Original subtitles

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one day in November

15:32 the new world and the old world

collided

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168 Spaniards attacked the Imperial Army

of the Incas in the highlands of Peru

before the day was out they had

massacred 7,000 people and taken control

of the Inca temple

not a single Spanish life was lost in

the process

why was the balance of power so uneven

between old world and new and why in the

centuries that followed for europeans

the ones who conquered so much of the

globe these are questions that fascinate

professor Jared Diamond he is on a quest

to understand the loops of power

searching for clues in the most unlikely

places

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he's developed a highly original theory

that what separates the winners from the

losers is the land itself geography

it was the shape of the continents their

crops and animals that allowed some

cultures to flourish while others were

left behind

but can this way of seeing the world

shed light on the events of 1532

how can geography explain the conquest

of the world by Guns Germs and Steel

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for two years a band of Spanish

conquistadors has been traveling in

search of gold and glory

they're not professional soldiers but

mercenaries and adventurers led by a

retired Army captain Francisco Pizarro

he's already made a fortune for himself

in the colonies of Central America now

he's taking his men south into unknown

territory

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they are the first Europeans to have

climbed the Andes and ventured this far

into the continent of South America

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as they travel they find evidence of a

large native civilization they've

reached the edge of the mighty Inca

Empire for Indians and Spaniards alike

any encounter is a clash of cultures

these Indians have never seen white men

before and have no idea of the threat

they represent they can't imagine that

within a few days these strangers will

turn their world upside down

by the 1530s the Inca Empire was

enormous it stretched along the length

of the Andes from modern-day Ecuador to

central Chile a distance of two and a

half thousand miles but just five

hundred miles to the north began the

colonies of Central America and the

Caribbean prized possessions of the

Spanish Empire at the time the Spanish

king controlled 1/3 of mainland Europe

but Spain itself had only recently

become a unified state having fought off

700 years of occupation by Islamic Moors

it was still a rural society most of the

conquistadors came from villages and

small towns in the heart of the country

towns like Trujillo where Pizarro grew

up he spent much of his childhood here

working as a swineherd in the fields

nearby

today he's remembered as a great warrior

this statue dominates the main square in

Tree Hill

this family home has been turned into a

museum

Jared Diamond has come here to explore

the world of the conquistadors and

understand the secret of their success

this is Francisco Pizarro a Spaniard who

conquered the most powerful state in the

new world the Inca Empire

why did Pizarro and his men conquer the

Incas instead of the other way around

seems like a simple question the answer

isn't immediately obvious after all

Pissarro started out as a rather

ordinary person and Trujillo here as a

rather ordinary town so what is it that

gay Pizarro and his men this enormous

power

why am i so interested in pasar rose

conquest adores because their story is

such a grimly successful example of

European conquest

and for 30 years I've been exploring

patterns of conquest

Jared Diamond is a professor at UCLA in

Los Angeles but most of his field work

has been done in Papua New Guinea

this time there inspired him to explore

the roots of inequality in the modern

world

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to understand why some people have been

able to dominate and conquer others

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looking back thousands of years he

argues that farming gave some cultures

an enormous head start and those who

were lucky enough to have the most

productive crops and animals became the

most productive farmers agriculture

first developed in a part of the Middle

East known as the Fertile Crescent over

time crops and animals from the Fertile

Crescent spread into North Africa and

Europe where they triggered an explosion

of civilization

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by the 16th century European farms were

dominated by livestock animals that had

come from the Fertile Crescent none were

native to Europe they provided more than

just meat they were a source of milk and

a wool leather and manure and crucially

they provided muscle power harness to a

plough a horse or an ox could transform

the productivity of farmland European

farmers were able to grow more food to

feed more people who could then build

bigger and more complex societies

in the New World there were no horses or

cattle for farming all the work had to

be done by hand the only large domestic

animal was the llama but these docile

creatures have never been harnessed to a

plow the Incas were very skilled at

growing potatoes and corn but because of

their geography they could never be as

productive as European farmers

horses gave Europeans another massive

advantage they could be ridden

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to the incas the site of Pizarro's

conquistadors passing through their land

is extraordinary

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they've never seen people carried by

their animals before some think they are

gods these strange-looking men part

human part beast

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the horses that seemed so exotic to the

