You're Dead to Me - The Inca Empire

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

In this episode, Greg Jenner is joined by Professor Bill Sillar and comedian Sue Perkins to learn all about the South American Inca empire. At their height, the Inca controlled a vast territory from their base in Peru, one that stretched down the mountainous west coast of the continent, from Ecuador all the way down to Argentina. But the empire barely lasted for a century. Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, it fell in the 1530s with the arrival of Spanish conquistadores, led by Pizarro. This episode goes beyond famous sites like Machu Picchu and explores all aspects of Incan life, death – and taxes! Along the way, it takes in social and family structures, food and drink, religious practices, art and architecture. [The podcast version of this episode has been edited slightly to amend an incorrect reference to the weight of the stones carried from Cuzco to Ecuador]Research by: Andrew Himmelberg Written by: Andrew Himmelberg, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Caitlin Hobbs Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors. Like when our estrogen levels drop during menopause, causing the risk of heart disease to go up.

Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are loading up our llamas and doing the Machu Picchu Trail to learn all about the Inca Empire. And to help us, we have two very special guests. In Archaeology Corner, he's professor at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, where much of his research focuses on the archaeology of the indigenous peoples of the Andes before, during

and after the Inca Empire. It's Professor Bill Sillar. Welcome, Bill. Well, thanks very much for inviting me. Looking forward to it. Yeah, lovely to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, she's a renowned broadcaster, writer, actor and comedian. You'll know her from literally everything good, including as host of the iconic Just a Minute, The Great British Bake Off and Insert Name Here, plus her recent tour de farce on Taskmaster, various marvellous travel documentaries. You'll almost certainly remember her from our episodes on Ottoman Istanbul and Agatha Christie. It's Sue Perkins. Welcome back, Sue.

Total pleasure to be here. What a lovely dream team we've got. Right. OK, Sue, we know you're a history fan. Yes. You're renowned for your knowledge and for being a very well-travelled person. You've seen the world. So South America for you is not far away and daunting. You've been. Yes, I've done some extraordinary things in South America. I've been shot twice in Colombia. Once at point blank range in the stomach and the other one through a, I'd admit, fortified bulletproof windshield. I was mugged in Rio and ended up taking mescaline in Bolivia.

So I feel I certainly have one side for what South America can offer. Wow. Yeah. Hopefully today will be slightly less dangerous. And what about the Inca, the intellectual Inklings towards the Inca? Do you know much about them? Not really, no. I'm Inca-lite when it comes to my database and my knowledge. But that's why I'm really glad to be part of this show because it's a voyage into the unknown so what do you know this is where I have a go at guessing what you our lovely

listener might know about today's subject or rather when I say Inca what do you think I'd guess you're picturing yes thank you for that Sue I'm guessing you're picturing, yes, thank you for that, Sue. I'm guessing you're picturing Machu Picchu, the phenomenal ancient citadel in the Peruvian Andes, which is now a major tourist destination. You may have seen it on screen in anything from TV documentaries to blockbuster movies, including Transformers, Rise of the Beasts. There's a giant robot gorilla up there. Of course, why would there be anything else? In terms of Inca culture, you might have seen the hugely underrated Disney movie, The Emperor's New Groove, one of my faves. It's got the hilarious henchman Cronk,

who was so funny they gave him a spin-off movie. You may also have seen the heartbreakingly bad Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a movie that does not exist in my head, I erased it. That's where Indy peruses the Peruvian jungle until aliens ruin everything. Weirdly, of course, our famous whip-wielding archaeologist is himself based on Charlton Heston's character in the 1954 film Secrets of the Incas. So the Incas are clearly in our cultural imaginations. But what do we actually know about this powerful civilization, this powerful empire that only really flourished for about 100 years or so? Let's find out, shall we? Right, start with the basics.

Sue Perkins, when and where? That's the worst introduction I've had. When and where did the Inca Empire emerge? Give us a country, give us a time. Well, it's going to emerge in one of the South American countries. And I'm going to say... Well, you've talked a lot about Peru, so I'm going to imagine it's Peru or Chile.

Century-wise, I'm going to go for 10th. OK. Bill, I think Sue did better on the geography than the chronology on that one. Yeah, so Peru's good, but it's a bit later than that. So 1400, 1500, 1532, the Spanish arrive and knock them off. Yes. So they emerge around 1400 in the area of sort of central southern Peru. Cusco is their central city. It's very high, isn't it, Cusco, to build an empire?

It is lovely and high. To build an empire. Well, but they don't mind that. They make good use of that height. So, they are, yeah, lots of their stuff's 3,500, 4,000 metres. That doesn't worry them at all. So, they initiate a process of making alliances and conquering, and they eventually incorporate an area from your Colombia

right down to Santiago in Chile, and going a little bit into the Amazon basin, but mainly along that coast and the Andean mountain range. This shocks me in many ways, possibly because of the many cinematic iterations that you talk of. We see them as an ancient. Ancient. Yeah, ancient is the word. But they are expanding at the same time that we're having the Renaissance.

1532 is when the Spanish show up. That's Henry VIII. So when we think of the Inca, we need to really think it's the sort of Wars of the Roses period and the Tudors. Already my mind is blown because they are more recent. And yet they, at the time, of course, they're bigger than the British Empire. I mean, there's nothing bigger than the British Empire.

How dare they? Nonsense. What is this? Yes, but of course, our history is so centred towards our own, you know, expansionist nonsense, we don't even give them any credence. Apart from you, sir. That's why you're here, educating people like me. Yeah, so that's a good point.

So, Bill, actually, if they're contemporaneous with the like me. Yeah, so that's a good point. So, Bill, actually, if they're contemporaneous with the Tudors, they should be fairly easy to study because it's fairly recent. But what are the challenges of knowing about the Inca? Well, I guess the main challenge is that they didn't write about themselves in a way that we can get at. All of what we've got in terms of written sources were produced by the Spanish or by people that were indigenous that

become Hispanicized. So there's one amazing letter to the king of Spain that basically explains what's going wrong but it's by a guy that's become Christianized. So for that reason we have to work with these accounts that we have from the Spanish and later indigenous people that write in Spanish and explain what was going on in their memory of that past. And then we have archaeological knowledge, which is great. It gives us a lot of information about sort of the structures and the buildings and the roads, but it doesn't give us the personalities. It gives us some of the dates, gives us some of the massive changes that the Inca are part of, but it doesn't, in a sense, marry quite with the sort of Tudor history of dynastics.

