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The Last Days of the Incas
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The Last Days of the Incas (2007) (edit title/settings)

by Kim MacQuarrie (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

In 1532, the fifty-four-year-old Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to the shores of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had defeated his brother... read more

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  • “As Atahualpa listened to the latest report about the bold yet obviously foolish invaders, intermixed with the much more interesting news arriving each day from the south, he lifted up the gilded skull of his former enemy, Atoq, the Fox, took a long cool drink from its rim of gold and bone, then turned his attention to the more pressing matters at hand.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • Amazingly, an elite of perhaps one hundred thousand ethnic Incas ultimately controlled a population of perhaps ten million individuals.
    Highlighted by 54 Kindle customers
  • Conquest, then, had little to do with adventure, but rather had everything to do with groups of men willing to do just about anything in order to avoid working for a living. Stripped down to its barest bones, the conquest of Peru was all about finding a comfortable retirement.
    Highlighted by 41 Kindle customers
  • The vast majority of Spaniards, therefore, traveled to the New World not in the employ of the king, but as private citizens hoping to acquire the wealth and status that had so eluded them at home.
    Highlighted by 37 Kindle customers
  • The Incas’ genius— like that of the Romans—lay in their masterful organizational abilities. Amazingly, an ethnic group that probably never exceeded 100,000 individuals was able to regulate the activities of roughly ten million people. This was in spite of the fact that the empire’s citizens spoke more than seven hundred local languages and were distributed among 2,500 miles of some of the most rugged and diverse terrain on earth.
    Highlighted by 31 Kindle customers
  • Conquistadors thus were not paid soldier-emissaries of a distant Spanish king, but were actually autonomous participants in a new kind of capitalist venture; in short, they were armed entrepreneurs.
    Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers
  • Beginning in about 3200 b.c.—roughly during the same period when the Egyptians were building their first pyramids—people on Peru’s northern coast began building terraced mounds alongside large plazas, ceremonial architecture, and large-scale settlements.
    Highlighted by 28 Kindle customers
  • Machu Picchu, quite simply, was Pachacuti’s Camp David—a royal resort built by a man who had almost single-handedly transformed a small native kingdom into the largest empire the New World has ever known.
    Highlighted by 28 Kindle customers
  • By a.d. 900, in the region of Lake Titicaca, for example, the Tiwanaku civilization had already flourished for more than seven hundred years, had erected giant, perfectly cut stone monoliths and temples, had forged copper tools, and had created and maintained a capital of some 25,000 to 50,000 people, located high up on the altiplano at 12,600 feet in elevation (the population of London at the time, by comparison, was less than 30,000).
    Highlighted by 28 Kindle customers
  • Today, Inca objects of gold and silver are a supreme rarity— the lion’s share having disappeared nearly five hundred years ago into the furnaces of Cajamarca.
    Highlighted by 24 Kindle customers
  • Pachacuti called his new empire Tawantinsuyu, or “the four parts united,” as he divided it into four regions: Chinchaysuyu, Cuntisuyu, Collasuyu, and Antisuyu.* The capital, Cuzco, lay at the intersection where all four suyus came together.
    Highlighted by 23 Kindle customers
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First Sentence edit see section history

THE GAUNT, THIRTY FIVE-YEAR-OLD AMERICAN EXPLORER, Hiram Bingham, clambered up the steep slope of the cloud forest, on the eastern flank of the Andes, then paused beside his peasant guide before taking off his wide-brimmed fedora and wiping the sweat from his brow.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Preface

1. The Discovery

2. A Few Hundred Well-Armed Entrepreneurs

3. Supernova of the Andes

4. When Empires Collide

5. A Roomful of Gold

6. Requiem for a King

7. The Puppet King

8. Prelude to a Rebellion

9. The Great Rebellion

10. Death in the Andes

11. The Return of the One-Eyed Conqueror

12. In the Realm of the Antis

13. Vilcabamba: Guerrilla Capital of the World

14. The Last of the Pizarros

15. The Incas' Last Stand

16. The Search for the "Lost City" of the Incas

17. Vilcabamba Rediscovered

Epilogue: Machu Picchu, Vilcabamba, and the Search for the Lost Cities of the Andes

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Kim MacQuarrie (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Country: U.S.A.
Publication Date: 2007
ISBN: 978-0743260497
Page Count: 522

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: F3442 .M33 2007
  • Dewey: 985.02

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