Original subtitles

[narrator] South America, in the 15th century.

They appear out of nowhere.

Within just a few decades,

they build the largest empire in the world:

the Incas.

In Europe, there is talk of a country with fabulous gold deposits,

somewhere in the Andes.

Worshipped by his people as a divine king,

the Inca rules over an empire of ten million people,

from the steep highlands of the Andes

to the deserts of the Peruvian coast.

This culture appears mysterious and strange.

Many things still raise questions

and puzzle researchers even today.

Who were these extraordinary people?

The rulers saw themselves

as sons of the sun.

They believed their empire would last forever,

until the arrival of Spanish conquistadors

suddenly changed everything.

This is the conquistador Francisco Pizarro.

He will not give up until he has found the country "Biru,"

with its fabulous gold treasures,

but, in May of the year 1527, the situation seems hopeless

when he disembarks at the beach of the Isla Gallo

in the north of South America.

He has lost many of his men. The survivors are exhausted.

Their greed for gold has long since given way

to the naked fight for survival.

A new supply ship is supposed to save them,

then he wants to make one final attempt.

The Spaniard has no idea what is awaiting him in the new world:

the Inca Empire, the most powerful and largest state on the continent.

Its success story begins in the 15th century,

with someone who wants to change the world...

[atmospheric flute music playing]

...Pachacutec.

As a victorious commander, he takes over power

and proclaims his divine rank as the son of the sun god, Inti,

a descent, which, from then on,

all Inca rulers will claim for themselves.

With breathtaking speed, their empire expands.

The Incas subdue over 200 tribes.

Soon, they rule over an empire of ten million people,

boldly, mercilessly, and effectively.

[male voice] Inca armies were incredibly numerous in terms of soldiers.

50,000, 100,000, and even more in certain cases,

so it was a huge strength.

The most successful Inca ruler and conqueror is probably Tupac Yupanqui,

Pachacutec's son,

who has conquered tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands of kilometers squared.

You can compare him to Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great,

both for the size of what he has conquered

and the quickness of his conquest.

[narrator] In just 80 years, the Incas conquer an area

that stretches from present-day Chile and Argentina

across the entire length of the Andes to Ecuador.

A gigantic road network,

with two main and many secondary routes runs through the empire.

At its intersection,

the capital Cuzco with the Coricancha, the golden temple of the sun,

a place that the Incas proclaimed the "navel of the world."

To this day, the Inca are surrounded by an aura of mystery.

Written evidence of their culture and history

has only been handed down from the time of Francisco Pizarro.

What caused their meteoric rise? What role did their rulers play?

Once again, Pachacutec returns to the capital from a victorious campaign.

He is celebrated like a god.

He believes himself to be almighty, superhuman,

inviolable as a ruler,

and this is how his subjects see him:

they are not even allowed to look their divine king in the eyes.

[Eeckhout] When a new Inca accessed the throne, he changed of essence.

He was not a human being anymore,

he was the son of Inti, the sun god,

which makes him a kind of god himself, or semi-god.

He could speak to the god and to the other Huacas,

which was very important for maintaining balance in the world.

In anthropology, we call this kind of a ruler

a divine ruler, the divine kingship,

which is very different from, for instance, a European monarch,

who ruled by divine grace, but not by divine descent.

[narrator] Three rows of walls, made of granite blocks

weighing several tons, piled up to 12 meters high,

cut and polished by thousands of workers and transported here from quarries.

Today, the temple complex Sacsayhuamán above Cuzco

is a unique testimony to the Inca architecture.

[female voice] Yes, there are many secrets surrounding Sacsayhuamán.

There is still very little known about the place.

We don't know how they were able to move these large stone blocks

and put them on top of each other.

[narrator] Built without cement and mortar,

the stones are so perfectly anchored in the walls

that not even a knife blade would fit in between,

custom-made for an impenetrable bulwark,

which also served as a place of worship,

or was intended as such from the very beginning.