ITA's had already been used in Spain for

4000 years in an age before motorized

transport they allowed people to be

mobile and control their land

Jimeno in Nunavut when Javier Martinez

not hurting cattle he gives displays of

traditional Spanish horsemanship this

style of riding is known as Tonetta the

emphasis is on control and

maneuverability using bent knees to grip

the sides of the horse and only one hand

on the reins very different from the

more formal style of medieval knights by

the 16th century the unit the way of

riding had become the dominant style of

the Spanish cavalry this is how the

conquistadors would have ridden their

horses it's an amazing display of a big

animal being controlled by a person

precise control stopping and starting a

turning Javier told me that he has been

riding since he was 5 years old and when

I watched this I have a better

understanding of where the can feast

doors were coming from they were masses

of these techniques and they learn these

techniques for working with bulls but

the techniques were also good in a

military context as well and I can see

that this control would let you ride

down the people in the open

people who had never seen horses before

would have been absolutely terrified

watching this it would be strange and

frightening and that's even before one

of these animals is rushing towards you

riding you down about to Lance you and

kill you news of the godlike strangers

on their four-legged animals is taken by

royal messenger to the Emperor of the

Incas

who's camped in the valley of cajamarca

in northern Peru guarded by an army of

80,000 men

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atahuallpa is revered as a living God a

son of the Sun itself

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he's in Cajamarca on a religious retreat

giving thanks for a series of recent

military trance when he hears about the

progress of the Spaniards he chooses not

to have them killed instead he sends

back a message only to you whatever that

he invites them to join him in Cajamarca

as quickly as possible

atahuallpa wanted the spaniards to come

to the homonka and enter into a trap and

to be sure that they would do so he

played like a psychological game with

them sending presents asking him to come

at a while pi knew that the spanish were

not gods

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the intelligence reports speak of people

wearing wool on their faces like a llama

like an alpaca that is like an animal

then they went from one place to the

other wearing on top of their head a

little pot that has never been used for

cooking

you need to be crazy to walk with a pot

but you must be beyond salvation if you

arrive to a camp and you don't use that

pot to cook after a while I had an idea

that these were subhumans

what could a few horsemen and 100 and so

Spanish do to the powerful inca

virtually nothing

but atahuallpa spies don't realize that

the Spanish are armed with some of the

best weapons in the world at the time of

the conquistadors Spain had the biggest

army in Europe orchestrated from the

imperial capital Toledo

for more than 700 years the Spaniards

had been at war fighting against the

Moors and other European armies

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there was an arms race in Europe to

