2.28 America: a.d. 1401 to 1500  (Page 8/9)

The Incas had a number of effective plant medications, including quinine from cinchona bark for malaria, coca, containing cocaine for both tranquilizing and stimulation, as well as atropine, ipecacuana, curare, theophyllin and various mind-altering plants such as peyotl, teonancatl and ololiuqu. Surgery was usually a separate profession. Skulls were trepanned, but whether this was for medicinal, religious or other reasons is not known. (Ref. 125 )

Inca-style jars, with black on cream decorations and lines forming grids are called aryballoses and are identical with some in a French museum made by north African Berbers. There appears to have been no local precursor to Inca pottery. Even at Cuzco, shards of Inca pottery lie above fragments of an entirely different, un-related style. No pottery earlier than the Incas has been found either in Machu Picchu, Ollantaytambo or in Chinchero, where there were most imposing complexes. In other places, deep to the layers of Inca pottery, one finds the Killki type, which Engel (Ref. 62 ) states to be in no way related to the Incas'. To quote Engel directly concerning the Killki:

"The 'keros' or hardwood flaring vessels with flat bottoms and polychrome decorations, are supposedly associated with Inca times. There is an astonishing collection of them, and it is really regrettable- that almost nothing has been published regarding these archaeological treasures. The shape of the keros is clearly Tiahuanacoid, however, and the many-colored decorations ornamenting them indicate that many of them, if not all, belong to the period of protohistorical transition. Flowers, European costumes, or African faces are depicted on them. I do not think these keros constitute an element very typical of the final pre-Columbian period."

A further confusing fact is that the Inca construction technique of using enormous polyhedral blocks without mortar appeared abruptly in this 15th century and the only comparable architecture is in far away Polynesia in the Marquesas Islands. One of the Inca cities, Ollantaytambo, has an adjacent terrace rising 300 feet high, with stairways too steep for horses to climb. On a crest above are enormous carved, monolithic slabs weighing over 100 tons each and there is no way of knowing whether these were raised there under the direction of the Tiahuanacos or the Incas. Their size and the difficulty of emplacement rivals both Stonehenge and the temples of Egypt. (Ref. 62 ) By 1471 the Incas had pushed south into Chile and northern Argentina, while after 1493 the new emperor Huayna Capac concentrated on the north, founding Quito in modern Ecuador as a northern capital. His sons, however, fought bitter civil war, dividing the northern and southern parts of the empire.

Along the western frontier of what is now Argentina, lived the Chiriguanos, a Guaranis tribe with Caribbean customs, who had settled in the lower Andes in pretohistoric times. Finally they conquered all the lower Andes from the Bermejo River to Santa Cruz in the north. It is known historically that several tens of thousands of them made trips of over 600 miles and were a permanent menace to cities like Cuzco and Machu Picchu because of their penchant for the women, salt, wool and metal objects of those centers. Other tribes dotted the whole northern and western South American areas - the peaceable Arawaks, the Chiquitos, who used curare-poisoned arrows, the Mojos, the Yuracares, the Mosotenes and the Chimanes and many more in far flung regions where they remain in a primitive state today. Some paid tribute to the Incas, some fought. (Ref. 62 )