[Silva] Pachacutec wanted to show the power of the Incas,

the power of religion, the power of the gods.

It was created as an enormous ritual place in Coricancha.

It had a giant, spectacular gathering place

with walls that displayed the deities,

like, for example, lightning, water, or the puma.

[narrator] The mysterious combination of the spiritual and the profane,

of domination and religion,

seems to be common practice among the Incas.

All across the empire, they erect new buildings,

often in extremely inaccessible places.

[epic music playing]

But what purpose these gigantic buildings

served has not yet been fully clarified.

Why all these efforts?

And why here, of all places?

Today, researchers assume that architectural marvels,

such as the legendary royal palace of Machu Picchu,

reflect, above all, the religious beliefs of the Incas,

going back as far as their founding myths.

In the beginning, it is said,

there was only darkness and chaos,

until the creator created the stars,

the moon and the sun.

The sun god, Inti, chose the Incas as his children.

As Inti's son, the Inca was to rule on earth

and turn disorder into order,

just like the creator in the sky.

The powerful sun cult is the backbone of their state ideology.

The rulers actions are based on the old myths.

[rhythmic drumming]

[male voice] The Inca developed an Andean culture

that has the concept of the huaca .

It's a special place: springs, rocks, mountains, streams, and so forth,

and each one of these were imbued with certain power

and then the Inca took that concept

and they made it a little more sophisticated

and they turned it into a state religion

that, in their view, justified their conquest of the Andes.

[narrator] Huacas: this is what the Incas

call their mighty natural sanctuaries,

which, for them, are present everywhere in their empire,

like landmarks of the gods.

About 100 kilometers away from Machu Picchu,

the old Inca city of Clhoquequirao rises

at an altitude of more than 3,000 meters.

Pachacutec had its temples and palaces

partly hewn vertically into the rocks.

It has long been assumed that a holy place was the decisive factor

for the choice of the location.

When the first archeologists uncovered

the terraces on the western steep slope

in the 1970s, an unexpected mosaic appeared.

24 llama figures, with white slate inserted into the stone walls.

Yacana, the Lama, is considered a holy animal by the Incas

and they even see it in the sky as a constellation.

Pachacutec had left nothing to chance

at this location.

In addition, he had a whole mountaintop removed

and transformed into a huge platform,

making it possible to oversee the wide panorama of the mountains.

[Eeckhout] They choose specific places with sacred mountains

and they adapted the architecture to the nature

and not imposing architecture on nature, which is very different.

This is what we call "landscape architecture."

You have examples at Machu Picchu, you have examples at Choquequirao.

When everywhere you look, you see, wow, this is a wonderful point of view,

this is also, this is also!

This is because it has been felt that way by the Incas

in order to worship this environment and to create a kind of scenario

for the Emperor himself, as the center of the ceremonies,

to communicate with all this landscape.

[narrator] Astronomical calculations have shown

that, in Choquequirao, at the summer solstice,

the sun rises exactly behind the Yanacocha glacier worshipped by the Incas.

1470: The Incas conquer one state after the other.

Their next destination:

the coastal kingdom of the Chimu, with its metropolis, Chan Chan.

[chanting in foreign language]

Their approach follows the simple strategy:

cooperation or war, submission or death.

It starts with a peaceful takeover bid.

Precious gifts are presented to the Chimu king.

In return, the Incas demand buildings for their administration,

craftsmen, and men for military services as tribute.

In view of the military superiority of the Incas,

many tribal chiefs submit to the Inca.

They exchange their power for the privileges offered.

However, their hitherto independent rule is absorbed into the Inca Empire.

The expansion of the Incas meant the suppression and destruction of societies

that lived autonomously and had developed independently until then.

The invasion stopped this development

and turned these peoples into tribute payers.

The tribute was the decisive social motivation for the Incas

to conquer foreign peoples.

[narrator] Miguel Conecho has lead the excavations

in the Chimu city of Chan Chan for over 20 years.

