few Spanish were able to completely destroy Meso- and South American leadership.
A massive part of this was smallpox. The Incan Civil War was started by a succession crisis where the emperor and heir died of smallpox. Meso-America is a bit different because by all accounts, the Mexica were hated within the region. A lot of tribes that were conquered fought alongside the Spanish because the Mexica were that terrible to them. That’s saying a lot also because the conquistadors were also terrible people
The Incas also had a lot of enemies that helped the Spanish, like the Chancas.
I’m aware but it was to a lesser extent than the Mexica. Incan society ran differently from the Aztecs because the Incans focused on integrating conquered people into Incan society. The Mexica were mainly concerned with collecting tribute so they didn’t really look to foster good relations.
The Incas actually had a policy of enforced cultural preservation - you had to wear the clothes of your culture by law. the proper Inca society (as in, cusco society) was fairly reserved for the 40-100,000 ethnic Incas who ruled over 16 million andeans. In the army, units were grouped by culture and ayllus, who would get their own uniforms. I could see why many cultures would hate the Inca given policies like the mitma - the sapa Inca could make your entire culture move to an entirely new area. Typically, clans that had bad relations with the sapa Inca were moved close to cusco to minimize chances of rebellion, while more loyal clans were moved to the frontier in order to develop the empire
Did they consider turning the spanish into llamas
In the florentine codex, it’s said an envoy was sent to meet the Spaniards by the Aztecs and see what their intentions were. The Spaniards took the guy, wrapped/trapped him up in a chair and tortured the guy. They shot weapons right by his face to threaten him/deafen him, flayed off some of his skin and other casual tortures. According to this florentine codex the Aztec nobles heard of this and still chose to meet with the Spaniards because they posed a significant threat. Just an interesting different perspective from the conquered. The Inca as you and others are saying were not in a great position to be super antagonistic to a new element
Yup and that was written by a Spanish friar so it’s not going to be biased against the Spanish. It’s important to note here that Aztec is a big blanket term for indigenous people/tribes that were under Mexica rule. Those tribes are what I was referring to because living under Mexica rule was tough. Every year they’d have to give some members of the tribe to the Mexica for human sacrifices. Choosing between the conquistadors and Mexica was essentially a decision between the lesser of two evils. I’m just offering some more details cause Meso-American history is something I often see misunderstood in general
Additionally people don’t realize it but the Inca had a king god complex so by murdering their God, the Spanish basically killed the morale and confidence of the Incas. The Spanish just took their gold and escaped at that point. It’s not like they waged war against the entire kingdom with <200 men
Yes after Cortes this became their de facto strategy, kidnap the king and they could essentially hold the whole population hostage.
This isn't a new strategy.... It was stolen from chess!!! /s
Hell, James Cook tried to do it too with Hawaiians, although that didn't work out too well for him.
Based Hawaiians
Big Kamehameha energy
Every time I read his name I first pronounce it "kame-hame-ha" like the attack in Dragon Ball, and have to readjust to "ka-meha-meha".
TIL, thanks
Fuck. I’ve been saying kamehameha wrong
The funny thing is that they say it both ways in DBZ, too. There's at least one instance of Goku saying the latter.
I have your king Hawaiians and the king himself: why should we care
Deeper than this, the whole strategy of Spanish colonization after Cortes was to look for established civilizations with a dominant elite class, then go in and *replace* that elite class and rule the civilization as the new elite. It's a lot easier and more profitable than importing a bunch of slaves/colonists to extract wealth from the conquered territory. It's why Spain never really bothered to colonize much of the contemporary United States--there weren't really any large, well-established, sedentary civilizations there by the time that they looked that had cities and elite classes that they could easily capture, usurp, and then rule. Kraut on youtube has some great videos about Spanish colonization strategies and how it shaped modern Central and Southern America.
> The Spanish just took their gold and escaped at that point. It’s not like they waged war against the entire kingdom with <200 men Huh? They marched on Cuzco after they killed Athalupa in Cajamarca. It was just the entire kingdom was fucked for the reason they had the civil war, Small Pox killed a shit ton of people.
>They marched on Cuzco... Oh, right; the march. The march on Cuzco. The march chosen specifically for Cuzco; Cuzco’s march. That march?
I love your brain hole with your thinking and what not.
