Global Girl Diaries

Touring around Cuzco prior to Macchu Pichu, we made an effort to read up and learn about the Incan civilization, which made the experience all the richer.  It was really surprising to find that while the Incan civilization was extremely advanced in some ways (they made stone cities that have lasted 500+ years and survived many earthquakes, while the spanish architecture crumbled), it lacked in others (no alphabet, no wheels, no advanced weapons). And even more mysterious, we really don´t have all that much confirmed fact about them as they didn´t chronicle the history of their people before the Spanish arrived.  But seeing the remains of the amazing Incan architecture, and then observing the distruction of the Spaniards was quite sad.  To think that one people would enter a civilization and order all their religious sites and amazing architectural accomplishments (quite superior to their own) destroyed, and the stones re-used to build churches to convert those same people.. its just astonishing.   But there is another side to the story that made me feel better...in reading further about the Incan empire and it's expansion, and they were definitely conquerors themselves!  They started out a community in Cuzco and overtook most of peru, bolivia, parts of ecuador, argentina and chile.  Each king had the responsibility of expansion.  Their ideal conquering was peaceful, but thy were brutal if they were "forced" to be. And they did demand that the new citizens reject their old gods and old ways, and instead worship the sun like they did.  They also ordered new teritories be occupied and made families relocate to the territories. And the kings were all from one blood line, and were immune to all law and could request anything they wanted, while the citizens had very strict punishment (usually death) for disobeying any law. Basically, while they weren´t destructive like the Spanish, they were angels either.