He discovered how rigidly the Incas dealt with peoples

who did not cooperate with them.

The Chimu, famous for their architecture and craftsmanship,

were a rich people with a centuries-old high culture

when Inca Tupac Yupanqui began to besiege their capital around 1470.

For ten years, the Chimu resisted,

then, the Incas cut off the water supply.

In the end, the proud Chimu had no choice

but to bow their heads before the Incas.

[Conecho] The Incas had great interest in the Chimu kingdom,

because they had specialists.

They had goldsmiths, ceramists, and great builders.

Chan Chan is an example of their great architecture.

From the beginning, the Incas intended

to relocate these specialists for their own purposes.

[narrator] The goldsmiths of the subjugated Chimu

are brought to Cuzco to gild palaces and temples with their skills.

Today, there are hardly any gold objects from the Inca period left.

Only artifacts of the previous cultures give us an impression

of what the legendary Inca gold might have looked like.

Their greatest treasure, the most precious sanctuary in the whole country

for the Inca and his people, is the Coricancha, Cuzco's main temple.

The massive golden sun disk in its interior

represents the earthly manifestation of the sun god, Inti.

Here, the ruler holds a dialogue with the gods.

Gold was a symbol for the sun. It had no material value.

This can also be seen from the fact that it was called "tears of the sun"

and it was always used to worship or represent the sun.

That's why the inside of the sun temple was lined with gold plates.

The Inca ruler, who himself was the son of the sun, ate from golden dishes.

The Inca nobles, who were also descendants of the sun,

were allowed to wear golden jewelry, which were forbidden to other people.

[narrator] When an Inca king died, his power was far from broken.

As an immortal deity, he lived on in the community.

His mummy was an indispensable advisor for the living.

Thus, the great founder of the empire, Pachacutec,

remains present after his death

as a divine mediator between the worlds.

[whispering in foreign language]

[narrator] These mummies still had their servants who dressed and fed them.

They accompanied the living Inca ruler on

his journeys and took part in festivals.

Tupac Yupanqui will also commit himself to this tradition

as the successor of his father

and, for him, too, the advice from the hereafter

will be a decisive guide in his conquests.

[Stanish] The Inca had a very, very special kind of inheritance system

where the new emperor did not inherit the wealth,

but he inherited the mechanisms of power of the empire

and the new emperor had to go out and get new territory,

otherwise he could not provide for his faction.

The old emperor owned the old territory,

his mummy, the actual mummy,

was the owner of the previous conquest

and, as long as this mummy existed,

his clan, his group had access to that wealth.

[narrator] To break the magic of the dead,

the Spaniards were later to burn the mummies of all the rulers,

in the eyes of the Inca people, an unbelievable regicide.

Mortal remains of less prominent people

have been preserved for research,

and provide insights into

the medical abilities of the early Andean cultures.

Numerous finds in the Archeological Museum of Lima

show elaborate surgical procedures, including even skull openings,

the trepanations.

The special thing about this specimen is the opening of the skull,

which is quite shocking to us.

The skull shows that this person must have suffered a trauma

at some point in his life.

Healers then apparently took action.

First, they scratched the skull bone thinner and thinner,

until they reached the last layer that covers the brain,

then they also cut through this layer to release the pressure.

[foreboding music playing]

[narrator] Artfully closed and healed,

some patients seem to have survived this procedure.

By examining skulls and mummies,

experts in Lima try to reconstruct individual medical histories.

This man, for example, had been operated on before his death.

He was between 30 and 40 years old and was corpulent,

as his wrinkled skin proves.

An oyster shell was placed on his chest,

a burial gift that only wealthy people were allowed to have.

[Briceño] We can still see the badly-healed skin on the bones.

I think this person didn't survive

and died from the complications of the surgery.

[narrator] Tupac Yupanqui seems to have

followed the advice of his father's mummy.

Indeed, his campaign to the north was successful.

Now, he moves along the coastal road to Pachacamac,

the next region he wants to annex to his growing empire.

