The Tiwanaku state in the middle region of the Andes
Mountains faced terrible strife. Social unrest had shaken the region a
generation before, wrecking urban centers with such ferocity that even the enormous
stone Gateway of the Sun had been toppled. Later scholars would believe this low
point was due to the beginning of drying climatic change for the region as food
prices rose due to poor harvests. If not for a miraculous discovery of
hydro-engineering, the entire region could have collapsed.
Tiwanaku peoples had flourished centuries before thanks to
the development of farming using flooded-raised fields. Compared with
traditional farming that would yield some 2.4 metric tons of potatoes per
hectare, the system
of using raised mounds surrounded by shallow canals generated some 21 metric
tons in the same space. The water in the canals prevented frosts from damaging
much of the farmland. Further, the canals could be used as fish farms, adding
available protein while fertilizing the raised mounds. Adopting high-yield agriculture
allowed specialization, turning much of the population to manufacturers of
ceramics, textiles, and metalwork. Everything depended upon good rains,
however, and the increasingly bad droughts might soon promote a mass exodus to
wetter regions south.
In the midst of the coming disaster, a priest of Viracocha, the
creator of all things, called a public assembly to demonstrate a new method of
drawing water out of Lake Titicaca. He had been granted a vision during his
prayers of crying out to the hot sun to turn to rainstorms when he saw the
waters of the lake flow upward onto the land to refill the deserted canals.
Some scoffed, saying the amount of work needed to run jars of water could not
be kept up, but the priest countered by rotating his staff in the water with attached
potsherds that drew up the water at regular intervals. Later European visitors
would recognize the device being similar to a water screw, also called the Archimedes’
screw.
Religious fervor seized the troubled region, and enormous
versions of the water-raising tools were constructed with each contributor
receiving a guaranteed share of the crops in proportion to their input.
Harvests recovered, and social issues with wealthy landowners stockpiling food were
widely alleviated. As the culture returned to specialization, a new branch of
priests and priestesses arose to divine other new technology from the gods. It
was a clear religious continuation: the ancient legend of Manco Capac and Mama
Ocllo told how these descendants of Viracocha had been born out of Lake
Titicaca in ancient days when humans lived as animals to teach them agriculture,
weaving and sewing, construction, law, and to make fire.
In the coming years, the technology-driven priesthood would
devise numerous inventions for making labor more efficient. Spinning devices
and looms revolutionized the textile industry so that one person could do the
work of a dozen. The quipu, a system of knotted strings to hold records, had
long existed with distinct meaning to the placement and size of knots. By
running the knots as a “program” through machines, looms could be automated to
create particular designs with colored string.
The rains returned to the region, and the water screws were
no longer necessary for irrigation, so many were reversed to create screw turbines
that generated power. Rather than requiring human or animal labor to drive
their machines, Tiwanaku peoples could tap into the flow of water to drive
their work. Soon organized factories rose up along the waterways with a
moneyless system of exchange through goods and labor.
Metallurgy improved, too, which drove other discoveries.
Being high in the mountains, furnaces required specialized air-blowing systems
to be hot enough to smelt ore. Artisans noted how the hot air rose and sought
to capture it for work as the flowing waters had been. Weak turbine engines
gradually came into development, along with specially stretched and tanned
animal intestines that made balloons for religious services. Mining tapped new
sources of iron and coal that enabled fire-driven engines to drive machines
away from rivers.
In the 1400s, one of the neighboring states in Cusco, the
Inca, rose up to conquer the others. Their creation legend included further
siblings to Mama Ocllo and Manco Capac (whom they called Ayar Manco and considered
their first king), including the warrior goddess Mama Huaca. Taking command in
1438, divine ruler Pachacuti began a tradition of aggressive expansion through
spying out power centers and sending ambassadors to persuade them to join him
with promises of expanded wealth. If the local leaders refused, military
conquest followed with the leaders being executed. Either way, the conquered
area soon prospered under Inca administration. Through only a few generations,
the empire grew up and down the west coast of South America, uniting a wide
language base.
During this conquest, the Inca weaponized technology, such
as adapting balloons into siege weapons to drop diseased animals into
strongholds for biological warfare. The balloons also became a method of
communication by using mirrors to deliver messages in a complex code based on
reflecting sunlight on silver mirrors for certain intervals and durations, much
like the quipu. Chasqui runners on foot carried quipu and oral messages as much
as 150 miles per day while llamas laden with goods acted as transport along
mountain roads.
A new crisis struck the area with visitors from Europe.
While the attempted coup by Spaniard Pizzaro ended in disaster with the emperor
Athualpca’s escape via his royal balloon, the Inca were ravaged by diseases
brought by trade. The scientific priesthood turned their attention fully to the
plague, and methods of quarantine and controlled exposure to weaker strains
through variolation minimized the effects as much as could be possible. Counter-expeditions
by the Inca seized European technology such as the wagon, tacking to sail into
the wind, iron weapons, and written records. Wheeled transport with Incan
gas-turbine engines expanded trade, and turbine-driven balloons made conquest
eastward over the mountains possible. While Incan chemistry could not unravel
gunpowder, the Incan pneumatic rifle was smokeless and had a better rate of
fire.
Eventually the Incan Empire normalized relations with the
outside world, gaining allies to balance against Spanish incursion to the north
and Portuguese to the east. English and Dutch ships were eager to buy up Incan
manufactures, which soon outpaced China as the biggest exporter in the world
economy. As calculations became too complex even for advanced yupana tables
that used spatial meaning, Inca priest-engineers adapted their quipu-programmed
automated looms into mechanical, and then electrical, computing. Inca
technology became the groundwork of the icon-based worldwide digital
communication network.
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In reality, the Tiwanaku state did collapse roughly 1,000
years ago, although the exact reasons remain unknown. The Incan empire grew up
in the region several hundred years later, ruling a vast stretch of land over
2,500 miles long. It came under a new stress of disease and civil war shortly
before being overtaken by Spanish Conquistadors.
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