Do we call them the Inca or the Incas? The Sapa Inca is the ruler. He's the head Inca. He's the king, really, yeah. The Inca called their own empire, Tawantinsuyu, the four parts brought together. So they didn't call it the Incas. We call it the Incas.

Gotcha. But Inca himself, the king, would be the Inca. He's the Sapa Inca. Interestingly enough, he was sometimes called the Cusco. Right. Well, we're going to start really with the kind of origin myths of who the Incas said they were. But first I wanted to ask Sue, if you had to conjure up your own origin myth for the Perkins family, mythical beginnings for where the Perkinses began, what would you go with?

Well, I mean, sadly, I already know my own origins having done Who Do You Think? And it's such a deeply peasant stock on my dad's side. Lots of lying about ages to try and get in the army. And on my mother's side, just desolation and incarceration. But to create a mythology, I think, in the way that the mythology doesn't in any way have to reflect the actuality. I think the Perkins, it's a longstanding dynasty and they've always been readily involved in the eating of carbohydrates. But it has no, the main thing about the Perkins is it doesn't affect their form in any way. They can gorge on three or four sometimes different carbohydrates in any one meal.

And they will still emerge, even at the point of death, to be lean with a heavy muscle mass, ready for action, physically accomplished, deeply dexterous, fighting people, fighting sturdy outdoor people that can take to any sport, resistant to all stutters. That's a lovely way into how the Inca thought of themselves beginning, Bill, because they talk about not so much potatoes, although they had potatoes. Oh, potatoes are good. Yeah, so not so much... I was going to say, there's an Inca gold, isn't there? Is that one of the potatoes?

But they talk about stones. So their origins are stones. I guess that's because they're mountainous, right? They're mountainous and within the Andes, people tie themselves to the place, the landscape. So they come out of the landscape and their origin. Particularly stone can be animate

in the Andes in different ways. So one of the ideas is that they came out of a series of caves not too far away from Cusco, Tambotoco, the House of the Windows, and they emerge out of this fully formed as four brothers and four sisters. But they immediately get into difficulties. So the food connection's really good. One of them is Brother Salt, and he's a real problem, Ayra Cachi,

because he's too strong. So a bit like your guys that are muscle, all muscle. That's what they Ayaracachi, because he's too strong. So a bit like your guys that are muscle, all muscle. That's what they say about the perk, is they're too strong. Well, much the same thing. He's too strong. He's starting to cause real problems and trouble. The other brothers decide to sort of trick him and put him back in the cave and wall him up in the cave.

Wow. Best thing to do. Yeah. The second brother, Ayaruchu, so he's the brother chilli, because if you're going to eat your potato, it's a bit bland. You've got to have a bit of chilli with it, chilli and salt. So brother chilli, Ayaruchu, he is also a bit of a fighter, but he basically goes up onto a mountain, Wanakauri, and he also gets turned to a stone. And that's the point where you can see Cusco for the first time. The third brother...

Is it mayonnaise? You would have thought so. Airaoka, he's just a sort of savagely difficult brother actually. We've all got one. Well, I don't. I've got three sisters and they're fine. But the Airaoka, when they get sort of close to Cusco, the third brother who becomes man called Kapak is putting a staff into the ground,

a staff of gold. And at the point where that can sink into the ground, he decides that's the right place to form a city because it's soggy. At that point, the third brother, Airoca, he sends him to fly over to a central point and he becomes another stone. So Airoca becomes a stone actually in Coricancia,

which becomes the central temple of the Incas. So the fourth brother, this man called Capac, who put his staff into the ground, has now got rid of his other brothers. He's got three of his sisters, although particularly Mama Oglia, his preferred sister, becomes his wife. And that's where they found Cusco.

So a great sort of origin myth for the Incas nearly as good as the Perkins story as you say in so many cultures the land is so fundamentally important I remember listening to stories about partition and people just wanting to go and take a rock they couldn't take any of their possessions but they wanted to take some of the earth some of the actual raw material from where their families had heralded. I mean, I've actually been to Cusco. It's a very rocky sort of dry place. Yeah, well, the bottom of Cusco was this soggy, it was literally a river valley plain.

So like a dried up riverbed kind of thing. Yeah, but going up from there, they terraced it, and up the top there's lots of limestone and stuff like that, and that's where they build the big sort of construction of Saxo Marne. Wow. So we had the chilli peppers there and we had the stones so it's like q magazine but we always had salt and pepper as well we had salt and pepper yeah push it yeah exactly real good push it real good yeah um so we and they did when when brother and sister's married that's pushing it too far but i mean so from eight siblings uh turns into an empire of

millions built not genetically the strongest start can i make that point this is you know myth this is myth because obviously there would have been many many people in the area but how fast does that inca empire expand and does it do so through war or does it do so through sort of you know gentle negotiation hey come join the gang we're all fun over here. First of all, as you say, this is a myth. In practice, of course, the Andes have been occupied for 10,000 years. The Inca are just one group emerging out of a long history of occupation. Now, we know archaeologically, we can sort of partly trace this by styles of pottery and buildings and things like that, that basically this group begin to consolidate their area. And in the ethno-history, it's also very clear that they begin to effectively create alliances with other groups,

sometimes conquering them, sometimes creating alliances, sometimes marrying into them. So it's not always your brother and sister that get together. Reassuring. Well, there's a period of two or three hundred years when they are getting their act together, but then they begin to grow very rapidly. One of the systems is that you elect a leader or you bring in a leader, the Sapa Inca, and they take on a role of chief and they gather together people that will come and work for them. The difficulty of that is what happens when that person dies? Who inherits that system.

But it doesn't necessarily have to be his son. And in doing that, they divided up the ownership. And in fact, it was the rest of the family, so to speak, that inherits the land holdings of the Inca leader, whereas the new leader doesn't inherit anything. He has to go and collect his own land, conquer the next bit. So it's a very good way to sort of push forward the process of conquest. And Cusco itself potentially is a city of 100,000 people. Is that right? It becomes that. By the end, it's at least 100,000 people.

But by the end, the Inca Empire has, as we've said, it's stretched from borders of Ecuador down in Santiago in Chile, and it's 10 to 12 million people that are within that empire. The 1400s, that is very big. Yes, it is, isn't it? I mean, is there any way of comparing, for example... I mean, England's about 2 million people at that time. OK.

So that's big. Really big. I mean, there's a lot of land, to be fair. What do the Incas believe in? What cultures are they suppressing as they spread across South America? Are they animists? They are very much animists in the sense that it is the land that is alive. So there are different facets to this.