survive the Spaniards needed to keep up

with the latest in weapons technology by

the 1530s the haka bus was an important

part of the Spanish arsenal gunpowder

had originally come from China but it's

used as a weapon was pioneered by the

Arabs in European hands guns became

lighter and more portable and were used

for the first time by foot soldiers on

the battlefield the haka bus was still a

crude weapon but would go on to change

the face of warfare to us moderns this

gun doesn't seem useful for anything

it's like a joke

its aim as terrible it takes a long time

to reload and while the shooters

reloading in a sort you would come in

and kill them but the Incas hadn't even

gotten this far and even this gun with

its sound and with the smell and with a

smoke and with every now and then a

person that it manages to kill would

have been terrifying to someone who had

never seen this before this would have

been shocked in or 1532 style

for all its bluster the technology of

gunpowder was still in its infancy

the real power of the conquistadors lay

elsewhere with the production of Steel

Toledo had some of the best sword smiths

in the world but why were people here

able to craft deadly steel weapons while

the Incas were still making simple

bronze tools there was nothing 1/8 be

brilliant about Europeans themselves

that allowed them to be the ones to make

high quality sword

just as with guns swords were the result

of a long process of trial and error

that began outside Europe people started

working with metal in the Fertile

Crescent 7,000 years ago and because

Europe was geographically close to the

Fertile Crescent Europeans inherited

this metal technology but they took this

technology on to a new level European

soldiers demanded stronger longer

sharper swords this is what a Toledo

sword looks like when it's finished this

particular one is modeled on the sword

that Pissarro carried it's a fearsome

weapon it's used for stabbing and it's

also used for slashing and I can easily

understand how the person wielding the

sword could kill dozens of people within

a short time swords like this rapiers

represented a high point in a very

sophisticated metalworking technology

you think about what the qualities are

that are needed in a sword first of all

it has to be harder the metal has to be

hard enough to take a sharp edge and

that requires steel that is iron infused

with carbon and the more carbon you put

into the iron then the harder the metal

is but if you make it too hard then it's

brittle and that's no good because as

you hit somebody

your sword would break and so you also

need your sword to have a certain

pliability and ability to bend and

spring back into shape and it's not by

heating it to certain temperatures

plunging it into cold water immense

amount of experimentation it took

centuries to get to the level of

sophistication where you could get

something so long and elegant and fine

and deadly as the rapier

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the rapier with its extra-long blade was

developed as a dueling weapon but became

so fashionable in Renaissance Europe it

was the sword of choice for any aspiring

gentleman

the word rapier derives from the Spanish

term Espada peripera and that means

dress sword and for the first time in

Spain we start to see people wearing the

sword with their everyday clothing their

civilian dress going about their

everyday business they didn't do that in

the Middle Ages this is something new in

the 16th century and it's saying I have

arrived I am a gentleman

I am upwardly mobile and I claim

ancestry from the Knights of the Middle

Ages it was very much a symbol of the

conquistadors aspiring greed the thing

that drove them through all their

hardships the thing that made them go to

the Americas was their lust for gold

their lust for self advancement and the

rapier absolutely symbolized that

overbearing avarice

on November 15th 1532 Pizarro's band of

adventurers enters the valley of

Cajamarca

they've been told that Arthur Alba is

waiting for them here but they're not

prepared for the site that greets them

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in the hills beyond the town of

cajamarca is the imperial inca army

80,000 men in full battle order

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the conquistadors own journals bear

witness to their first impressions

their camp looked like a very beautiful

city with seen nothing like it in the

Indus until then and it scared us

because we were so few and so deep in

this land

Bizzaro sends a party of his best

horsemen into the heart of the inca camp

they are led by Captain de Soto

they are gambling that uh walpa will

allow them to pass through the camp

unharmed and agree to meet them visit

that are very important psychological

purpose to intimidate the Inca in front

of his people challenging her with the

horse at all but first didn't react to

Soto's presence as if nobody had entered

the room once the the horse comes I to I

with the Inca the ink I still come

showing that the horse has no impact on

him calling Soto's bluff the captain

advanced so close that the horse's

nostrils disturbed the fringe of the

Incas forehead but the Incan never moved

and then

after brief silence comes at a wall pass

explosion Hamas hike it is one immunity

data he was telling them the time has

come for you to pay I understand this as

the time has come for you to pay with

your lives but hiding money it is one to

Basha Manik it is one so - I understand

was nervous enough to come back with

fear to the camp and as we know the

Spaniard spent the night before in

extreme fear

the conquistadors have made their camp

in the town of cajamarca many of them

are now convinced they are facing

oblivion a hundred and sixty-eight

soldiers a thousand miles from any other

Spaniard facing an army of 80,000 Incas

few of us asleep that night we kept

watching the square from where we could

see the campfires of the Indian army it

was a fearful sight like it brilliantly

started started Knight Pizarro and his

most trusted officers debate their

options for how to deal with some advise

caution but Pizarro insists their best

chance is to launch a surprise attack

the next day it's a tactic that's worked

successfully in the past

twelve years before Pizarro went to Peru

another famous conquistador Hernan

Cortes had gone to Mexico and

encountered another formidable

civilization the Aztecs

he conquered the country by kidnapping

the Aztec leader and exploiting the

ensuing chaos

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Cortez's story was later published and