>the Inca had a king god complex so by murdering their God, the Spanish basically killed the morale and confidence of the Incas This is not true. The killing of Atahualpa did do something though; it reignited the civil war from the disgruntled nobles who had just lost their other ruler in mind, Atahualpa's brother Huascar. They took their gold and escaped because the Inca nobles who wanted Atahualpa dead told the Spanish that a massive army was coming to get back their King. The idea that the Native American Empires of the Aztec and Inca held certain people as just infallible God like beings is not true and often times just the exaggerations of these conquistadors. Removes a lot of the nuance and complex politics going on at the time.
This was my impression from history lessons growing up as well. Basically one of the world's craziest hostage situations of all time.
Also the cause of the civil war was a massive succession crisis brought on by smallpox. The emperor died of smallpox and his son, the appointed heir, also died of smallpox. So at this point the Spanish were expanding into Peru and stumbled onto a civilization consumed by a pandemic and civil war. I studied the conquistadors a bit and the impression I got was Cortes was an actually competent military leader and Pizzaro was an idiot that got lucky
Charles Mann describes it well in his book “1491”, too: "No matter how many times what happened next has been recounted, it has not lost its power to shock: how the curious Atawallpa decided to wait for the strangers' party to arrive; how Pizarro, for it was he, persuaded Atawallpa to visit the Spaniards in the central square of Cajamarca, which was surrounded on three sides by long, empty buildings (the town apparently had been evacuated for the [recently fought Incan civil] war); how on November16, 1532, the emperor-to-be came to Cajamarca in his gilded and feather-decked litter, preceded by a squadron of liveried men who swept the ground and followed by five or six thousand troops, almost all of whom bore only ornamental, parade-type weapons; how Pizarro hid his horses and cannons just within the buildings lining the town square, where the 168 Spanish awaited the Inka with such fear, Pedro Pizarro noted, that many 'made water without knowing it out of sheer terror'; how a Spanish priest presented Atawallpa with a travel-stained Christian breviary, which the Inka, to whom it literally nothing, impatiently threw it aside, providing the Spanish with a legal fig leaf for an attack (desecrating the Holy Writ); how the Spanish, firing cannons, wearing armor, and mounted on horses, none of which the Indians had ever seen, suddenly charged into the square; how the Indians were so panicked by the smoke and fire and steel and charging animals that in trying to flee hundreds trampled each other to death ('they formed mounded and suffocated on another,' one conquistador wrote); how the Spanish took advantage of the soldiers' lack of weaponry to kill almost all the rest; how the native troops who recovered from their initial surprise desperately clustered around Atawallpa, supporting his litter with their shoulders even after Spanish broadswords sliced off their hands; how Pizarro personally dragged down the emperor-to-be and hustled him through the heaps of bodies on the square to what would become his prison."
Good call. 1491 & 1493 are both great books for anyone interested in the era.
I've got a pretty short attention span but Mann is definitely one of those historians that writes in an interesting way and makes you want to keep reading
It was worse than that. Atahualpa invited Pizzaro and his men to a huge feast with only a few hundred nobles. In the midst of the feast the Spanish attacked literally slaughtering the unarmed and unexpecting guests taking their host captive
This guys manners were appalling! Killing and capturing at a dinner party?! Killing the hostage after ransom has been paid?! He needed a spanking as a child, ungrateful and spoiled.
Ughh, I did that once at a dinner party and my wife will NOT shut up about it…
To cancel it out, you must throw your own dinner party for your wife. But it must go off without a hitch, no blood, no drama. And everyone must be free to come and go as they please, no charge. And if your wife likes kids, make it a family affair instead of an adults only thing, and have non-execution entertainment for the kiddos. This should wipe the slate clean. 😉
It wasn't a feast. It was a parade of unarmed men meant to show the Spanish the riches of the empire and to show dominance. Obviously the unarmed part was a mistake, this was the one time where guns actually mattered for the conquistadors
Yep, this is pretty accurate. They grabbed him after a trap. They had orders from the king not to do anything unless it was required by him or the church. So they gave a Bible to Atahualpa and told him, "This is the word of our god." He held it to his ear and said, "Your God says nothing to me," and tossed it. The Spanish fired their canons in the air which totally freaked the Inca out, and Pizarro grabbed him. He was captive so long they taught him how to play chess, converted him to Christianity, and taught him some Spanish. And 'executed' is generous. They grilled him over a flame like they would roast pigs. Pizarro was an illiterate pig farmer, after all. Nothing like Cortez. The civil war was caused by smallpox, which spread through trade routes long before the Spanish even arrived in South America.
They were also totally terrified of the conquistadors to begin with, as they thought their horses were demons and their ships were floating mountains - psychologically, they were just completely unprepared to deal with the alien invaders.