This place was holy even to the pre-Inca cultures,

because there's a powerful oracle here in the desert.

Now, its magical attraction is meant to serve the new ruler.

Researchers from a Belgian-Peruvian joint project

have been working here for 20 years.

They want to find out what significance this sacred site had

for the people before and during the Inca period.

For excavation director Peter Eeckhout, the terrain is a rare treasure trove.

[Eckhout] Pachacamac is a huge site

that was occupied during more than 1,000 years when the Incas arrive.

It was the seat of the sanctuary of a powerful god,

which was called Pachacamac,

and which was a creator god and also an oracle,

and Pachacamac holds a special place in the cosmology of the Incas,

the way they were seeing the world.

[narrator] Archeological investigations show

that the Incas preserved the old cult,

but on the conditions of the victor.

On the highest point on the complex,

they built a sun temple for their main god, Inti,

which, from then on,

towered over the oracle temple of the local god, Pachacamac.

Thus, the balance of power was clear.

The oracle of Pachacamac lives in a crypt down below,

in the painted temple from the pre-Inca period.

Strict rules apply here.

No one but the priest may enter the interior of the temple.

[shouts in foreign language]

[majestic music playing]

[Eeckhout] The priest drunk a psychotropic beverage

and had hallucinations, sound and also visions,

and so, in that state, which is called Hutirayay, which means furiousness,

he entered the crypt of the idol, which was in total darkness.

[narrator] In a trance, he makes contact with the god...

but to look into Pachacamac's wooden eyes is forbidden to him.

One God, with two sides and faces,

Pachacamac sees into the future and into the past,

he connects the universal opposites.

The Incas also believe

this is how the present and the living world is created.

This holy place has completely been taken over by the Incas.

Wall finds give the researchers rare insights into the events of that time.

The remains in the current excavation section

once belonged to an administrative institution of the Incas,

but then the archeologists bring to light

bones from a much older burial ground.

[Eeckhout] When the Incas constructed it, there were tombs here, but old tombs,

so the Incas didn't care and they disturbed the tombs,

so, as you can see it, there is lots of bones not in their position,

disturbed by the Incas, who showed no respect

for these people that were not their ancestors.

[narrator] Then, Peter Eeckhout and his team make another sensational find.

These are objects, the likes of which

have never been excavated in Pachacamac before.

In the nearby excavation archive, a penguin becomes everybody's darling.

Over the years, the experts have collected numerous unusual objects here,

all of them precious offerings

brought here by pilgrims from their distant homeland.

Colorful feathers from the Amazon,

filigree fabrics,

vessels decorated with shells.

[Eeckhout] The objects that we find are made from materials

that come from very far away,

so, this is proof that the Incas had succeeded

in making this site something very important

and the pilgrimage has known a very important boom at this time.

Thousands of people were coming a year to Pachacamac.

[narrator] The Incas turned Pachacamac into the Mecca of the Andes.

That's how they brought one of the continent's most sacred sites

under their control.

In order to keep the many conquered tribes

under the direct rule of the Inca in check,

hard rules apply to the simple subjects.

They must not only produce food for the community,

their labor must also be available for the Incas at all times.

Everywhere in the country,

administrative and tax centers are established

to handle the tribute payments.

Since the Inca didn't use money, the taxes are paid in kind.

The tribute is meticulously registered by knot experts.

They are the powerful data guardians of the Inca Empire.

[speaking in foreign language]

[narrator] Using an ingenious system of colored strings

on which knots are arranged, the so-called quipus,

they produce highly-complex statistics

for all matters of the state.

[Barrera] The quipu was very important for the Inca Empire.

Because there was no written documentation,

the empire needed a way for the administration to record things.

An empire cannot function if it has no data on taxes, production, or census.

[narrator] Even before the Incas,

the Andean peoples used knotted cords as information carriers,

but it was the Incas who used them as a governmental regulation,

as a perfect system for bookkeeping

and an instrument of their bureaucracy.

