Inca Empire

Previous accounts of the fall of the Inca empire have played up the importance of the events of one violent day in November 1532 at the highland Andean town of Cajamarca. To some, the "Cajamarca miracle" - in which Francisco Pizarro and a small contingent of Spaniards captured an Inca who led an army numbering in the tens of thousands - demonstrated the intervention of divine providence. To others, the outcome was simply the result of European technological and immunological superiority.

When the Smithsonian’s Hall of Physical Anthropology opened in 1965 it featured 160 Andean skulls affixed to a wall to visualize how the world’s human population had exploded since the birth of Christ. Through a history of Inca mummies, a preHispanic surgery called trepanation, and Andean crania like these, Empires of the Dead explains how “ancient Peruvians” became the single largest population in the Smithsonian and many other museums in Peru, the Americas, and beyond.

Han pasado 10 años desde que Cortés conquistó México y más allá, el legendario y poderoso imperio de los incas, llega a su máximo esplendor, abarcando parte de Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia y Chile. Este inmenso territorio, recibirá una verdadera legión de conquistadores que con el brío de la ambición y la búsqueda de la gloria, fundan ciudades, llevan su lengua, su religión y su cultura a todo lo largo y ancho del Nuevo Mundo. Uno de estos españoles, escribirá una de las historias más épicas y sorprendentes de la conquista.