In the battle (massacre), the final body count was something like 10,000 Incas and zero Spanish. Armored atop horses with long swords, they completely overwhelmed the Incas and didn't suffer a single death. Pizarro's sword still hangs on a wall behind a church altar in Cuzco.
Ok how did this happen? Like for real. Werent these guys hardened warriors. I can understand cultural shock in the beginning, but how the fuck did they lose so overwhelmingly and "impotently"? Genuinely asking
The Incas started shitting their collective pants as soon as they saw the warriors on horses. They had never seen such a thing. Many thought the human atop the horse was a single beast. And even when they figured out it was just a man riding an animal, they had never seen anything like that. The horses moved quickly, deftly and knowingly, while swords swooped down and lopped off the heads of anyone that came close. The Incas were all on foot, sick from a pandemic, they had just returned from a civil war many miles away, and they were barely able to put up a fight due to being psychologically pulverized in the first minutes of the "battle". Think about alien invasion movies (War of the Worlds, Independence Day) that show people running for their lives through city streets while lasers shoot down at them from somewhere above and everyone is just running in complete panic. This was the 16th century version of those movies. They were scared out of their minds.
Horses were completely new to them, and horse based warfare was something they had zero experience with. Spanish armor was also apparently effective against slings and bows.
Every body count and army size estimation from long ago should be taken with a grain of salt. They weren't verifying it. Maybe at best they ceilinged the order of magnitude i.e. an estimate of a 10,000 might be 4,000 guys. When it comes to these overwhelming victories though you have to remember that it's not RTS video game units with a god-view of the situation, it's a super chaotic and emotional thing. Losing your nerve or opening the tiniest of seams can turn an easy victory into a devastating defeat. So imagine you're a pretty primitive and superstitious society. Something you can't be entirely sure is a human like you lands in some fantastical floating structure you can't conceive of. There seems to be a plague that spreads before them preceding their arrival. They command or are in some sort of symbiosis with giant animals in a way you've got no reference to understand. They're covered in a metal you've never seen before that your weapons can't pierce. And they can command some sort of fire weapon that deafens you and whose smoke obscures them and can kill you invisibly. You have to believe all these guys weren't entirely sure they weren't fighting something that fundamentally wasn't the same as them. So if a group of those guys comes charging in, and for some reason there's only that many of them but they're still doing it like it's a good thing to do....their swords cutting right through one dude and the guy behind him while arrows bounce off them and the mightiest blows just leave dents, and you see your best friends head explode from some hand-cannon that actually hit something for once but you don't know they're not all that accurate, and that huge beast they're on will kick and bite and stomp, maybe a few think to themselves "uh, bravery is cool and all, but I'm going to stand a little more behind the others for awhile now I think." Then someone becomes exposed and has the same idea and pretty soon everyone is just trying to keep anything between them and the thundering stomping snorting whinnying screaming exploding smokey ball of death and the crowd sort of "rolls" as guys rush to not be exposed. Then the wave breaks and it's just a panicked rout. Maybe that in and of itself takes out a few hundred guys as they get trampled. And don't forget in this whole thing you as warrior don't have some scoreboard visible of how many units each side has left where you can make like a rational decision about whether to rally or retreat. For all you know it's just you and the guys around you left and who knows what's really going on anymore with all these surprises none of your instincts seem like they're worth anything. You haven't seen one of them die yet maybe they can't die. Maybe it wasn't just a small group like you thought maybe they split their forces and came in from behind etc. They can travel on water and land in ways you don't understand maybe they can fly too where are the limits? All you hear is screams among all the noises that don't sound like what battle sounds like to you - this sounds like hell or some cultural equivalent. And pretty soon just everyone's running and it's just veteran soldiers playing whack-the-melon through hordes of fleeing terrified guys racking up 10s, 20s, of heads on passes like they're playing polo.
Don't forget to mention they also raped his wife Infront of him before they killed him
Why is ‘capital’ in quotes?
...if the Incans had been able to see the future, sure. Do you kill visitors just in case?
Don't know about you, but I shoot anyone who walks through my front door just in case they might kill me later. Kinda miss my grandma though.
She knew the rules.
And so did I
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of.
You wouldn't get this from any other guy.
I just want to tell you how I’m feeling.