Lined up on a head cord,

each knot on the individual cords

represents a certain numerical value.

Depending on its position and the way it is tied,

it stands for thousands, hundreds and tens: a perfect database.

The royal quipu is a showpiece.

It summarized information from smaller quipus,

intended for the central quipu archive in Cuzco.

[Barrera] The quipu are still a mystery to us.

From Spanish chronicles, we know that the Incas could tell stories with them.

They contained historical information,

which unfortunately have all been lost.

We don't know how to read the quipu and don't understand these stories.

[narrator] The art of reading and weaving quipu

was reserved only for a small elite.

They were the guardians of all collected information

and, probably for this reason,

they were among the most powerful men in the state.

[speaking in foreign language]

Runners take over the transport of the quipus.

Through their well-organized relay system,

they bridge even long distances

in the network of Inca roads

in the shortest time.

They also delivered important oral messages.

[thunder rumbling]

1493.

Inca Tupac Yupanqui, the great conqueror,

is dead.

For one year, the people will mourn their dead ruler.

At every full and new moon night,

the community performs the cult of the dead.

It symbolizes the guidance

for the soul of the deceased,

which sets out on a journey beyond space and time

to the world of the ancestors.

Their transformation shall take place,

nourished by drink-, smoke- and blood sacrifices.

Tupac Yupanquis' successor, the new Inca, Wayna Capac,

was soon to face an unexpected disaster.

900 kilometers west of Cusco,

one hole next to the other, in rows of four,

a mile and a half in length,

that's why this mysterious structure

is called "Band of Holes."

It seems to stretch endlessly up the ridge of Monte Sierpe.

[Stanish] I got a phone call from a fellow from the United States, who said:

"What do you think of that site called Band of Holes?"

And I'd never heard of it before,

so, next time I was working here,

Henry and I came up and we looked around and said,

we really have no idea what's going on. This is a great mystery.

[narrator] This strange formation fascinated the archeologist.

Charles Stanish counted a good 5,000 holes.

At irregular intervals,

they are repeatedly interrupted in their arrangement.

They seem to form individual sections.

What were they used for?

Each individual hole is fastened at the edges with stones,

the diameter is about one meter

and they are half- to one meter deep.

[Stanish] What's so special about this site is, it's unique in the Andes.

There has never been anything like this described

and that would be odd, because there is plenty of deserts, so...

this makes it unique and it really doesn't conform to anything

we've ever really discovered before.

[narrator] The archeologists are puzzled:

Could these holes have been the units of measurement for the local tax office?

Only four kilometers to the east

lies the former Inca settlement of Tambo Colorado.

Strategically located on the road to the highlands,

the city serves as an administrative center,

the headquarters of the tax authorities,

and as a military base.

The idea that, in the vicinity of such a town,

there might also have been a counting point

for the recording of agricultural yields

does not seem to be made up out of thin air.

[Stanish] Tambo Colorado is ideally situated

and the "Band of Holes" is where the valley becomes very narrow

and it's right where people will come up when the agriculture was over.

It's on the road and so, to me, my interpretation is

that Tambo Colorado is intimately connected

to the "Band of Holes" as an accounting device.

[narrator] Each hole a measure of filling for the agricultural tributes?

Or were astronomers and spiritual grandmasters

rather than bureaucrats at work here?

Some believe that the huge image of a snake,

a sacred power animal for the Incas,

was created here, with a lot of effort.

Beyond the deserts,

every free spot in the Inca Empire is used for agriculture.

Yield increase is key,

because, for the growing population and the huge army,

ever larger reserves have to be stored.

The expansion of agriculture is therefore systematically promoted.

New, high-yielding, varieties are bred.

The Incas cultivate 3,500 different potato varieties

and about 250 different varieties

of cereals and vegetables,

such as beans and corn,

regardless of the sometimes dizzying heights.

"Andenes," the word for terraces,

still gives the mountain range its name today.

