2.28 America: a.d. 1401 to 1500  (Page 7/9)

This section would not be complete without further comment concerning the much debated question of the origin of syphilis. Morison (Ref. 150 ) states that there is abundant evidence of syphilis occurring in a mild, endemic form in the pre-Columbian American Indians, but it was not until after the arrival of Columbus' sailors that the disease became rampant on both continents. For whatever reason, the interaction of the European men and the Indians made the disease violent on both sides of the Atlantic.

South america (see map in the next module)

Northern and western south america

There were many different Indian peoples in this part of South America. Of the Andean groups the great Inca Empire was dominant, but there were also the northern Caribs, Caraja, Mundurcu and the Savana-Orinoco group, among others. Sometime in the era just before the dominance of the Incas, the Chimu kingdom deteriorated markedly, perhaps because their farmland had been over-irrigated and insufficiently drained and had become salinized. The lowlands of coastal Peru were, and are, saturated with salt and to be useful the land must be excellently drained and well flushed. Deforestation also resulted in a dessication so that the underground rivers, so important for the low lying savannahs, began to disappear. Today the ruins of Chan cover an area of 14 square miles, with 10 surviving walled compounds (fortresses) forming the heart of the city.

The Peruvian Incas subdued the coastal Chimu civilization early in the century, although as we have seen, it may already have been in decline. It was in the reigns of the 8th emperor, Viracocha, and his son Pachuciti and grandson Topa that the Incas expanded out of their original Cuzco region and soon had an empire 200 by 2,000 miles in area with a population of perhaps 10,000,000. Engel (Ref. 62 ) writes that only when Prince Pachacuti mounted the throne in A.D. 1438, does tradition become reliable and concomitant with provable fact. Everything prior to that is summed up in a bunch of names that may have very little true value. It is probable that in the time of Viracocha, the so-called empire was still restricted to the narrow Cuzco Valley, in an area of a few thousand acres, surrounded by hostile neighbors. The sudden blossoming and conquering of territory then matches that of Alexander the Great or of the great, ancient Persian kings. The word "Inca" does not imply a race; it belongs only to a dynasty and the system that dynasty imposed on a number of South American peoples. The entire imperial expansion lasted only 100 years, but due to the deportation of conquered peoples and the planting of garrisons, the Incas made their Quechua language into the "lingua franca" of the Andes and it remains so today, even 4 centuries after the competing Spanish language appeared. (Ref. 62 , 221 )

There have been millions of words written about the Inca civilization. In this outline we can only hope to summarize some of the more important and interesting features. Inca governors subdivided the entire population into groups of 10 persons