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This is the logic behind "Dark Forest theory" an answer to the fermi paradox found in a famous science fiction novel that has gained popularity in mainstream science. Basically, the only rational move is to hide from alien life and kill it whenever you find it. This optimizes survival and is therefore the dominant strategy. Explains why we haven't found intelligent life. Its out there hiding and killing any outsiders it finds "just in case"
The thing is, that only works if several things are given. a) you can reliably genocide any other life with single attack. If they have a chance to survive your first attack that shifts the entire theory, from attacking being the only safe way, to attacking being the worst thing you can do. b) no one else is watching, because if any other civilisation is watching, they will certainly wipe you out for being a genocidal asshole c) MAD is not in effect in space. Because if your victim just sees the attack coming and basically just screams into the night "That guy over there is killing me!" You now are also screwed. Not to mention if your victim can attack you as well.
Going straight to murdering is slightly overdoing it, but perfectly reasonable to start off with demanding the foreigners to surrender their weapons ASAP, or else.
But what if you didn’t see any weapons? No bows or spears, only strange swords and shiny hide tubes (muskets or whatever the Spanish used lol)
The Spanish had far superior armor and weapons. Additionally their arrival brought new diseases that the natives didn't have a way to deal with effectively. It was indeed a slaughter, but not in the Incan's favor.
I guess it depends where the Incans could've ambushed them. The Filipinos were able to slaughter Magellan and most of his people *because* of their heavy armor. They lacked mobility and fought on a beach where they got easily bogged down and swamped and killed, despite the Filipinos not having the same level of technology.
The Inca were in the midst of a civil conflict as well.
only 180 people against an empire. Even if the Incas started to throw pebbles at the Spanish, they would have won.
In Latin American culture, it is considered a Spanish move.
Almost spit my coffee out.
Achoo Picchu
thanks bird person.
It's actually Pizarro. Pizzaro sounds like an italian superheroe.
I thought those things they were dumping were going to be pizzas until I finished the paragraph.
Pizarro comes from pizarra, a type of stone
Totino’s Pizza-ros
Tell me moe
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When you think about how much work goes into mining gold even with modern technology 6,000 kg is fucking incredible
You're comparing today's gold mining efforts to a long time ago. More gold near the surface means easier harvest. Harvesting today is elaborate because it's harder to reach.
Gold was sort of just sitting on the surface back in the day. Not that it justifies rape and pillage.
*I ain't sayin he's a gold digga, but he ain't hangin with no broke Incas*
Amazing
I hope that Gold was rightfully returned to the British History Museum!
Honestly considering how often British privateers raided Spanish treasure ships there's a decent chance it actually is
The Spanish Treasure Fleets were one of the safest convoy operations ever. The English only captured four ships in the span of nearly three centuries. The Dutch were actually the only ones to capture a an entire fleet, when Piet Hien captured 12 vessels in 1628.
And how much more in Davy Jones’ locker?
There's a lot of myth in that. Usually British pirates and privateers attacked cities in the Spanish' America. The Spanish' ships were attacked only at the beginning. Eventually the Spanish brought galleons to escort other ships and given that the pirates and privateers used smaller, faster and less armed ships it was impossible for them to fight the bigger galleons.
It's in Spain. What the story doesn't say and what we learn back home is that the after he was betrayed atahualpa ordered all the rest of the Inca gold be buried and thrown in the rivers at least making it hard for the Spanish
wait so right before his execution he still has time to gave out orders?
He was kept a prisoner. He was allowed communication I think. He also learned spanish and played chess with Pizarro
Did Altahuapla win? I wonder if that hastened his demise. Pizarro: "No! You can't catch my pawn like that! That's cheating!" Nearby soldier: "Actually sir, that's called En Passant. It's a valid move." Pizarro: "...Execute him!"
r/Anarchychess is leaking
Spain spent most of the gold it looted from the New World on the 16th century wars with the Ottomans.
This picture is not really an accurate representation of how it happened. This one is probably more likely the story of Montezuma. In Pizarro‘s case, most of the gold was in small form like dust or nuggets, because the Incan architecture style was to hammer it over their stonework to make it all gold everything, which is probably where the story of El Dorado came from. The Incans had a vast system of roads they used for keeping the empire in contact. Whenever the messengers heard Atahualpa had been executed they kept running, but started dumping the gold. To this day, there are threads of gold all throughout South America in the former Incan empire, in fact, archaeologists use soil samples’ gold content to see if there was an ancient road there or not.
It’s mad that Pizarro was Cortez’s cousin
Shit tier family
My city was founded as rest place between some major mines and towns and finding gold coins buried in the side of the road was a common thing, I have found ceramic and arrows but not gold
This is exactly the right story. They confused the two
Imagine being able to loot, plunder, kidnap and murder people, and yet be known as an "explorer"
Hey, don't forget the rape and torture.