With hundreds of thousands of them, the Incas transform steep slopes

into cultivated land.

They specifically focus on

studying the best growing conditions for their crops.

Apparently, the Incas successfully tested

earth from a different region of their empire

at each level at the terraces of Moray.

The farmers achieved harvest surpluses

and stored reserves for emergencies,

but, they are not prepared for

the disaster that is about to befall them.

November, 1527.

[Inca man] They are people who can surely be nothing but gods,

because they claim to have come with the wind.

They are bearded, very beautiful

and very white people...

they eat from silver plates and even their animals, large animals

which carry them, have silver shoes.

[narrator] When the Inca Wayna Capac

receives the news of the arrival of strangers

at the border of his empire,

he has no idea of the dramatic events that will soon take place.

For him, the son of the sun,

the newcomers cannot possibly be a threat.

[man speaks in foreign language]

After months of waiting on the Isla Gallo,

Pizarro's reinforcements have finally arrived,

although fewer men than expected.

Now, he dares a first exploration on the mainland.

As it happens, he actually meets locals who offer nothing less

than gold for a trade

and he is told that there is supposed to be much, much more of it...

inland, in the mountains.

Now, Pizarro knows where he is heading.

His finest hours are about to come.

[Stanish] What happened was, the Spaniards arrived,

and the Inca saw them as dirty, useless, it wasn't even a threat.

They did not see them as a threat,

in fact the Inca Empire collapsed largely on the hubris

of the Inca emperor, who ignored that threat for too long.

[narrator] In the years before the arrival of the Spaniards,

in the heart of the Inca Empire, its ruler had other concerns.

Rebellions in the North challenge Wayna Capac.

He strikes them down, but one trouble spot remains.

So Quito is to become the second capital,

because his bitterest enemies occupy the territory between Quito and Cuzco.

Chachapoyas, "fog warriors,"

that is what the Inca call the rebels from the rainforest,

whose land they conquered, but whose people they could never completely defeat.

[suspenseful music playing]

Gran Pajaten, wrested from the wilderness

and reconstructed according to archeological findings:

no straight lines and no right angles.

Unlike the Incas and all other Andean peoples,

the Chachapoyas build round houses for their warriors,

which they decorate with zigzag and lozenge patterns.

They bury their princes near the clouds in the sky

as upright guardians of the mountains.

How they managed to place the elaborate clay sarcophagi

on the steep slopes

often remains a mystery...

but one thing is certain:

the Chachapoya developed an independent high culture

long before the arrival of the Incas and became masters of the vertical.

Their mighty mountain fortress, Kuelap,

as it probably once looked from a distance,

surrounded by walls eight meters high

and 600 meters long,

it is even larger than Machu Picchu

and, as a fortification, appears simply impregnable,

but things must have turned out differently.

In 2008, 80 skeletons are discovered here,

all men, all carelessly buried in the earth.

Many bones show signs of battle.

Were they Chachapoya warriors,

who were taken by surprise by the Incas in Kuelap?

Even the huge fortress was probably not to be held against the superiority

of a huge Inca army.

After decades of wars, of conquest,

the Inca Empire is at the zenith of its power.

Insurgent peoples are punished, others are controlled by alliances,

but, suddenly, an enemy appears who cannot be defeated by armies.

Silently and invisibly, it sneaks into the country.

From Mexico, it reaches Peru long before the conquistadors.

Measles, smallpox, flu:

tens of thousands of Indians die of these unknown epidemics.

Their immune systems were unable to fight them off...

and the epidemics do not stop even before the Inca Wayna Capac.

His empire plunges into its deepest crisis.

[female voice] In the ancient Peruvian cultures,

illness is always a sign that the universe has lost its balance,

and this balance must be restored.

Since their religion is largely dominated by rituals of sacrifice,

they turn to sacrificial offerings.

When something as serious as the illness or death of an Inca happens,

the universe is turned upside down.