The Inca did have a cult of the sun that they push as a state religion. But at the same time, they very much recognise local locations. So they're called wakas, which are powerful locations that are animate places. The Inca carry on celebrating those and sometimes will capture them and develop them themselves. In a sense, they don't just conquer, they create alliances and they assimilate. And they're interested in getting work from the people that they bring in. So in some ways, they don't just want to sort of kill everybody. They want to get the access to the resources when they do this.

So they don't impose a singular religion, although there are ways in which they promote this cult of the sun. There is a famous conqueror. He was called Pachacuti. He was fairly brutal in his conquering because he was sort of renowned for drinking from the skulls of his enemies and turning their skin into the skin of a drum. That's how Stomp started, wasn't it? It started at the early...

Well, I mean, it caused a lot of controversy. Before they had the trash cans on their feet. Yeah. But he's the ninth Sapper Inca. So he's, you know, already you're quite far down the dynasty line there. But he rolls for 30-odd years, Bill. So he's significant as a ruler from 1438 to 1471, I think. How do you imagine the empire is run, Sue?

Did they develop a sort of, almost like a local government system where you've got sort of smaller agents? I mean, my first thing was pigeons, obviously. But I just sound like an idiot. And then I couldn't think of what the sort of South American equivalent would be. I suppose a condor. Did they train condors? obviously. But I just sound like an idiot. And then I couldn't think of what the sort of South American equivalent would be. I suppose a condor. Did they train condors to fly? Then I became

rational inside and I thought, well, there's going to be maybe regionalised hubs with messages running between them, conveying the messages from the sapper. I mean, I love the condor answer, but I think your second answer is pretty much bang on, Bill. It's very, very good. So they have chaski that are runners running at 4,000 metres, but they are running quite large distances, 30 or so kilometres, and then passing it on to somebody else so that you can pass messages on. We've said that the Inca don't have writing, but what they've got are little strings with other strings hanging off them,

and you put knots in these strings. We can only get certain information of this. We get a decimal system, but we can't get at all the nuance of the narrative content. So that was one aspect of it. They constructed a very large road system at various points along this road. You have large stores where people are storing maize and potatoes

and military gear and things like that. And you have sort of way stations where there's a, what are they called, tambos that are your pub and your hotel base. So they have a very integrated system. There's also a common language that is promoted by the Inca. It exists long before them, but Quechua gets promoted by them as a common language of communication. So that leads to a very complex way of integrating this very large area. So that system Bill was describing is called a Khipu, a K-H-I-P-U. And, I mean, there's an awful lot of scholarship and work trying to decode them, but they're a semiotic system of information that is literally strings. And they're beautiful, but they're really fascinating.

A guy called Cary Urton has looked at them. They've got possibilities of endless increments of information because the direction of the spin, the colour of the cord, the way that you tie the knot, the location of those knots, the sort of sequence of where you tie your pendants. If you think about our scribbled letters, in some ways we have a more limited way of putting in information. And indeed, computers are using ones and zeros to have all their information. So you can, in fact, code an awful lot of information into these.

Yeah, early coders, but through something you could hold, something tangible. And as a dyslexic, I think this is hugely desirable, I think, because we could avoid all these problems of misspelling words. But equally, for the short-sighted or partially sighted, you could feel what the messages were. There's something beautifully tactile about it.

I've been to some places where they only have oral history. They don't write anything down. And it's really interesting to get your head around the fact that whole histories are being told in tapestries, needlepoint, different ways of embroidering crabs and fish, which will explain how good the harvest or the bounty was that particular year. I mean, I am mind-blowing that stuff. And so that's what we have for the accounts of the Inca Empire

is basically the Spanish writing down what people are saying they are remembering through these khipus, so that we get some of the oral history transmitted by the khipu kumayos, the specialist khipu readers. Beautiful. If you had to design your own semiotic system from scratch, so it was not string and it was not writing, what would you pitch to the world?

I'd make it edible. It'd probably be pasta-based. It would be different. I mean, let's face it. You know, the Italians have given us a bountiful supply of different pasta shapes. And edible, then, if you had a message that was particularly seditious, you could just swallow it down. Yeah, this message was self-destructing. It was self-destructing my gastric juices in approximately 30 minutes.

So vermicelli, you get a sort of vermicelli in the post, you're like, uh-oh, the revolution's on. If you get an orecchiette, panic. Absolutely panic. She sent me a fusilli, I can't believe it. So what do we know of, I don't know, the class system, for example? We've got a king, we've got the Sapa Inca. What about everyone else? I guess if we go archaeologically, most of the people are living in

sort of small communities distributed amongst the very different environments that the Inca take over. So, up in the highlands, many of them are living in small round houses, sometimes little groups of houses with a patio area, sometimes with a bit of... Patio, lovely. Oh, very nice.

Absolutely wonderful. Probably a few flowers around it, but also with a corral next to it if you've got a bit of llamas and things like that. So they're organised as ethnic groups effectively that are sort of brought into the Inca Empire. that are sort of brought into the Inca Empire. And within those, you have sort of kinship groups, IUs that they're called, that will work together and they will own or access bits of land and they will share their labour, share some of that product, partly with the chief of that community or whatever it may be. And then if we think about this, actually, it gets developed higher up.

So the cascade of this is that the Inca Empire requires the people that they have assimilated, conquered, to contribute labour towards them as part of that system. And that depends on the area they're in as to what labour that would be. as to what labour that would be. So in a sense, the same ideas of reciprocity that exist within these communities gets taken up to the higher level so that you are told that you are being reciprocal with the Inca, Sapa, Inca.

What I particularly like is the fact that groups are allowed to retain their identities, which is quite rare in any sort of takeover. Who's orchestrating what... First of all, you'd be looking at all the different regions you control and going, well, that is a great place for grazing, that's a great place for maize, that's a great... Who's the uber power? It can't just be the sapper because...

No, no, because they also... Exactly, they have the nice sort of hierarchical organisation of administrators. They set up a requirement of this group is required to provide this much labour, and some of that would be military aid, some of it would be goods and stuff that they are producing. Sometimes it would be working on construction projects. Essentially, you say they allow people to keep their identity.

