RISE OF THE INCA

The growth of the Inca Empire can only be described as meteoric. Though
precise dates for its beginnings remain elusive, the realm known to the Inca
as Tahuantinsuyu, or "The Four Parts Together," arose sometime in the
early 1400s and ended in 1532, when the Spaniard Pizarro captured and
executed the final Inca ruler, Atahualpa, dealing a fatal blow to what had
been the largest indigenous empire in the Americas. How did the Incas rise
so quickly? In this interview, Terence D'Altroy, a professor of anthropology
at Columbia University and author of The Incas, describes the diverse and
innovative strategies that helped secure the Incas a domain almost as vast
as the Roman Empire.
GROWTH SPURT
Q: Just how big was the empire in its heyday? How far did it extend?
Terence D'Altroy: It was about 2,400 miles from north to south. That
would take us from the area just at the border of Ecuador and Colombia
down to about 50 miles south of modern Santiago, Chile. In terms of square
miles, we're probably talking something like 300,000 square miles. In
population, estimates range from maybe six to 12 million people; my own
estimate would put it somewhere around 10 to 12 million. That would make
it perhaps the biggest empire in all of the indigenous Americas before the
Spanish arrival.
Q: So how quickly did it grow? What were the dates from its advent to its
apogee, roughly?
D'Altroy: Recent archeological research suggests that the Incas actually
had a fairly potent state-level society in the Cuzco area that took about 200
years to develop and that the empire as an expansionist polity probably
started early in the 15th century, that is, sometime fairly soon after 1400.
So the empire itself was maybe a century or a little bit longer in duration.
But the processes by which the Incas came into power were really much
longer term than the historical documents would lead us to believe.
Q: I'd like to get into more specifics in a moment, but in a general sense,
how did the Inca Empire grow so rapidly?
D'Altroy: There were probably three or four things that the Incas did
simultaneously. One, they worked very hard in diplomacy, negotiating
relationships with neighbors or with people who were targets for
incorporation into their expanding territory, and they tried to work out
amicable relationships through gift exchanges, marital exchanges, or
political alliances. Failing that, they would threaten those people with
military conquest, and that having failed, they would actually undertake
military conquest. So there was a combination of diplomacy and
inducement, coercion, and militarism all wrapped up into one strategic
package.
LEADING THE WAY
By 1532, when Pizarro invaded, the Inca Empire stretched from what is now southern Colombia all
the way to central Chile.

Q: How much was the empire's rapid growth due to the exploits of a single
great leader, the Alexander-the-Great-like Pachacuti? Actually, to two great
leaders, Pachacuti and his son Tupac Inca Yupanqui?
D'Altroy: Well, it seems likely that Pachacuti and Tupac Inca Yupanqui
were instrumental in the great expansion of the empire. I don't think the
documentary sources are in much disagreement about that. So we can
think of the expansion of the empire as being largely a product of a couple
of generations. The question is, how much of the organizational capacity for
the expansion developed before Pachacuti came along?
Some people think that the Incas had actually been developing that
capability over between four to six generations. Other people think that
Pachacuti basically created things on his own. If we can draw an analogy, if
we think of the exploits of Alexander the Great, who's thought of as being
one person who created a great empire basically on his own, we have to
remember that his father, Philip of Macedon, had actually spent several
decades developing the military tactics and the political strategies that
allowed him to incorporate all of Macedonia and Greece, which became the
launching pad for Alexander.

"The Incas were simply too powerful to be resisted."

Q: Yes, you write in your book The Incas  that the conflict characteristic of
Peruvian highland society in the pre-Inca period [A.D. 1000–1400] set the
conditions for Inca expansion. Can you explain that?
D'Altroy: Yes. There are a couple of things that contributed. One of them is
that there was so much local conflict that there were, at least in the
highlands, no major societies that had the capacity to resist the Incas'
advancement. We can't think of any societies that were larger than maybe
40,000 or 50,000 people maximum at the time the Incas began their
expansion.
There wasn't the kind of, let's say, state-state conflict that you would have
seen in other parts of the world. The Incas didn't really have major
competitors comparable to their own power until they ran into the Chimú on
the north coast of Peru, who actually had an empire. By that time, the Incas
were simply too powerful to be resisted. So the local conflict made it difficult
for societies of the highlands to ally with one another and resist the Inca
advances.

Another thing that contributed to the Inca advancement was that conflict
had long been honed as a requisite for leadership. So this was not
innovative, in that militarism was built into the culture.

Q: Is that what you mean when you say in your book that the interplay
between militarism and genealogy in Inca successions also contributed to
the expansion?
D'Altroy: Yes. One of the things we have to keep in mind about the nature
of succession to leadership among Andean peoples—and the Incas were
definitely included in this—is that there wasn't the concept of primogeniture.
That is, the oldest son did not automatically succeed to the throne. Instead,
there were potentially a series of candidates whose legitimacy was validated
through success. One series of sons or even brothers of the deceased ruler
would compete with one another, politically and perhaps even militarily, to
take over the position of leader of the society.
As a consequence of this, it was really a battle for the strongest, most able
person to lead the society. That's a very effective way to create leadership
in a people who were trying to expand their power. On the other hand, it
can be very destructive in a society in which stability has been reached,
because instead of leading to dynamic leadership it leads to factional
competition among the leadership, and it breaks down the power of the
political structure.