That means you have to sacrifice the most valuable thing there is:

people or children, because they are life itself.

[narrator] The volcanic mountain Llullaillaco in today's Argentina.

In 1999,

the American-Argentinean research team around Johan Reinhard

sets off for the summit of one of the holiest mountains of the Incas.

At an altitude of almost 7,000 meters,

they unexpectedly discover sacrificial sites

and the bodies of three children.

Ice-cold and extremely dry mountain air

have preserved the children's bodies

in their graves, as natural mummies.

Further finds reveal:

these are children who the Incas sacrificed here 500 years ago in a ritual.

Why did they have to die?

[female voice] It was really one of the greatest discoveries of the decade.

The state of conservation of these mummies was amazing.

They were like little kids sleeping,

as if just about to wake,

so, I think it was one of the greatest moments for an archeologist

to see these little kids that are messengers from the past.

[bird screeches]

[narrator] According to the Inca faith, these children were chosen ones.

Children who were sacrificed to the gods in the holy Capacocha ritual

for the good of the ruler and the state.

One year before their sacrificial death,

the lives of these children begin to change.

They are picked up from their homes dressed in valuable clothes

and richly decorated with holy feathers.

[Browning] Capacocha was the most important ceremony for Inca culture.

It was an honor for their families

if one of the kids of the family was chosen.

They must laugh, they must be happy,

because these children were going to be gods.

[narrator] High dignitaries accompany them to Cuzco,

their first stop on their very long journey.

The children of Llullaillaco have found their final resting place

in the cold chambers of the Museo Arqueologíca

in Salta, Argentina.

Unexpected details came to light when their mummies were examined.

The little boy was named "El Niño."

Selected feathers for his headdress marked him out as the chosen one.

He was seven years old, well-fed, and,

as hair analysis showed,

he had been regularly administered cocaine

and alcohol before his sacrificial death,

as had the six- and fifteen-year-old girls.

They had spent several days in Cuzco with hundreds of other children,

in a ritual the Inca had determined

at which of the country's shrines they should be sacrificed.

On a final journey, they then traveled for almost a year

until they reached the place of their destination.

Miniatures and figures modeled on high-ranking Incas

were to accompany them on their way to the gods.

These are burial objects found by researchers in various children's graves.

[Browning] We believe that the children were alive

when they get to the summit of the Llullaillaco volcano.

They were put into these little tombs

and they died there,

because they were asleep,

because of this chicha that was in their bodies

and because of the coldness and the low pressure,

they just get asleep and, slowly, they died.

Death, for them, was not an end,

it was just a beginning.

[narrator] 1,000 human beings, children and adults,

are said to have been sacrificed to the gods after Wayna Capac's death.

Wayna Capac died without naming his successor.

A bitter war of succession between his sons subsequently divides the country.

Vast areas are now almost depopulated

by disease and fratricidal warfare.

It takes five years before one of his sons

finally emerges victoriously from this cruel war.

He and his army retreat to the mountains of Cajamarca.

Atahualpa:

his time seems to have come,

but there's one thing he does not suspect:

He will be the last free Inca ruler

and soon seal the fate of the entire Inca Empire.

At about the same time, in September 1532,

Francisco Pizarro leaves the coast,

heading inland with almost 200 men...

[dramatic music playing]

...but not a trace of the much sought-after gold,

only deserted cities.

What had happened?

Can Pizarro trust the Indians to lead him to their king?

Weeks later, they reach Cajamarca.

Atahhualpa's huge army seems overpowering

and, yet, the very next day, in an unprecedented carnage,

they will bring about the historic turn in the history of the Incas.

[Eeckhout] Atahualpa was very confident in himself.

He had a huge army, but, those Spaniards arrived:

"Oh, strange, how exotic," you know,

"well, let's see what they have to do."

He never imagined for a moment

that they could try to capture him,

because he was a sacred person, nobody even looked in his eyes,

you can imagine that, but they succeeded in doing it.