To some extent, they impose that. So you've got to keep the same aspect of your headdress and haircut that is the style of your area so that we know when you move to the other area that you were one of those people they are being marked in a way it's interesting because they're taking what's there but then they're sort of codifying it and yeah it's still a big state so these are called i use a l l y u is this a patriarchal society know, are men the ones in control? Do women have self-determination and influence? I'm betting they don't. Well, let's see what Bill says. They don't have self-determination, if you like. I think there's probably more male than female,

but it's certainly, it's described as being more balanced. There are matrilineal aspects, and indeed there are some communities in the Andes that were matrilineal. And many people would maintain both of their kinships. And certainly women got into positions of significant power. The wife or mother of the Inca held a lot of power. Some of the religious leaders were women. So yes, there were certain roles that women had. But as ever, there was probably more male control. More to do. More work to do. Yeah.

So what's it like growing up as a boy, growing up as a girl in Inca society? We've got to take into account the fact that we've probably got that information from ethno-history rather than from archaeology. It's quite difficult to get it from archaeological evidence. This guy, a guy called Juan Manpoma, who is an indigenous writer, basically wrote a letter to the king of Spain about a generation after the Spanish conquest, which is basically saying Christianity is pretty good, but everything else the Spanish have done is crap.

And you've misorganized things and you're abusing stuff. Within that letter, it's a thousand odd page letter, he's got drawings. He was furious. He was pretty annoyed. He detailed his annoyance in quite a lot of explanation. hear it. Yeah, he was pretty annoying. But he detailed his annoyance in quite a lot of explanation. And within that, he provides a lot of information about these different age stages that people are going through. Children, they develop skills and in some ways their age grades are more about the skills and the jobs that they are doing rather than age. In fact, the Inca probably don't record

age as such. You gain sort of your status as you begin to develop skills. Certainly children had less identity and status early on. And later on from the age of puberty, if you like, that's when they take on more of a gendered role. And one stage of this is the Ahlia. So it's a bit like a nunnery where young girls are taken in and become brewers of beer, weavers of textiles and sort of religious specialists. So in Juan Manuel Palmer's drawings, the sort of aged become a bit like children because they become the people that go and pick up sticks

and things like that and they become less useful to society. So there is a slight ageist element there. I think there is. It's basically capitalism, isn't it? It's like if you're old enough to pick up a shovel and do some work, that's fine. We will notice you. We'll be interested. And the moment your back breaks with that shovel, you're dead to a space.

We've got all sorts of different aspects of society there. And as you say, archaeology can only tell us so much. And we've got to be careful with this because this is a stereotyped description by an indigenous author. All caveats welcome. So, Sue, we have you here you are the this is the first radio ad you can smell the new cinnabon pull apart only at wendy's it's ooey gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long taxes extra at participating wendy's until may 5th terms and conditions apply as women our life stages come with unique risk factors. Like when our estrogen levels drop during menopause, causing the risk of heart disease to go up.

Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. ...host of not one, but two fantastic cookery shows, The Great British Break Off, and Supercizes. So, question I have to ask you, what do you think the Inca were eating? Well, I'm imagining three sisters. I'm imagining squash and I'm imagining beans and I'm imagining maize and things like that. Delicious. So that's definitely for the Aztecs. Is that the same for the Inca? Yeah, no, in many ways.

Although it's high altitude, they can produce, slightly lower down, they can produce chilli, lots of potatoes, we've said, maize up to 3,800 or so metres. So within Cusco, you can still produce maize. Slightly lower down, lots of beans. You've also got coca, the origin of cocaine, but it's been used as a herbal chewing thing rather than a drug making thing, if you like. Good at altitude. Very good. Very good at altitude. Yeah.

It does. It helps a lot. It makes a lot of difference. So I chew cocoa while I'm there. Usually it was organised so that one ethnic group had sort of access to several different ecological zones. So although you as a farmer might be farming in one area where there was just potatoes because you were just a bit too high, you'd be able to access some of these things that were coming down from the chilly and the nice exotic sort of lower valley things by swapping them within your sort of ethnic group. Sue, do you want to guess what the growing season would be? So it would be in our winter, I guess, and it would be minimal. I mean, a minimal season, presumably.

Although, no, there's not a lot of rain. What am I talking about? Quite a long season. I'm going to go a long season. A long season because it's mainly dry. Yeah. OK, so Bill, what's not a lot of rain. What am I talking about? Quite a long season. So I can guess it myself. I'm going to go with long season. A long season because it's mainly dry. Yeah, OK. So Bill, what's the agricultural cycle? Well, there's two main seasons. There's basically a dry season, sort of June to November-ish,

and then a wet season, December to May-ish. The wet season is if you like when things will grow. So you plant things just before that wet season starts, but then you can use canals and things to irrigate it. So you can sometimes start that a bit earlier. You will grow on during that wet season starts, but then you can use canals and things to irrigate it

so you can sometimes start that a bit earlier. You will grow on during that wet season and ideally you will harvest things like maize will be harvested sort of going into the beginning of the dry season. And in terms of things like livestock, are they rearing animals? I've not been to Peru, but my wife has and she, I think, nibbled a guinea pig. Was it furious?

You can't just go up to a guinea pig and nibble it it's a livestock so there's no horses right no horses no traction animals that's really important so you can't have the plow and neither can you there's no wheeled transport because if you're going to transport anything people have to carry it or llamas that can take 25 30 40 kilos but uh so you've got llamas and al take 25, 30, 40 kilos. Wow, that's unreal. So you've got llamas and alpacas. They're really important, partly for transport, partly for making textiles,

because they're going to produce a lot of the wool that's used for making textiles. Most people would be eating vegetarian food a lot of the time. Meat would be for special occasions, but guinea pigs are widely produced. In fact, dogs were also sometimes eaten. Hairless dogs. A bit like a pig but they don't have pigs. They're not a bit like a pig. Well, it depends how much you love your pig.

I don't eat any animals. There we go. It's all just a sort of rolling horror for me. But, you know, guinea pigs were... I mean, to be fair, people in the Andes love their animals. There is great care of animals. The words for managing animals are about love and affection. So there is great care of animals.

So that doesn't mean they don't eat them. But there is a very caring attitude. When you say guinea pigs run abundance, I'm now imagining just these sort of terraced, rocky terraced, altitudinous farmlands, Just guineas running amok. And I know for a fact they can run amok. And they are ferocious and violent breeds. Yeah, they're really nibble.