became a best-seller a handbook for any

would-be conquistadora it can still be

found in the great library of Salamanca

University in northern Spain this

wonderful library here can be thought of

among other things as a repository of

dirty tricks because in these books are

the accounts of what generals had been

doing to other generals for thousands of

years in the past and across much of

Eurasia and here from this library we

have a famous account of the conquest of

Mexico with all the details of what

Cortes did to the Aztecs and what worked

that was a model for Pissarro to give

him ideas what exactly to try out on the

Incas whereas the Incas without writing

had only local knowledge transmitted by

oral memory and they were

unsophisticated and naive compared to

the span it's because of writing

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but if books were so useful why couldn't

the Incas read or write

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to develop a new system of writing

independently is an extremely complex

process and has happened very rarely in

human history it was first achieved by

the Sumerian people of the Fertile

Crescent at least 5,000 years ago they

pioneered an elaborate system of symbols

called cuneiform possibly as a way of

recording farming transactions ever

since almost every other written

language of Europe and Asia has copied

adapted or simply been inspired by the

basics of cuneiform

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the spread of writing was helped

enormously by the invention of paper ink

and movable type

innovations that all came from outside

Europe but were seized upon by Europeans

in the Middle Ages to produce the

ultimate transmitter of knowledge the

printing press the written word could

now spread quickly and accurately across

Europe and Asia the modern world would

be impossible without the development of

writing

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but there's another part of the world

where a new system of writing was

invented independently in southern

Mexico at least two and a half thousand

years ago native people developed a way

of working with symbols that evolved

into the Mayan script but if the Maya

had writing why didn't it spread south

to the Andes and help the Incas become

literate

for diamond the answer lies in the shape

of the continents here are Europe and

Asia forming the continent of Eurasia a

giant continent but it stretched out

from east to west and now from north to

south the American continent is long

from north to south now from east-west

very narrow at Panama where it narrows

down to less than a hundred miles the

two continents are of the same length

about 8,000 miles and maximum dimensions

but Eurasia is 8,000 miles from

east-west and the Americas are 8,000

miles from north to south it's as if

these continents were rotated 90 degrees

of each other diamond has already shown

that crops and animals could spread

easily east and west across Eurasia

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because places at the same latitude

automatically share the same day length

and a similar climate and vegetation

but the American continents were the

opposite of Eurasia a journey from one

end of the Americas to the other is a

journey from north to south a journey

through different day lengths different

climate zones and dramatically different

vegetation these basic differences

hindered the spread of crops and animals

as well as people ideas and technologies

the people of the Andes were chronically

isolated without access to writing or

almost any other innovation from

elsewhere in the Americas by contrast

Pizarro and his men were geographically

blessed as Spaniards they enjoyed the

benefit of technologies and ideas that

had spread easily across Eurasia

the events 1532 were clearly influenced

by deep causes over which no individual

Spaniard or Inca had any control the

shape of the continents the distribution

of plants and animals the spread of

Eurasian technology these were facts of

geography and almost every turn of the

drama geography was tilted in favor of

Europeans

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it's the morning of November 16th

15:32 Ottawa has agreed to meet the

Spaniards in the town of cajamarca and

since his entourage ahead of him

but he makes a fateful decision that his

soldiers should not carry weapons the

Indian food musicians and dancers they

were soldiers but unarmed why would a

Tulpa unarmed his own soldiers why

because he was in the festivity he was

celebrating he wasn't going to war he

was going for a celebration so that the

whole people could see how the alleged

gods would run away in fear the fact

that some people believe that the

Spaniards were gods would play better in

the hands of a tower pass a purpose if I

know they are not God and I've defeated

the God then of course everybody will be

with me but what if I defeat the God

with no show of force at all and I am

beyond the gods

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a lotta falta and his men in Turkic