[somber music playing]

[narrator] After almost a year in captivity,

Atahualpa believes he can save his life after all.

He reckons with the Spaniard's greed and proposes a deal to Pizarro.

He offers him a whole room full of gold for his freedom.

Treasures for this gigantic ransom are arriving from all over the country.

The room his subjects fill with gold

is three meters high,

but, in the end, all efforts are in vain.

Shortly afterwards, in a faked trial,

the Spaniards pass the death sentence on Atahualpa.

"It was the most disgusting thing

we Spaniards ever did in the West Indies,"

a chronicler will later accuse this regicide.

On July 26, 1533,

the strangers execute Atahualpa in his own kingdom.

At the last moment, he had himself baptized

to avoid being burned to death.

He wanted to at least save his body for the life in the hereafter.

An executioner will strangle him with the garrotte.

About 200 million euros,

that's how much the ransom money collected in vain

for Atahualpa's life would be worth today.

It is very likely that the reason for Atahualpa's,

let's call it, "execution," was fear.

Pizarro knew for sure that Atahualpa had a strong backing.

He simply saw no other possibility than to have the Inca ruler executed

in order to seize the empire.

[narrator] The Spaniards plunder the remaining gold

and destroy the holy sites throughout the entire empire

also in Pachacamac.

Many of the peoples once oppressed by the Incas

join this merciless conquest in revenge.

According to the archeologists, Pachacamac

is suddenly abandoned, shortly after the Spanish plundering.

[Eeckhout] When the Spaniards arrived, they had no fear at all.

They entered the crypt directly,

they took the idol and they smashed it in front of the crowd.

So, for all these pilgrims and the Incas and the people that were there,

it must have been very traumatic.

It was like the God has been vanquished,

or as if their god had abandoned them.

[narrator] But the city itself was not destroyed,

the buildings remained intact,

but a strange find

puzzles the archeologists.

During the excavations of a side temple

they find rooms completely littered with ceramic offerings

and the amazing thing about it:

all the vessels are broken.

The dating of these more than a hundred objects reveals:

they all date back

to the end of the Inca period.

Something enormous must have happened

and, as the reconstruction of the puzzle shows,

probably on purpose,

because the shards were spread over several rooms.

[Eeckhout] In the ancient Indian mind and for the Incas,

when you make such beautiful objects,

you give life to them,

and, when you destroy them by smashing them,

and distributing their parts all over, it's like killing them,

so it's really a farewell ceremony,

a termination ritual, as we say in archaeology,

and what is particularly pregnant and dramatic in this case

is that this heaven is the last one we have

and it's around the Spanish conquest.

[narrator] Their mighty God had failed

at the moment of greatest threat.

In a last act,

the local priests celebrate his end.

Only shards of his cult remain.

Pachacamac is abandoned by its inhabitants.

Soon, the Incas throughout the empire

have to retreat further and further

from the advancing conquistadors.

Their empire becomes part of the Spanish Kingdom

and Ollantaytambo and Vilcabamba

become the last refuge of the remaining Inca fighters.

The defenses in the mountains of Cuzco only give them a brief respite,

then, the Spanish crown takes over for good

and they are left with only a small realm in the hinterland.

40 years later, the last resistance is broken.

With the execution of the last heir of the Inca rulers,

the legendary refuge castle of Vilcabamba is also destroyed.

The sons of the sun experienced the highest ascent,

but also the deepest fall

in the history of the South American continent.

The arrival of the Spanish had changed everything.

The old order and the old faith no longer applied.

The rulers were no longer divine,

the sun was only a star.

In the sorrowful experience of foreign rule,

the people will soon begin to glorify the time of the great kings

as a utopia of a golden past

and create a myth of a legendary place

to where the last Inca fled

with the gold of their ancestors:

Paititi, the lost city deep in the jungle.

To this day, its treasures have however remained hidden

from the eyes of the seekers.

The magical world of the Andes preserves its secret.

[epic orchestral music playing]