Why weren't the countries of South America able to fight back Spanish soldiers despite the fact that they outnumbered them?
from Ken Fishkin's answer to Military History and Wars : If I was an Incan emperor, how would I deter the imperialistic advances of the Spanish?Check out "The Last Days of the Incas", by Kim McQuarrie, which goes into this in some detail - it's an interesting but depressing read.Within only a few years, the Incans had overcome their initial disadvantages:They realized that the Spaniards' goal (first they thought they were visitors, then just plunderers who would take booty and then leave) was nothing less than total and permanent conquest.They were no longer under any illusions that the Spanish or their horses were 'supernatural'.The Incan civil war was over - they had a single leader (Manco Inca) who was die-hard against the SpanishThe initial wave of disease was overManco IncaThey then launched a huge, united, military campaign against the Spanish - and lost. The issue wasn't Incan valor or discipline - the Incans were themselves a warrior culture who had gained their empire by conquest.The issue seems to have been that it's very hard to change your cultural mindset, and to do so quickly. Some particulars:The Incans didn't launch night attacks on the exhausted Spanish, who they outnumbered 1000 to 1. As "children of the sun", they did not fight at night.When they got hold of Spanish armor or swords, they would lay them aside as trophies - the book doesn't say why, but the idea of using them themselves just didn't seem to arise. There is one mention of using the Spanish guns, but this took about 20? years to develop and was too little, too late.Much of the Spanish power came from their horses, yet there was very little attempt on the part of the Incans to target the horses specifically (e.g. killing horses in the stables, or using caltrops/punji sticks).Given these constraints, it was almost impossible to win. Their most successful general, Quizo, won several battles by ambushing the Spanish in ravines and rolling boulders on them. Things have to go just right for you to win a battle this way! He died when after winning four such battles he was ordered by Manco Inca to do a frontal assault on the remaining Spaniards at Lima - Quizo obeyed, and he and his men were slaughtered.So would it be possible to overcome the Spanish? Yes, but only by changing the cultural mindset as to how wars were waged.
How does the Inca Empire compare to Roman Empire? Why did Incas fall so quickly?
When these kind of topics appear most times people comment due to misinformation, with the common mistake of confusing the Mesoamerican civilizations with the Andean civilizations, with the latter being much more advanced in politics than their northern counterparts. The Inca was an Empire in its own right, an Empire called “Tahuantinsuyo” divided in four regions or “Suyos” further divided into smaller provinces themselves, the empire was led by a political figure called “Sapa Inca” and had their capital based on Cuzco in central Peru, but with several major cities in its territory including Tumipampa in the north and Tucma in the south that functioned as administrative centers, linking together countries as big as Argentina, Peru and Colombia with a complex road system through the Andes, so they were no uncivilized brutes.They could gather big armies, hundreds of thousands of men from all corners of the empire, in no time and they used advanced warfare tactics and even diplomacy for their conquests, the Sapa Inca was usually accompanied by a battalion of 20.000 professional noble soldiers at any time and their agricultural techniques and building skills were so advanced that they are still in use. Although they were known for their diplomacy expansion, they were capable combatants and slaughtered whole communities when they rebelled against the Inca, also they could adapt quickly to their enemy’s tactics and weapons, as seen when they learned to use horses and iron armor during the guerrilla war against the Spaniards, or the inclusion of native tactics and weapons when expanding the empire to the coast and jungle territories.In short, both Romans and Incas were evenly matched, however they existed in completely different eras and lands, so a comparison between them would be unfair. However, the Inca did have some weakness, the lack of tamed animals for increased mobility and their rudimentary metalwork skills. Though the Inca had some of the best gold ornaments at the time, they weren’t able to discover iron or steel, they were in the bronze age barely, and their only tamed animals were llamas as cargo beasts, there wasn’t anything similar to a horse in South America.If both civilizations would have met, I doubt a confrontation would have taken place, both tended to diplomacy before any military action took place so the cultural mixture would have benefited both, maybe the Incas to a better extent.
I read somewhere that humans and dinosaurs may have lived together on earth, how real can this be?
The K–Pg (Cretaceous–Paleogene) boundary is a geological signature that marks the end of the Cretaceous Period, 66.043 ± 0.011 million years ago. This signature coincided with, and is almost certainly related to, a large meteorite impact at the Chicxulub crater. It also coincided with the great extinction that ended the Mesozoic and wiped out the giant reptiles.The accepted theory is that this meteor impact triggered catastrophic events which were followed by gradual environmental and climatic changes. The extreme volcanism of the Deccan Traps in the Indian subcontinent may account for climate change: a large scale release of dust and sulphuric aerosols into the air would have blocked sunlight and reduced photosynthesis in plants. This volcanism may itself have been triggered by seismic waves radiating from the Chicxulub impact.Regardless of the precise mechanism that caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, they disappeared from the fossil record around 66 million years ago. Some avian dinosaurs survived and evolved into modern birds, and a few related species (like Sphenodon punctatus) are still extant.If we take a snapshot of the K–Pg boundary, around 66 million years ago our human ancestor looked like this:Carpolestes simpsoni weighed around 100 grams, had grasping digits but no forward-facing eyes and was adapted to an arboreal habitat. It didn’t look very human. Modern humans are probably less than 330,000 years old: Jebel Irhoud.In other words, the dinosaur reptilian ancestors of modern birds coexisted with the shrew-like mammal ancestors of humans. No dinosaurs were around when Homo sapiens arrived on the scene; no H. sapiens (or primates of any sort) were eaten by T-Rex.