They nip, don't they, guinea pigs? They become an amazing noise as well. They're very loud. But it's more like the Star Trek Trouble with Tribbles or whatever it was because they're inside. Guinea barn. Well, actually quite often in your kitchen. So they'll be running around

in your kitchen. You're feeding them the scraps of your sort of potatoes and peelings and things like that. They'll be eating them and then when you've a need, that's them available. Alright. So it's just thick, big, rosetted guinea pigs in your kitchen. And you could also store

some of this. Not so much the guinea pig, but the lamb and alpaca meat. You can store it by freeze drying it. Which they also do for potatoes, right? They do. So the meat one is called charqui, which is actually probably where we get our word jerky from. Oh, I didn't know that. Which is to freeze dry the meat. The potatoes, you're doing that by sort of trampling them and letting them freeze, drying out a bit in the sunshine, letting them freeze again, trampling them a couple of three, four days. And then you've got little frozen potatoes that are called chunyu.

Like smash. So they're sort of trampling them. Yeah. On the foot. Although not with aliens. I think we've just got to get back to the fact that it's not aliens that are doing this. That's what I love about that, though. The fact that aliens have made that instant mash. That is a dated reference for our younger listeners. Look up this smash advert on YouTube and you'll understand why we're all going aliens, aliens.

Why did they, because potatoes store very well. Yes. Why did they smash them? Why did they trample them underfoot? Had they got them confused with wine grapes? They might well have done. It does change the flavour. I bet it does. They become cheesy potatoes. Well they do sort of.

They've got a very deep flavour when you've done so. We ferment things and stuff. We do strange things to things. They freeze dry potatoes and then it becomes a delicacy. I'm into that idea. I might try that at home. Yeah. And the other thing I suppose we should mention is drink.

They're not wine drinkers. Can you grow grapes that high? They haven't got grapes, have they? They don't have grapes. They only come with Europeans. Ignore that. Right, so beer then, Sue. What's the beer in that part of the world called, you know? I'm thinking, would they have

a beer called Sol or something to reflect the sun god or the, you know... Made, as you say, by nuns, probably, with bits left over from many... Well, they must also have had a bakery, because the two go hand in hand, do they not? They don't actually bake.

That's very interesting. So we don't get sort of bread because they don't. The great Incan bake-off never took off. Well, but, you know, I think Mary Berry. Berry was up for it. She was up for it. Well, she'd be impressed by certain things. So one of the ways of, there are different ways of starting the fermentation.

So the beer was mainly made out of maize. One of the ways of starting your beer was mainly made out of maize. One of the ways of starting your beer is to chew it. So if you masticate your beer, you can introduce the yeasts and then leave it. Thick beer! And it begins to, you then leave it for a few days, you add that as a sort of starter mix to your beer and then

let it ferment. I'm with you, so the mash part of the process, when you start with that thick. But if you masticate some of it, it's one of the ways of introducing the yeast and beginning that process, and then you can leave the rest of it to keep fermenting. And this is called chicha, I feel like. Chicha. She translates as brewer's gob. Yeah, it's

sliver, isn't it, really? Yeah. And it's really important, because it is the way that you cement relationships by sharing beer, but you also make libations, so you make the gifts of the God, and as you say, the nuns, the athlea, were one of the groups that were responsible for brewing the best of this beer that was used for some of the ceremonies and things. And what do you think about the drinking of water, Sue?

What occasion do you think water drinking would be given over to? Oh, very rare, I'm thinking, because I'm just thinking about our own in the UK. We had small beer, didn't have sanitised water until very, very late on. I'm thinking it would only be festivities maybe. So you're thinking of sort of a fun occasion, a shindig? A shindig of some kind. You know, the conjoining

of two people you love or maybe bidding farewell to a relative, maybe at funerals too. You might have had a cup of water to celebrate. Opposite, water was a punishment. No. Yeah. It's the opposite of beer I celebrate. Opposite. Water was a punishment. No. It's the opposite of beer, I guess. Is that because they knew that it was contaminated or it could make you sick? I think partly because it's very cold

and people were quite worried about the sort of coldness of some of that water. But also because, you know, why drink water when you can have a good bit of beer? A lot of the beer was quite mild. It wasn't really heavy alcohol, but it's not really getting them drunk. As a teetotaler, I'm here for the water. But, you know, that's fine. All right, let's talk about textile

because it's a really big deal in Inca society. Weaving really matters, doesn't it? And it's slightly gendered. Yeah. I mean, first of all, you're up 4,000 metres or whatever. You need cloth. And therefore, the production of, you're up 4,000 metres or whatever, you need cloth. And therefore the production of cloth was a vital thing for all society. Textiles for blankets, footwear, carrying things.

It was also used for defence and armaments and slings and things like that. It was sacred and it was used as a burnt offering. So when the Spanish arrive, you know, the Spanish are all interested in the gold. offering. So when the Spanish arrive, you know, the Spanish are all interested in the gold. Actually, what the Incas are interested in is the quality of fine cloth that some of the Spanish have got, silk and things like that. They're obsessed by that. We'll do a trade. You can have my t-shirt and I'll have your gold. The Spanish burn some of these textiles, don't they? I mean, there's that aspect that we don't have many of them. Is that right? The Spanish burned some of them,

partly because they were about status and they were carrying religious sort of information and things. So the Spanish certainly burned some of them. We get some nice ones preserved on the coast. But 400 years later, we have very little textile surviving. What we do have is really important.

But weaving was part of the imperial tax system, Sue, which I find really fascinating. It was... If only HMRC would go that way. Because I tell you what, I'm pretty good at all that. I can turn around some crafting. Very happy to turn in a sort of coat or whatever they need, really, a tabard. Yeah. I can do really ornate stuff, Greg. They just won't have it. They won't let us knit our VAT receipts. Tell us then, Bill, about this tax system. We've got the central government, we've got the Sapa Inca at the top, we've got this stratified society, the local governors. How do people pay taxes and how does weaving come into that?

The Inca authorities have said, well, in this area we want this ethnic group to contribute this amount of labour. Often the local leaders would probably designate how that took place, although there were some examples of the Incas setting up sort of craft production centres. And similarly, they might distribute either wool or fleece, llama fleece, or indeed cotton, for people to spin and produce, and then they would have to make a contribution of some of those textiles. Similarly, people would go and work to produce stonework. Or in some cases, they would go and mine. And then the ore would be provided for people to work some of that.

So they don't have money. So there's no currency. They don't have cash. Cashless society. Cashless society. And they have all this gold and silver that the Spanish are like, wow. Hooray. Just lying around. Just lying around. What do you think they were using the gold and silver that the Spanish are like, wow, hooray. Just lying around.

Just lying around. What do you think they were using the gold and silver for? Well, I mean, I wouldn't say temples, but then you think of them, they're animists. So, you know, for them, their ancestral spirits are living in the natural world. But I guess, you know, when you're empire building, you do want a bit of jazz hands and a bit of razzmatazz, do you not? And so, all right, I'll go for temples, big structures, big Inca building, centralised government kind of vibes in Cusco.