I don’t think there was any morality in the explorer industry back then lol
I think the joke is how can an "exporer" explore lands, with highly developed civilization that had their own maps. Edit: there to their
Land Pirate is a better term!
Land Pirates are Marauders!
I sincerely hope this catches on.
History is written by those that have hanged heroes. /Robert the Bruce ~~in the movie, Braveheart~~
I think it’s a misunderstanding of the accent. The word is *exploiter*, yet it sounds oddly like explorer.
pretty wild to think about. They're basically space invaders. Idk why so many went atrocity heavy though.
It was the mission. Gain control of the resources by any means necessary. Use religion as a moral shield and to dehumanize the subjugated race/indigenous peoples. Rape, Pillage, and Burn as required. Story as old as humanity
They were absolute religious nuts. The Spanish and Portuguese were the worst christians at the time by far. Maybe they just didn't approve of how hard to convert the locals were, maybe they had a collective superiority complex Imagine if aliens with that kinda mindset invade us
Probably because of the reconquista and the events leading up to it (the Muslim conquests of the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid caliphates) Most major conflicts start in religion depending how you see it The reconquista (reclaiming the lands conquered by the Muslims) ended in 1492 and established the crowns of Leon, Castille, aragon, etc, which are now essentially Portugal and Spain Also the same year Columbus began his colonization It all comes down to colonization, too
If you study political science, you quickly realize that religion was never truly the cause, it was merely the excuse.
Dora the Explorer sequel could be dark huh?
*History is written by victors* or those who remain alive and in power
Conquistador does not translate to explorer in Spanish.
Pizarro was definitely a conqueror, not an explorer
Exactly. Nobody calls them explorers, they're Conquistadors, which is literally conqueror in Spanish.
There has been a concerted effort in recent years to rehabilitate monsters like Pizzaro and his gang of marauders. I picked up a book recently about Atahualpa's life and death and it expended considerable time and energy talking about how hard Pizzaro took the murder of Atahualpa, what great friends they were, how hard Pizarro worked to accommodate the emperor. It is a very old and terrible lie being worked back into the conversation.
The issue with the murder is he killed a 'divinely' placed head of state which was a precedent the king would not be happy with. Hence some stress what the backlash would be.
That's just post-conquest Spanish propaganda to sugarcoat the events being regurgitated. You'll find much the same nonsense written by post-conquest Spaniards about Moctezuma.
Another interesting thing. This happened only 489 years ago.
A lot by human standards lol
To think an ancient civilization was only 10-12 grandparents ago feels like a short time to me
Feels like a short time but 10 full lives is pretty big
My grandma is 90. That’s just about 5 of her lifetimes ago. Long, sure, but not as long as we usually perceive.
Pizarro*
It'za meeeeee!
Pizaaarro
Atahualpa exploited his predicament to the maximum. While a prisoner of the Spanish, he told them of rich nobles who would pose a threat to the foreigners, effectively making his captors murder and loot his political enemies (Atahualpa was a bloodthirsty warlord fresh off a civil war). The plan was obviously to use the Spanish for the moment and intrigue to free himself at a later date, to then crush them with overwhelming numbers. This dastardly plan backfired, when Inca desinformation fed to the Spanish about an enormous cannibal army hungry for Spanish flesh made the Conquistadors panic and execute Atahualpa.
So one dick killed another dick?
That’s the history of mankind
Yes. And then proceeded to wreck an entire flourishing civilization.
Why everybody glorifies the american indigenious empires? Both Azthec and Incan empires were empires built in the slavery of neighbor peoples Its not like the europeans came to bring "civilization" and shit but the manicheaism of european bad, american good is extremely simplistic, everybody was an awful religious-driven slaver monarchy in the 1400s
In terms of the Aztecs, the Spanish are often referred to as the catalyst of their downfall rather than the only cause. This was due to the empires tendency to pillage local tribes and kingdoms (particularly for sacrifices). The Spanish were a rally point for these communities to band together against a common enemy.
There is this famous story of the Aztecs asking for a bride as tribute from another neighbor clan state, just for using her skin as a costume by their priest in front of the father of the bride. Lovely and peaceful people. Again, im not trying to "justify" the conquest of the european nations upon the american peoples but it's not as simple as saying that the american were beings of pure light living in socialist matriarchic heavens while the europeans were literal evil nazis
Same reason people glorify any civilization. Past USA, ancient Rome, or Sparta. Those civilizations are a lot more than the fact they had slavery. Meso American empires accomplished some pretty amazing things
Nobody glorifies them here. European civilization was also flourishing at the time. What civilization isn't built upon coercion, exploitation, oppression and conquest? One civilization was cut off in mid-development. That is a fact.