America the Spaniards are waiting hidden

from view there were five or six

thousand men and behind him the figure

of atahuallpa seated on a very fine

litter lined with feathers and

embellished with gold and silver many of

us pissed ourselves out of sheer terror

the square is filled with apparel past

people but there's there's not one

Spaniard outside atahuallpa asks where

are these dogs one of his right hands

answers they have run away because they

are afraid of magnificent inca of course

the whole crowd listen to this and

believe that this was the case

representante vosotros a nombre de la

christian death Bizzaro sends out his

priests to confront the conquistadors

are obliged to try and convert native

people before any resort to violence

kapa haka Connie in destroying me

no Concannon d-theta touring man an

opporunity to capella de poder proceeded

mi c or sus palabras Astana's krita's en

este libro

even KP after walpa has never seen a

book before he doesn't know what to do

with it he monkey

man I'm a pastor carica man angry

Muskogee KP can chew commodities in the

apparel Zalgiris panelist mr. Genest

rosboroughs General Hospital las casas

de Dios

at that moment with the crowd absolutely

unprepared horses come was massive panic

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just imagine the scene in Cajamarca the

Incas hadn't seen horses before and

these aren't ordinary horses these are

Spanish horses fierce big fighting

horses they could get in amongst men

they would trample men and they made the

most excellent platform from the horse

you could stab down to the left stab

down to the right you could cut you

could sighs I can call about you

if only the Incas had known that what

you had to do against Kaveri would stand

firm then they'd have been all right

they had superior numbers but they

didn't know that they fled they broke

ranks and then the horsemen could get in

amongst them and they cut

there was an Inca God called viticulture

and he was a white man and he was the

god of thunder and they thought these

men with their Aqua buses were the very

incarnation of very culture

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Inca force was in his litter helped by

his carriers as soon as they were able

to do it the Spanish went after the

litter and they started killing the

carriers one carrier would fall and

another one would replace him only at

the very very very end of the tragedy

the little started to move because there

were no more carriers left as the litter

Falls Pizarro himself captures other

Marga his plan has worked to perfection

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atahuallpa has taken to a makeshift

prison in the Royal quarters of

cajamarca he thought we were going to

kill him

but we told him no Christians only

killed in the heat of the battle

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outside thousands of Incas are dead the

rest of the army has retreated to the

hills in spite of a massive imbalance in

numbers Spanish horses swords and

strategy have proved decisive but the

Spaniards possessed another weapon they

didn't even know they had a weapon of

mass destruction that had marched

invisibly ahead of them

today the war against infectious disease

is waged at biological research centers

like Porton down in southern England

they produce vaccines here against the

world's deadliest viruses

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in the 16th century there were no

vaccines and there was no protection

from the rampant spread of infectious

disease

twelve years before Pizarro arrived at

cajamarca a Spanish ship sail - mixer

on board one of the slaves was suffering

from the first signs of a fever

he was the first person to bring a

deadly disease to the American mainland

the disease was smallpox

within weeks the smallpox virus would

spread from a single source to infect

thousands of Native Americans smallpox

gets into the body when you breathe in

the particles and they attached

themselves to the back of your throat in

the inside of your lungs

about two to three days into the illness

then the classic rash appears and in its

worst forms this takes over the whole of

the body with initially pimples and then

enormous blisters until a hole of the

skin starting with the hands and the

face and then spreading down to cover

the rest of the body is taken over by

the smallpox blisters

from that time on the patient is highly

infectious because of each of those

blisters is packed full of smallpox

particles then if you burst a blister

the fluid will come out and large

numbers of viruses will be spilled onto

whatever it touches

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10 to 12 days later his friends would

begin to be taken ill and then 10 to 12

days after that their friends that kind

of rate means the disease spreads

exponentially it's rate of increase gets

bigger and bigger and bigger than more

people who infect it until eventually it

will cause tremendous devastation in the

population

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the first smallpox epidemic of the new

