In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Inca Empire was the
largest South America had ever known. Centered in Peru, it stretched
across the Andes' mountain tops and down to the shoreline, incorporating
lands from today's Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and
Peru - all connected by a vast highway system whose complexity rivaled
any in the Old World. Rich in foodstuffs, textiles, gold, and coca, the
Inca were masters of city building but nevertheless had no money. In
fact, they had no marketplaces at all.
The Inca Empire may be the only advanced civilization in history to
have no class of traders, and no commerce of any kind within its
boundaries. How did they do it?
Many aspects of Incan life remain mysterious, in part because our
accounts of Incan life come from the Spanish invaders who effectively
wiped them out. Famously, the conquistador Francisco Pizzaro led just a
few men in an incredible defeat of the Incan army in Peru in 1532. But
the real blow came roughly a decade before that, when European invaders
unwittingly unleashed a smallpox epidemic that some epidemiologists
believe may have killed as many as 90 percent of the Incan people.
Our knowledge of these events, and our understanding of Incan culture
of that era, come from just a few observers - mostly Spanish
missionaries, and one mestizo priest and Inca historian named Blas Valera, who was born in Peru two decades after the fall of the Inca Empire.
Wealth Without Money
Documents from missionaries and Valera describe the Inca as master
builders and land planners, capable of extremely sophisticated mountain
agriculture - and building cities to match. Incan society was so rich
that it could afford to have hundreds of people who specialized in
planning the agricultural uses of newly-conquered areas. They built
terraced farms on the mountainsides whose crops - from potatoes and
maize to peanuts and squash - were carefully chosen to thrive in the
average temperatures for different altitudes. They also farmed trees to
keep the thin topsoil in good condition. Incan architects were equally
talented, designing and raising enormous pyramids, irrigating with
sophisticated waterworks such as those found at Tipon, and creating enormous temples like Pachacamac
along with mountain retreats like Machu Picchu. Designers used a system
of knotted ropes to do the math required to build on slopes.
And yet, despite all their productivity, the Incas managed without money or marketplaces.
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