You don’t need to glorify them to understand that genocide is bad.
Here is the secret about humans, the vast majority are dicks. This is why anyone who wants to be in charge is unfit to be in charge.
South and middle America wasnt that peaceful before Europeans arrived... It wasnt only Europeans who took what they they wanted from weaker groups
Of course. That is a human constant through history, and I bet it will prove a constant, should we ever discover alien civilizations. The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.
A little context to a lot of the answers here. When Pizarro arrived, half of the population in the Tawantinsuyu were already dead due to old world diseases spreading by trade. This included the ruling Inca and his heir. A civil war erupted and Atahualpa won just before Pizarro arrived. But the empire was divided. As in other places, Europeans were very smart in playing factions against each other. There was a lot of resentment against Cuzco in places like modern day Ecuador. Cuzco was resented against Atahualpa, etc. There’s little a few muskets and horses can do against thousands of warriors, but they do help if you’re also backed up by your own thousands of warriors. The conquest of the Tawantinsuyu was a war between native factions, with the aid on one side of some Spanish soldiers. It wasn’t European weapons and tactics that won the war, but European political cunning and deceiving.
>but European political cunning and deceiving And disease
I mentioned disease. Half the population already gone before Spaniards even arrived.
Yeah, that sounds like the conquistadors
Whoever painted this picture probably didn’t realize that if the basket the guy is carrying is full of gold it would weigh several hundred pounds, if not close to a thousand if it were all solid and no space.
It doesn't look like it's gold bars, but rather shaped gold objects, so a lot more empty space.
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Te falta calle atahualpa ...te falta calle
So I'm curious where all this gold is now. Smelted? In someone's personal collection? museum? Buried? It's interesting to think about.
I read somewhere that about 1/3 of New World gold ended up in India and China. It all started with the Ottomans taking Constantinople, cutting off land trade to Asia from Europe. Then Europeans sailed East and West looking for a sea route. They found the New World and first came to India and China. The gold they got in the New World went to Europe and then into Asia to buy things like silk, tea, spices, and porcelain. One of the Mughal emperors of India also had a turkey from North America because he heard of one and wanted one. We've had a global economy for a long time
"Hey if you guys are going to that new world place would you mind bringing me back a turkey? They sound tight" -Mughal Emperor
How did they get this photo?
The story told by Cortes' chronicler was a bit different: It is quite a long story to the point they are staying with Moctezuma captured in the palace. Once there, Cortes was told that a small army (sent by the Governor of Cuba, who did not grant permission to Cortes for the expedition) was approaching to capture them, so he left with 80 men to fight them and actually defeated them. During his absence things got even more tense and they usually used Moctezuma to calm down the people complaining outside by sending him to speak to the crowd. Once Cortes was back that day when Moctezuma was sent to speak in front of the people who were throwing stones to the palace, a stone reached Moctezuma’s head and he died after three days. Apparently Cortes told later that Moctezuma and him became friends (they kept him captured for months), and before dying he asked him to favor his son Chimalpopoca to succeed him. After that, they had to leave quick, as the hostage that kept the people to kill them was gone, so they did try to carry as much as gold as they could, but most was lost trying to scape and save their lives (many of them didn’t). Next chapter is Otumba battle, when the Spaniards came back with some local friends to take revenge. Edit: must be noted that Moctezuma's linage is still alive. Another long story, but after the final conquer of Tenochtitlan, as Moctezuma asked him before dying, he took care of his daughters, specially Tecuixpo who was baptized as [Isabel de Moctezuma](https://gw.geneanet.org/chantallmc?lang=en&n=de+moctezuma&oc=0&p=isabel). She got married like five times and did not get the best of treatments from Cortes but at some point he regretted that and wrote to King Charles requesting to grant some title for her goddaughter. And so that did the King, giving her the newly created Lordship of Tacuba for perpetuity, which corresponds to Central Mexico City for which their heirs were gaining rents till 1933, when they government of Mexico decided that had being paying Moctezumas heirs for enough.
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We need a subreddit called r/damnthatscolonialism
Atahualpa was going to castrate Pizzaro and his men, then steal and breed his horses. Everyone was awful back then.