3 ms·

The Incans were quite wealthy and advanced. As said by the official secretary of Pizarro [1]: “The city of Cuzco, being the primary place where the lords made t

by Veserv 3y ago

The Incans were quite wealthy and advanced. As said by the official secretary of Pizarro [1]: “The city of Cuzco, being the primary place where the lords made their residence, is so great and so beautiful and with so many buildings that it would be worthy to be seen in Spain”. On a fortress of the city: “Many Spaniards who have seen it, and who went to Lombardy and other foreign kingdoms,” he adds, “say they have not seen another building like this fortress nor a stronger castle.” In any event, the advantages of stronger pack animals are only significant if you can create wheeled carts. The Incans, like most Mesoamerican civilizations, had limited access to metals and advanced metallurgy preventing them from widespread usage of wheels as a means of facilitating travel. Without wheels, the amount of distance most animals can go while carrying their supplies is fairly similar. If I recall correctly, it is something on the order of 150 km, regardless of horse, ox, or even human. If you have to carry your food and water you can only go around 150 km with what you can carry. That means proportional consumption rate is highly similar, so two animals that can carry 100 kg is not materially different than one animal that can carry 200 kg. Under that model you would probably actually prefer smaller pack animals to reduce concentrated risk of animal loss and improve maneuverability. You actually can do better since animals like horses can efficiently graze, but that heavily limits your transportation speed and weight maximums for commerce purposes and you still need to feed the humans. Incidentally this is why rivers are so important in early civilization. Barges on rivers bypass the fundamental distance limit even without wind. Floaty boat and a stick to push off the banks/riverbed dominates almost everything else for commerce. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/inca-architecture-from-the-andes-to-the-adriatic-pedro-sanchos-description-of-cuzco/19E051A819D3223B0925A762040A9E88 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterl...

nradov 3y ago
The Incas had a handful of fancy residences for the ruling class. The society as a whole was very poor. Even if they had more metal available they lacked the economic surplus that would have been necessary to ever accomplish anything of significance.
- truculent 3y ago
  > The Incas had a handful of fancy residences for the ruling class. The society as a whole was very poor Meanwhile, in 15th century Europe…
- Veserv 3y ago
  You are going to need to support that blanket assertion with some references. The capital city of the Incan empire, Cusco, is estimated to have had a population of ~40,000 [1] ruling over an estimated 10,000,000 people. The capital city of Spain at the time, Toledo, had a population of a mere ~32,000 [2] at the time ruling a population of a mere 6.5 million at the time. Contemporaneous accounts demonstrate the comparable grandeur of their seats of power and more objective determinations demonstrate the comparability of scale and scope. It is not just “a handful of fancy residences” unless you apply that moniker to Spain as well. For that matter, Spain in the early 1500s is not exactly a wealthy country. Their wealth largely came from their American conquests which resulted in what is believed to be a ~300-600% increase in the amount of European-accessible gold and silver [4]. It is a little hard to determine how much came from plunder and how much from the mines and slavery, but the Incans were not poor in precious metals, the measure of wealth in the contemporaneous European societies. [1] https://www.worldhistory.org/Cuzco/ https://www.worldhistory.org/Cuzco/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,_Spain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,_Spain [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution
  - JackFr 3y ago
    But that gets back to Diamond’s motivating fundamental question. Why were the Spaniards colonizing the Americas rather than the Incas colonizing Spain?
    - Veserv 3y ago
      No? This comment chain is not about that. The first comment argues "quantity of interconnected people". The second adds on by postulating horses/riding animals are key as they support interconnection/communication. The third says that the Mesoamerican societies had riding animals as well, so that is not a unique differentiator. The person I am replying to then makes the implicit argument that obviously a poor society would be conquered and then makes the explicit argument that obviously the Incans were poor because alpacas do not count. This line of argumentation relies on the Incans being poor otherwise the implicit argument fails. The implicit argument is being made because otherwise there is no reason to bring up "it's impossible to build a wealthy society" since that would be irrelevant. I point out how the Incans were not poor and thus their implicit argument fails. I quoted first-hand witnesses who support that the Incans appeared to be quite wealthy and thus the "wealthy conquers abject poor" theory does not adequately explain the Spanish conquest of the Incans. You are free to make a different root argument, but it is not really the point here. But you do have to make a argument that is consistent with the fact that the Incans seemed pretty darn wealthy even though they were missing certain technologies that we would normally view as critical or indicative of "progress".

by Veserv 3y ago

nradov 3y ago

The Incas had a handful of fancy residences for the ruling class. The society as a whole was very poor. Even if they had more metal available they lacked the economic surplus that would have been necessary to ever accomplish anything of significance.

truculent 3y ago
> The Incas had a handful of fancy residences for the ruling class. The society as a whole was very poor Meanwhile, in 15th century Europe…
Veserv 3y ago
You are going to need to support that blanket assertion with some references. The capital city of the Incan empire, Cusco, is estimated to have had a population of ~40,000 [1] ruling over an estimated 10,000,000 people. The capital city of Spain at the time, Toledo, had a population of a mere ~32,000 [2] at the time ruling a population of a mere 6.5 million at the time. Contemporaneous accounts demonstrate the comparable grandeur of their seats of power and more objective determinations demonstrate the comparability of scale and scope. It is not just “a handful of fancy residences” unless you apply that moniker to Spain as well. For that matter, Spain in the early 1500s is not exactly a wealthy country. Their wealth largely came from their American conquests which resulted in what is believed to be a ~300-600% increase in the amount of European-accessible gold and silver [4]. It is a little hard to determine how much came from plunder and how much from the mines and slavery, but the Incans were not poor in precious metals, the measure of wealth in the contemporaneous European societies. [1] https://www.worldhistory.org/Cuzco/ https://www.worldhistory.org/Cuzco/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,_Spain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,_Spain [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution
- JackFr 3y ago
  But that gets back to Diamond’s motivating fundamental question. Why were the Spaniards colonizing the Americas rather than the Incas colonizing Spain?
  - Veserv 3y ago
    No? This comment chain is not about that. The first comment argues "quantity of interconnected people". The second adds on by postulating horses/riding animals are key as they support interconnection/communication. The third says that the Mesoamerican societies had riding animals as well, so that is not a unique differentiator. The person I am replying to then makes the implicit argument that obviously a poor society would be conquered and then makes the explicit argument that obviously the Incans were poor because alpacas do not count. This line of argumentation relies on the Incans being poor otherwise the implicit argument fails. The implicit argument is being made because otherwise there is no reason to bring up "it's impossible to build a wealthy society" since that would be irrelevant. I point out how the Incans were not poor and thus their implicit argument fails. I quoted first-hand witnesses who support that the Incans appeared to be quite wealthy and thus the "wealthy conquers abject poor" theory does not adequately explain the Spanish conquest of the Incans. You are free to make a different root argument, but it is not really the point here. But you do have to make a argument that is consistent with the fact that the Incans seemed pretty darn wealthy even though they were missing certain technologies that we would normally view as critical or indicative of "progress".