Good guess, Bill? Absolutely good guess. The Inca do not have iron. They've got copper alloys for a lot of different things. But gold and silver are largely ornamental. And sometimes, actually, they're mixed with copper for the colouration of it. They like it a little bit mixed with copper because they prefer the colour of that.

Ugh, gold. Let's put some copper in it. Cheer it up a bit. And gold gets referred to as the sweat of the sun and silver as the tears of the moon. Thank you very much. I was trying to remember. It's like a romance novel. So beautiful. Yeah.

It sounds good. And it gets used for lots of ornaments, big ears. So the Incas were called big ears. You threw that in. Because they had huge ear holes that they put earplugs into that were sort of very ornate. Oh, tunnels. Yeah, they stretched lobes and put these huge sort of gold,

kind of very early noughties punk emo look. Yeah. So the Tears of the Moon, beautiful. So the tears of the moon, beautiful. The sweat of the sun, less so. The sun god is called Inti, is that right? Inti. Inti, Inti. So he's the main god.

It's difficult, but there's also Viracocha, who's a sort of animating creator god, who the Spanish sort of think is even better. So they sort of promote the idea that Viracocha might have actually been the Christian deity in certain circumstances. The Pleiades are very important as well. The stars. The stars. But also lots of these local locations. But this gorgeous gold and silver and copper mixed,

these treasures, as you say, they were in temples. We don't really have them because the Spanish melted them down. You knew where I was going with that one, didn't you? According to modern estimates, something like $60 million worth of gold and silver was melted down by the Spanish and then brought back to Europe to fund their wars. And a major contribution to kick-starting the capitalist society. If you didn't have that coming into the coinage, we'd have had a very different experience. Although, of course, Spain was then bankrupted many times because of hyperinflation

because they had too much silver and gold. So would that have been funding the Armada at some point? Yeah, literally. All their huge tercio armour. I mean, the Spanish army was enormous in the 1500s. So, the artworks we don't have, many of the textiles have rotted away. We've got some.

We don't fully understand the Kipu knots. Is there anything in Inca society and culture? Have you made up the Incas? It's a pretty good make-up. I'd be quite pleased with that. I think my fiction score would be very high. No, in many ways we have lots of evidence. So we have buildings, structures, Machu Picchu and things like that,

but also much more local sort of houses and domestic things. Lots of pottery survive, which is really important as a marker of both sort of local production, but also some styles that are very definitely key to the Inca. So they're producing big brewing jars and serving jars, which are quite iconic. And where we find them is one of the ways that we identified the sort of presence of the Inca. Also sort of really important in terms of sort of monumental structures. They're building very beautiful stonework that is this close fitting stonework that's only used for really some of the most prestigious buildings. Yeah, we can show you a quick picture of that actually, Sue.

This particular photo, is it Saksayawaman? Saksayawaman? Saksayawaman. Bevelled is the phrase I want to use. The edges are not fully straight. They look like they're curved. Can I borrow your picture, Sue? Because I need to add a scale to it, OK?

So if we put a person here and I'm going to do a stick figure, they would be about that size. Oh, wow. Essentially, you'd be looking at 12 meters high 10 12 meters high almost like endless row of knackered front teeth as you say slightly beveled crenellated closer fitting than my front teeth and mine too but emerging from the ground so they don't almost like that it's buried so the foot the foundation stones are laid in sets. It's very very beautiful but very unusual. So I'm intrigued as to the

meaning of it. What's the purpose of it? There have been sadly lots of ideas that it's using magical acids and things like that or lasers or aliens have come around. Oh no! All of that is wrong. Bloody Indiana Jones. My builder told me he was using magical acids.

Are you telling me that's not right? Well, he may well be, but that's different to the construction technique. These are basically done very simply by pecking them with other bits of stone. So the Inca do not have iron, but they are using other stones as hammer stones to work this. And indeed, the Inca word is that they are pecked or chewed to be positioned. And we can see how these are done for most of the smaller stones quite easily. What's quite difficult to explain is these large stones, exactly how you get them precision made so that they fit perfectly.

Actually, the question of exactly how you move them and get them perfectly carved and positioned is still, there are ideas, but it's still being debated. It's a lot of rolling logs, isn't it? Do they even have trees? I mean, it's a very mountainous... They do have trees and some of them... We've got examples, though, of some of not quite this style of stone

that are moved as large blocks that were carried from Cusco to Ecuador. So 1,000 kilometres. You would not want to be that village. And the only way to do that is for people to carry them on a litter. Yeah. Which the Inca himself was carried on a litter. So they get carried on litters.

What was the IU that ended up with that job? It would be furious. Oh, it was a prestige thing to do, to be carrying the Inca. We've got these kind of fascinating city planning then. In our head, Machu Picchu is probably the one that comes to mind. Cusco is the major capital. There's a city that's planned to resemble a puma. Cusco, the Inca capital, is conceived as a puma

and the Saksuaman is referred to as the head. So your idea that that's the teeth is not such a bad idea. Down below that, there's the plazas, the main plazas of Cusco, which are sort of the belly area. And then when two rivers come together, that's referred to, which is where the central temple, Coricancha is, these two rivers coming together are referred to as the tail of the puma. Lovely.

So yes, it's conceptually a puma. And the puma was the sort of icon of the Inca royal family. Ah. All right, so let's talk about Machu Picchu because it's the one that people will know and it's the one that Hollywood has told us is the most thrilling and exciting. It's the sort of city in the clouds.

It's Transformers 7, Rise of the Beasts, as we all love. Massive gorilla, Mechanised gorilla. The stonework is astonishing, but what's it for? Is it a palace? Is it defensive? Is it a fortress? I mean, it's so high. You know, you need the coca leaves and all that. Well, it's not that high.

In some ways, it's lower than Cusco. Right. Cusco is punishing. So Cusco is 3,400. I can't actually remember where it is, but it's a bit lower than that. It is nonetheless on a hill. So it's a magnificent location with the sort of river going around it. And it was meant to be beautiful and stylish and have an impact.

Although there is a sort of wall around it, it's probably not defensive as such. It's thought to have been Pachacuti, the ninth emperor, who's credited with this idea of expanding. And I mean, the problem is that he probably rewrites history, but nonetheless, he gets credited with an awful lot of what happens.