CONSOLIDATING THE EMPIRE

The Inca leader Pachacuti, as depicted by an early chronicler. According to a 1586 chronicle by the
Spanish cleric Miguel Cabello Valboa, Pachacuti reigned from 1438 to 1471 and his son Tupac Inca
Yupanqui from 1471 to 1493, though these dates remain controversial.

Q: How much of the Inca leaders' phenomenal success was due to their
building on administrative and economic systems that were already in
place?
D'Altroy: When the Incas developed the empire, they simultaneously used
existing structures and innovated. [The late anthropologist] John Murra
made an argument some years ago that the way the Incas presented their
notion of leadership to the people who they were trying to incorporate into
the empire was by saying that they, the Incas, were really nothing more
than local lords written on a grand scale. There were mutual obligations, in
which the local, non-Inca lord owed hospitality, protection, and military and
sacred leadership to the local society, and the society owed its labor and
allegiance in return.
On the other hand, there was nothing remotely as large as the Inca Empire,
and they innovated in a variety of ways. For example, they moved around a
large fraction of the population—somewhere in the range of three million
people, maybe as many as five million. They did this by resettling people in
agriculturally productive areas or in areas that were military hotspots. Or
they broke groups up as a means of diffusing the potential for political
insurrection.

The other thing the Incas did that was innovative but that also built on
existing systems was to create a vast network of roads, some 40,000
kilometers according to John Hyslop, who's the leading expert on that. They
also built around 2,000 provincial way stations or administrative or
production centers that were joined by those roads.
So they essentially laid a structure of imperial rule on top of an existing
system of local societies, and then tried to argue that it was really nothing
more than the local community in a grand expansive pattern.

Q: How did the Inca strategy of intermarriage with other groups aid them in
their rise?
D'Altroy: When the Incas were originally forming their power base around
Cuzco, they formed alliances with a variety of different ethnic groups
through intermarriage, so that the Inca ruler would marry the daughter of a
local ethnic leader and then would give one of his daughters in reciprocal
marriage to that local leader. So the Incas built themselves up using a
combination of kinship and political alliances locally in this way.
Once the empire got going, things worked a bit differently. The Inca
emperor would marry the daughters of prestigious local lords and bring
them in as part of his community. That was a way of essentially elevating
the status of the subject lords. But the Incas did not give away their own
princesses in the same way to ethnic lords. We find, for example, that the
last undisputed ruler of the empire, a man by the name of Huayna Capac,
when he went to Ecuador sometime in the early 16th century and developed
a new capital and carried out warfare, he took along 2,000 of his wives,
leaving the other 4,000 in Cuzco!

What we see here is a very conscious strategy of marital alliance being used
to solidify political relations. But it became increasingly one-sided as the
Inca emperors developed more concentrated power.

"Given the chance, people rejected Inca rule at their first opportunity."
Q: In the end, did the Inca generally improve the lives of those they
conquered or assimilated into the empire?
D'Altroy: In some ways, life was much better under the Incas than it had
been previously, and in other ways it was, of course, much worse.
Let me give you a couple of examples of how things improved. In the
highlands, most of the population before the Inca peace lived in relatively
high elevations, often in communities away from the most productive
agricultural lands in the valley. When the Incas resettled the populations, an
awful lot of that population abandoned the high-elevation settlements and
moved into places that were more dispersed and more accessible to
productive agricultural lands. It made it easier for people to follow their
agricultural strategies, to exploit, say, lower maize lands.

It probably also had the impact of reducing infant mortality, because the
mothers' diets were better, the children were no longer living in such cold
environments, and the people weren't compressed into such nucleated
communities. There are some indications that infant mortality rates
decreased substantially under the Incas. In fact, both the Incas and some
subject peoples reported to the Spaniards that family size grew under Inca
rule. In addition, there was a reduction in the amount of warfare at a local
level. And some people, of course, got great privileges by collaborating with
the state. So in those senses, things certainly got better.

On the other hand, there was a great trade-off. People owed two to three
months of labor on an annual basis, and they lost some extremely valuable
productive lands. A third of the population was moved from their traditional
homelands into areas that were foreign to them, and they were not well
received by the people into whose regions they were inserted. Finally, of
course, they lost their freedom and their political autonomy. So there were
some benefits, but they were offset by substantial disadvantages. By and
large, given the chance, people rejected Inca rule at their first opportunity,
so we know which side of that equation they came down on.

ROUSED BY RICHES

Inca roads, like this one to Machu Picchu, extended for a total of 25,000 miles at the height of the
empire.