world swept through Central America and

reached the Inca Empire wherever it went

the virus decimated native populations

making them easier prey for Spanish

conquest

but why were the germs so one-sided why

did the Spaniards pass their diseases on

to the Incas and not the other way

around

this is tessaro's secret weapon pigs and

cows sheep and goats domestic animals

remember that Pissarro was a swineherd

he grew up in huts like this in intimate

contact with domestic animals breathing

in their germs drinking the germs in

their milk and was from the germs of

domestic animals that the killer

diseases of humans evolved for example

our flu evolved from a disease of pigs

transmitted by a chickens and ducks we

acquired measles from cattle we acquired

smallpox from domestic animals so that

these worst killers of human people were

a legacy of 10,000 years of contact

without the love of domestic animals

during the Middle Ages infectious

diseases swept through Europe and

claimed millions of lives but

paradoxically repeated epidemics made

Europeans more resilient in each

outbreak there were always some people

who were genetically better able to

fight off the virus these people were

more likely to survive and have children

in the process

they'd pass on their genetic resistance

over centuries whole populations

acquired some degree of protection

against the spread of diseases like

smallpox a protection the Incas

never had

when smallpox has taken to the new world

nobody in the new world has ever seen a

disease like this before so the number

of people who are susceptible was much

greater there was no natural immunity

and so therefore the number of people

who could both contract the disease and

then spread it and the number to receive

it once it had been spread was much

higher

more people would die and more people

who were susceptible to catch it in the

first place

he would spread rapidly throughout the

population and the death toll would be

enormous

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why hadn't Native Americans encountered

smallpox before and why didn't they have

any deadly diseases of their own to pass

on to the Spaniards it's simply because

they didn't have the same history of

contact with fallen animals the Incas

had llamas but llamas aren't like

European cows and sheep they're not nope

they're not kept in large herds and they

don't live in barns and huts alongside

humans there was no significant exchange

of germs between llamas and people

the key to diamonds argument is the

distribution of farm animals around the

world aside from the llama all the large

farm animals were native to Eurasia and

North Africa none was ever domesticated

in North America sub-saharan Africa or

Australia as a result the worst epidemic

diseases were also native to Eurasia and

North Africa and were then spread around

the world with deadly effect

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there's been a long debate about the

number of indigenous people who died in

the Spanish conquest of the new world

some scholars think there may have been

a population of 20 million Native

Americans and the vast majority perhaps

95% were killed by old-world diseases a

continent virtually emptied of its

people

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after the initial shock of his capture

Ottawa became a cooperative prisoner he

learned to speak Spanish and play chess

with his captors

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the spaniards realized he was more

useful to them alive than dead he was

allowed to reestablish his court in

prison as long as he ordered his people

to accept Spanish rule he also ordered

them to melt down a vast amount of

treasure Pizarro had promised atahuallpa

his freedom in return for the gold it

proved to be an empty promise

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having handed over 20 tons of gold and

silver Palpa was no longer useful to his

captors he was garroted to death in the

same square where so many of his

followers had been slaughtered 8 months

earlier

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with Ottawa did the conquistadors went

on to colonize the rest of Peru relying

on the power of their Guns Germs and

Steel Gold from the Spanish colonies was

brought back to Seville in southern

Spain

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there's little activity on the guado

commuter river today

but in the sixteenth century this was

among the most important busiest ports

in the world

the steady flow of ships carrying

treasure from the Americas helped Spain

become one of the richest nations on

earth the conquistadors had changed

forever the relationship between old

world and new I came to Spain to answer

a question why did Pizarro and his men

conquer the Incas instead of the other

way around there's a whole mythology

that that conquest in the european

expansion in general resulted from

Europeans themselves being especially

brave or bold or inventive or smart but

the answers turn out to have nothing to

do with any personal qualities of

Europeans yeah

Pissarro and his men were brave but they

were plenty of brave Incas instead

Europeans were accidental conquerors by

virtue of their geographic location in

history they were the first people to

acquire Guns Germs and Steel

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by the end of the 19th century European

powers had ventured beyond the Americans

and colonized Africa Australia and much

of Asia

the process that began at cajamarca had

reached its logical conclusion European

Guns Germs and Steel where we shaping

the world

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you

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you