All the best skull drinkers do. That's what they do. Basically, it's probably a part of his royal estate. There's agricultural terraces, although probably not producing a huge amount actually at Machu Picchu. But what people do is called the Inca Trail now, starting from Patayacta. And that area was a vast area of agricultural production. So the estate itself was producing an awful lot of stuff. But Machu Picchu is the sort of elite hub of that. It was

a religious area. So there are lots of structures that have very significant religious purposes, viewing to the stars and things. One stone that mirrors the mountain behind it was first excavated, found, if you like, or brought to world attention by Hiram Bingham, who is one of the potential models for Indiana Jones. They claim that it's sort of lots of occupied by women.

In fact, they probably get the osteology of the bones wrong because actually we now know that there's much more men there. So they originally said lots of women. Actually, that's probably much more balanced than it was originally. And you mentioned religious sites, religious rituals a little bit there. But we should also talk about the rituals involving the dead. Do you know about mummification in Inca society, Sue? Have you ever heard about it?

I've heard of mummification, but not specifically to do with Inca society and what the significance of wrapping a loved one in multiple bandages or cloth would be. Yeah, well, bandages is the Egyptian technique. Obviously, that's the one we know from Hollywood and horror movies, obviously. In Inca society, mummification is different in the technique, obviously that's the one we know from Hollywood and horror movies, obviously. In Inca society mummification is different in the technique, but also the dead continue to be

functioning society. They're consulted. They are absolutely central to Inca society. So although you have died, your body continues to be a living entity in the world. And in fact the Inca mummy was held as still owning things. Past Incas still had estates.

So Machu Picchu may still have been Pachacuti's estate, even though he is dead. And so exactly how they were mummified, we don't have any elite mummies surviving. I just love the phrase elite mummies. I'm going to have to try and find a way of using that. We'll find a way to do it. You pop down to Harrods and get one of your elite mummies, please.

Didn't he want to be mummified in the Egyptian way and hung from the clock like a pendulum? Muhammad Al-Fayed? Yeah. As a final two fingers to the establishment. Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher, he wanted his corpse to be used as it is in society.

So he still sits in councils. But I guess the ink got there first. Actually, it's very like what Bentham was thinking of in as much as the mummy carries on in society as a useful thing, if you like, and as an owner. So we don't know exactly how they were mummified. There were accounts of early Spanish

seeing some of them and saying how well how they were mummified. There were accounts of early Spanish seeing some of them and saying how well preserved they were. What we do know is that they played a crucial role. So there are accounts of Pedro Pizarro, for instance, who went into Cusco very early on, of the Inca mummies in the plaza and people giving them drinks and sweeping away flies but looking after them.

Don't rehydrate a mummy. And famously, Pedro Pizarro was going with one of the local indigenous military captains to help him get a marriage with a local indigenous elite woman and goes in to ask for permission for this and finds out that he's asking permission from the mummy. That it's the mummy that has to give permission. And the mummy has an interpreter luckily that is able to explain what is required. But it's the

mummy that he is asking permission from. So you have to ask the dad's permission but the dad is a mummy. Yeah. Mummy is daddy. Daddy is mummy. Mummy and daddy. Mummy and mummy. Sue, would you be happy to sit on political councils, visit other corpses, give permission for marriages and even guest on this podcast after nature has taken its course? We're called You're Dead to Me.

Oh, I mean. Can we keep booking you? Absolutely. And the great news is my agent will keep hoovering her 20%. She will, cannot, whether I am living or dead, as long as those residuals keep rolling in. It's absolutely fine with her. The key question I think we probably do have to ask because you said at the beginning Aztecs and Inca, are they similar?

I think the thing that people often imagine is ritual sacrifices. What do you think the Inca position was on ritual sacrifice of living people? So far you've told me they're mainly vegetarian. Pretty mellow about just sharing goods and resources

and division of labour. There's no great warring tribes. I understand that there's a warrior sort of caste, as it were. But I think they're lovers and weavers rather than sacrifices. Apart from Pachacuti, obviously. Yeah, but every great society needs one skull drinker. And maybe he takes one for the team. They do go in for ritual sacrifice.

They're not nearly as committed to it. They're probably much less than the Aztecs. So they do have human sacrifice in certain circumstances, particularly at the moment, isn't it the best time when you've got a new king coming in? That's the right time for a good sacrifice. So they took usually young people up to the top of mountains and

left there to die or whatever and they become a sacrifice on the mountains and sometimes on islands and things like that. But they're probably fairly small numbers so they're, Capicocha's these these offerings we've only got a very small number they're not on sort of when i think of the sacrifices of the aztecs they're in temples they're on stone kind of altars there's a sacrificial blade the blood ripping out of the heart they don't do that no so they're tied to a mountainside essentially and they are just starved

to death they're not tied again we need to and they are just starved to death. They're not tied, again we need to take it with a pinch of salt, but according to the ethno-historic accounts they went willingly. They were taken into Cusco to be vetted and part of major ceremonies so these have been discovered archaeologically they're not sort of damaged

in fact one or two are damaged by lightning later on. Oh wow! Blimey! You know the fact that they went up to the mountain was probably in relation to lightning. Because lightning was another Andean deity. So you say they go willingly, potentially this is a, to do this as an act of great dignity and privilege and prestige almost. But obviously it's still a young person. And so we've got sort of accounts of sometimes this being sort of elite women or daughters of elite families. Sounds about right, guys.

Well, we can think whether it is or two. They would have justified it that way. OK. Well, I mean, the fascinating stuff. But I think we've got to really the end of the Incan Empire. So how does the empire collapse? Collapse is maybe not the right word. Conquered, Spanish? Well, it is conquered and it happens fairly quickly.

So 1531, the Spanish arrive. By 1530, very rapidly, the Tsar gets up and captures Atahualpa, who is by that stage the Zapinca. Persuades him to give lots of treasures for his ransom, but then kills him anyway. Ah, classic. As ever, there are some disgruntled indigenous communities that are actually helping. The Spanish numbers were so small, they could not have conquered the Andes without the help of other Andean people. That rapidly causes the collapse of the political system. Interestingly enough, you know, there are accounts of some of the store systems carrying on

for 10 years or so afterwards. So some parts of the administration and organisation carried on after the sort of collapse of the political system, but very rapidly the Spanish take control. One of the key factors within this is probably disease, because the European diseases are wiping out large numbers of indigenous people. And the last Inca ruler is Tupamarú? Tupamarú. Who's in 1572. So that's actually 40 years after. So first of all, they get a sort of puppet Inca. He then sort of rebels against the Spanish

and goes and sets up a sort of an enclave in Vilcabamba down below Machu Picchu in the jungle that basically keeps sort of the Inca lineage alive. And it's eventually when the Spanish manage to conquer Vilcabamba that they bring Tupac Amaro up and kill him in Cusco. Right. So 1572 is sort of the absolute end point. But 1530s is really when the Spanish show up and everything ends. The nuance window!