Q: To what degree did a quest for wealth drive the expansion?
D'Altroy: That's a good question. We should think of wealth in maybe three
or four different kinds among Andean peoples. Wealth certainly could be
measured in terms of mineral wealth, which we know as one of the things
that the Incas were very interested in gaining. They thought that gold was
the sweat of the sun and silver was the tears of the moon, so they
considered those to be sacred rather than monetarily valuable.
The real source of wealth for the Incas was human labor. One's ability to
command labor, either by having a large family at a local level or by
commanding the labor of a large set of people through conquest, really
made an individual or polity wealthy.

There are other kinds of wealth. Herds of llamas and alpacas were
extremely valuable. That's probably why the Incas turned their attention
first to the Lake Titicaca area, because that's where the greatest herds of
the Andes were located. The llamas and alpacas were status and wealth on
the hoof. Wealth also included productive lands, which the Incas were very
interested in gaining, and finally things like products of human labor,
particularly cloth, which was the most esteemed kind of material good in
the empire. By commanding both labor and herds, the Incas could produce
the kind of wealth they most valued—very, very fancy cloth.

Q: The Inca often gave such valuable textiles and other gifts to those they
conquered and threw feasts for them. Would that, again, have contributed
to perhaps a quicker and more successful rise than otherwise?
D'Altroy: Yes. One of the things the Incas did was to present themselves
as benefactors to the entire population. The way they did that was by giving
out gifts on a grand scale. One of the names the Inca ruler took on
translates from the Quechua as "lover and benefactor of the poor." This was
manifested in practical terms by giving the people all the food and drink
they needed while they were carrying out their labors on behalf of the state.
Of course, that food and drink came from their own labors, but at least they
were not required to supply their own resources to sustain themselves while
they were carrying out their labor duties.
One's status in Andean society was often marked by the kinds of gifts that
one received from superiors. The prime kind of gift would be very, very
fancy cloth, Cumbi cloth, which was a tapestry weave cloth. The most
ornate of such cloths were made out of things like hummingbird feathers or
little shells, but more often they were made out of camelid wools. Vicuña
wool was the finest. There were lots and lots of different grades of prestige
goods that could be given to mark one's service to the state or one's status.

The Inca also went to great lengths in public ceremonies to sustain the
population. They threw great beer bashes, and they gave away gifts as a
way of trying to reinforce that sense of mutual allegiance between the state
and the people whom they were governing.

"We'll always be in a position of not really being secure about Inca

history."
Q: The Incas also had an elaborate food storage system. How much did that
play into their success?
D'Altroy: The storage system was the linchpin between production and
consumption for the Andean peoples, not just the Incas but also local
societies. Just to give you an idea of the scale involved, at least according
to some reports, the Incas in Cuzco [the Inca capital] received all of their
food either every four days or on a daily basis from the state storehouses.
Around 20,000 to 50,000 people were regularly supplied.
The largest storage system was right around Cuzco itself, but if you go out
into the provinces, that's where the bulk of the storage in the empire was
located. There were some places, such as Huánuco Pampa, Peru or
Cochabamba, Bolivia or the upper Mantaro Valley in Peru, where there were
anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500 storage buildings. The kinds of things stored
in those facilities ranged from very, very fine raw materials like
hummingbird feathers, to sandals for soldiers and shirts for people in
service to the state, to foodstuffs.

ANSWERING THE UNANSWERED

Q: In closing, what would you most like to know? What gaps in our
understanding of the Incas' meteoric rise would you like filled?
D'Altroy: I guess the one thing that I would really like to know is the time
frame. That seems like a fairly simple thing to want to know, but one of the
things we have to understand about Inca history is that space and hierarchy
probably played a more important role in the way the Incas constructed
their history than did linear sequences of events. And we know that the
Incas played with their histories, that each of the different royal kin groups
in Cuzco had its own version of Inca history, and they were competing with
one another. The past was malleable, with the goal of legitimizing a
particular political present.
So what I'd really like to know is, exactly how long did the Inca state take
to form and exactly how long did the Inca Empire take to expand? So that
we get a sense of exactly how to read these very different versions of what
the Inca past had been, as told by the different groups of Incas themselves.

Q: Where do you think you'll find that, in archeological work or historical

documents or perhaps in some other avenue of research?
D'Altroy: We're working with archeological evidence and chronometric
dating—radiocarbon dating in particular has some possibilities. Rereading
the documents has other possibilities. One of the problems with radiocarbon
dating is that it's a probabilistic way of measuring the past. You have to
bracket to some degree of probability a period of time within which you
think something happened.
So we'll always be in a position of not really being secure about Inca
history. We don't know when particular events happened; we don't know
the precise sequence of things. We don't have histories such as the
Romans, the Egyptians, or the Akkadians had. We're in a position of trying
to retrodict, that is, to work backwards into the past and read history and
archeology and try to put them together in a synthetic package. That's a
problem we're still working on and will probably be working on for some
time.