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The Remarkable Incas

Perknose

Perknose

Forum Director & Omnipotent Overlord
Forum Director
Look, I'd put this in OT but the main replies would be fart jokes. We used to have an alternate forum to the thunderdome that is P&N, but a previous corporate overlord unsheatehed his massive johnson and summarily obliterated it, without consulting us, which seems to be their enduring playbook for such matters.

So, my peeps, shut the fuck up and edumacate yourselves.

Annoyed that this isn't about our upcoming election? Of course you are, you dues paying member of the Upright Citizens Brigade, American Division. Now sit back down and beeee-have, k?

Summary: The Incas created a massive empire that included a strong central government and a massive military that stretched for 3,400 miles and included 10 million people ruled by 40,000 Incas. They built 25,000 miles of roads. Their empire lasted hundreds and hundreds of years.

And they did all this without the benefit of the wheel or a written language!

Discuss.
 
The Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs were all pretty fucking good at getting shit done. Vast empires, roads, armies, some of the largest cities of the ancient world, and not a single metal tool.
 
IronWing said:
Slavery gets shit done.
Click to expand...

Egyptian Pyramids, Roman roads, Chinese Great Wall sections and even recently the Panama Canal (non slave) are filled with reports of hundreds of thousands dead building those massive projects.

I sometimes wonder if the slavers knew they had to keep slaves well off in order to do the work or were they totally expendable like Russkie meatbags.

Either way it doesn't seem servitude (except with payment for work) has ever truly gone away, has it?

Edit: And don't forget about Dubai.. they bring workers on contracts to do the work.. and their payments are transmitted back home in order for them to self deport after the contracts are over.
 
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[DHT]Osiris said:
The Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs were all pretty fucking good at getting shit done. Vast empires, roads, armies, some of the largest cities of the ancient world, and not a single metal tool.
Click to expand...
I mean, in place of metal, human bone is pretty solid secondary 😉.
 
It takes a lot of work to build this. Long live the Empire!

68393fa215cd1eac49c98fa5eee66f53.jpg

And if you are going to Machu Picchu ...be sure to wear some flowers in your hair..

unnamed_file_from_ca-times.brightspotcdn.com.jpg.jpg
 
Perknose said:
And they did all this without the benefit of the wheel or a written language!

Discuss.
Click to expand...
wtf?
Did not know this aspect of them. That's... crazy.

Wait a minute. Isn't written language the very basis for how we know of ancient civilizations in the first place?
Without that, I begin to question exactly what we know about them, or the extent of their empire.
 
Seems they had a tenuous hold on all this using similar methods for controlling people by pitting them against each other as other great empires. In the end, it worked against them when the Spanish arrived. Of course, having no resistance to European diseases did the rest.
 
www.newscientist.com

We thought the Incas couldn't write. These knots change everything

A lost language encoded in intricate cords is finally revealing its secrets – and it could upend what we know about Incan history and culture
www.newscientist.com www.newscientist.com

thatjoescott.com

The Forgotten Knot Language Of The Incas

When the Spanish Conquistadors encountered the mighty Inca empire, they found thousands of knotted-up ropes called quipus. Encoded in these quipus were tax records, census data, and the entire history of the Inca empire. But the secret to these ancient computers have been lost to time. Today...
thatjoescott.com thatjoescott.com

A conjecture I sometimes entertain is that civilization arises as a product of sufficient numbers of people cooperating together to produce savants and free time.
 
Jaskalas said:
wtf?
Did not know this aspect of them. That's... crazy.

Wait a minute. Isn't written language the very basis for how we know of ancient civilizations in the first place?
Without that, I begin to question exactly what we know about them, or the extent of their empire.
Click to expand...
The Spanish and archeology?
 
hal2kilo said:
Seems they had a tenuous hold on all this using similar methods for controlling people by pitting them against each other as other great empires. In the end, it worked against them when the Spanish arrived. Of course, having no resistance to European diseases did the rest.
Click to expand...
I thought about the business of control as central but I don’t know much of what is known about these civilizations. I’m guessing some sort of universally proselytized belief system including taboos, punishment and fear.
 
Moonbeam said:
I thought about the business of control as central but I don’t know much of what is known about these civilizations. I’m guessing some sort of universally proselytized belief system including taboos, punishment and fear.
Click to expand...
As a (still) recovering Catholic, I'm seeing brocaded robes and smelling incense. Now excuse me, I'm off to dip my beak into the sacramental wine.
 
Perknose said:
As a (still) recovering Catholic, I'm seeing brocaded robes and smelling incense. Now excuse me, I'm off to dip my beak into the sacramental wine.
Click to expand...
May I lift a glass to your aim and also say this. It struck me just now that perhaps there are two recoveries possible and potentially interconnected. One would be to recover from the damage Catholicism is capable of. The other, a real potential is seems to me, is to recover the spiritual being that was Christs mission to awaken. Wine, spirit, intoxication and love, poetry and metaphor.
 
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