This is where Sue and I sit quietly and chew, well, I'll chew alpaca jerky. You're having the vegetarian option. Yeah, I love lots of cocoa leaves. Absolutely. While Professor Bill tells us something that we need to know about the Inca. So you have two minutes, Bill.

My stopwatch is ready. Please, the Nuance Window, take it away. Well, I think the first thing to say is, of course, the Inca are coming after a lot of development in the Andes, 10,000 years or so of people up there. There have been other major societies, Nazca, Moche, Chimu, Tiwanaku. The Wari Empire, which lasted longer

and covered quite a lot of a similar area of the Inca, only collapsed about 1,000 in the Common Era. So the Inca emerge after that. And that's quite important in terms of the fact that the Inca actually are picking up on quite a lot of things that pre-exist them. We think of the Inca's greatest legacy in many ways as things like their architecture of Cusco and Machu Picchu, Ollantaytambo, Pachacamac. Actually, it was this organisation of labour. The fact that they could get people to work together and construct terrace systems and canal systems and road systems

that covered this vast area. And much of that is still being used. So the agricultural productivity of the Inca is something that is still there now. And they invested heavily in developing some of these areas, areas like Cochabamba, which were low occupation areas that are now a booming sort of area of agricultural production. And they are covering this large area. And that's one of the other inheritances, I guess, is this idea of the shared identity that the Inca create, which, you

know, you've now got people in Chile, in Argentina, in Bolivia, in Colombia, in Ecuador, and in Peru, that all are picking up on aspects of Inca identity, as well as other aspects of their indigenous identity as an aspect of pride. Within that, I think we've got to do things like potatoes. You know, the crops that are being produced in the Andes are vital to our own society. We would not exist the way we do if we did not have the potato. It is a major contributor to world nutrition. So that idea of landscape management and use of the land, I think, is one of the main things that we should be thinking about in terms of the Inca,

as well as the beauty of their places, that we can now go and visit Ollantaytambo, Cusco, Machu Picchu. Amazing. Thank you, Bill. Thoughts on that, Sue? You're right. Let's boil it down to the potato at the end. It was a magnificent civilisation, but yeah, we've got the Inca gold, the real Inca gold, which is the spud. You're right. Where would we be? Such a massive, it's a bomb, a flavour bomb of excellent minerals and vitamins and stuff.

But obviously it wasn't eaten in Europe for a long time. When they first brought it in, Gaspar Buha said it when they first saw the spud in the 1500s. He was like, this causes leprosy and flatulence and erections. That's a busy trio, isn't it? So what do you know now? All right, it's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for a panicking Sue Perkins to see how much she has learned.

I mean, Sue, you've been taking a few notes. You've been asking great questions. You were very demure in saying, I don't need notes. And then we started talking and you went, actually. Yeah, well, some of the words are quite complicated. I'm going to try and not refer to them and I will... No, no, you've done very well. We've got ten questions for you.

Are you feeling confident? No. OK, well, let's see how much you can remember. Question one. In the Inca creation story, what did Manco Capac's siblings transform into to mark out the territory around Cusco? Stones.

It was stones, that's right, because Cusco means stone. Question two. Ruling for over 30 years, which dangerous Inca leader was responsible for the greatest territorial expansion and for using human skin as a drum? Pachacuti. It was Pachacuti, the Inca Iapancay. Question three. What was the quipu system of communication? This was knots strung along a single line, I think.

Yeah, encoding information in knots, which is extraordinary. Question four. Besides farming, women often performed the most encoding information in knots, which is extraordinary. Question four. Besides farming, women often perform the most dominant craft in Incan society. What was it? Weaving. It was weaving. Question five.

What was the name of the Incan sun god? Inti. It was Inti. Question six. In addition to farming, fishing and guinea pig munching, Inca produced meat by herding which two species of camelids? What was the next? Hang on.

The llama and the alpaca. Yeah, very good. Question seven. Which animal was the royal capital Cusco designed in the shape of? Puma. You didn't need the hint, did you? You knew. Puma. Question eight.

According to one Spanish chronicler, drinking which liquid was a form of punishment in Inca society? Water. Yes. Question nine. Which surprisingly chatty group did Inca rulers have to consult about important political decisions? Chatty group?

They're surprisingly chatty because they were... Oh, the mummies. Yeah, that's right. They were dead. That's a good question. And this for a perfect ten. In which decade did the Spanish arrive in Peru, bringing about the eventual end of the Inca Empire?

The 1530s. Ten out of ten, Sue Perkins. Never in doubt. No notes consulted. Listener, it's important for you to know that. Sue did not look down once. Mainly my notes are ha ha ha, brother salt, ha ha ha, chilli? Question mark.

That's mainly it and lots of doodling. Which, yeah, I do. Not because I wasn't interested, but it's a sort of natural response. But that was amazing. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Thank wasn't interested, but it's a sort of natural response. But that was amazing. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Thank you. Well, pleasure.

And once again, Sue, you've absolutely aced it in the quiz. Thank you so much, Bill, for sharing your knowledge. Thank you. That's really, really interesting. And listener, if after today you want to hear more from Madam Perkins, you can check out our episodes on Istanbul in the Ottoman Golden Age and Agatha Christie. Both fascinating and very different episodes.

But I enjoyed them both immensely. And for more Mesoamerican history, we've got an episode on the Aztecs, which was all the way back in Series 1. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends, subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In Archaeology Corner, we had the brilliant Professor Bill Sillar

from University College London. Thank you, Bill. Thank you very much. It's been fun. And in Comedy Corner, we have the sensational Sue Perkins. Thank you, Sue. Thank you. I'm off to now smash the potatoes underfoot freeze dry them. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we unravel another knotty historical topic. But for now, I'm off to join Sue in asking HMRC if I can knit my tax bill and weave it into blankets. Bye! This episode of You're Dead to Me was researched by Andrew Himmelberg. It was written by Andrew Himmelberg, Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, Emma Neguse and me. The audio producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Caitlin Hobbs. It was produced by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer Emma Neguse and our executive editor was Chris Ledgerd. The commissioning editor was Rhian Roberts.

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