Inca Wank

  • What about Steel? Leaving aside the fact that one thousand steel swords and a few crossbows plus a handful of harkbuses are a death wish when pitted against one hundred thousand bronze maces, bone-tipped spears and pebble-shooting wool slings, the Inka could learn of ferrous metallurgy from Spanish POWs. They were the first to smelt platinum, which has a far higher melting point.
I dont see anywhere that the Inca could smelt platinum. Everything Ive seen suggests they used native, ie metallic, platinum which they then mixed with gold in an amalgam. A couple of sources explicitly said they could NOT reach the temperatures necessary to melt platinum.

Do you have sources that show they did?
 
I dont see anywhere that the Inca could smelt platinum. Everything Ive seen suggests they used native, ie metallic, platinum which they then mixed with gold in an amalgam. A couple of sources explicitly said they could NOT reach the temperatures necessary to melt platinum.

Do you have sources that show they did?
I do, though it is not available online: See Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science: It explains that the Inka used gold dust to lower the, extremely high, melting point of platinum so that it could thus be smelted (you can see only part of this in page 268 in the Google preview if you do not wish to obtain the book). Better yet, if you have access to JSTOR, see the article "Ancient American Metal-Smiths" by Warwick Bray.
 

Meerkat92

Banned
Is there a technology that Incas could utilize in war that was unknown to conquistadors?

The Incas did have one major advantage: all the Incan roads were so steep that they were essentially staircases. The conquistadors had a lot of trouble ferreting out Incan rebels in the higher mountains because while llamas can climb stairs, horses cannot. I don't know how well that relates at all, but it's something.
 
Is there a technology that Incas could utilize in war that was unknown to conquistadors?
Actually, there are several:

  • Cotton armor, lighter and more comfortable and flexible than Western plate armor
  • Bolas, still used today to catch livestock, could cripple Spanish cavalry
  • Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. Unlike the Inka with their road system, the Spanish, even in Spain, lacked the ability to move masses of people across such vast distances on a scale anywhere near comparable to what the Inka were capable of doing with their mit'a (corveé) system. Furthermore, the Inka had superior food security than the Spanish with their tampu (storehouse) system and abundant terraces and aqueducts carrying water for irrigation and drinking.
 
I do, though it is not available online: See Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science: It explains that the Inka used gold dust to lower the, extremely high, melting point of platinum so that it could thus be smelted (you can see only part of this in page 268 in the Google preview if you do not wish to obtain the book). Better yet, if you have access to JSTOR, see the article "Ancient American Metal-Smiths" by Warwick Bray.
Making a gold/platinum alloy from native platinum doesnt count as 'smelting platinum' in my books. Nor is it any kind of step towards iron work.
 
I do, though it is not available online: See Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science: It explains that the Inka used gold dust to lower the, extremely high, melting point of platinum so that it could thus be smelted (you can see only part of this in page 268 in the Google preview if you do not wish to obtain the book). Better yet, if you have access to JSTOR, see the article "Ancient American Metal-Smiths" by Warwick Bray.
Making a gold/platinum alloy from native platinum doesnt count as 'smelting platinum' in my books. Nor is it any kind of step towards iron work.
 
  • Cotton armor, lighter and more comfortable and flexible than Western plate armor


  • And also completely and utterly useless when faced with a metal sword. That's part of why the Spanish kill to casualty ratio was so incredibly high in the Andes.

    [*]Bolas, still used today to catch livestock, could cripple Spanish cavalry

    Eh, useful enough but as has already been pointed out the Spanish cavalry was effectively crippled by the Incan road system itself.
 

Flubber

Banned
Making a gold/platinum alloy from native platinum doesnt count as 'smelting platinum' in my books.


It's not smelting in anyone's book, or anyone with a metallurgical or engineering background that is.

Smelting is a process which extracts metal from ores, most often with the help of a catalytic agent. Smelting in not a process in which native metal - that is metal which is pure enough not to be regarded as an ore - is melted with the help of a catalyst.

Nor is it any kind of step towards iron work.

Agreed.

The "Inca Empire" everyone keeps nattering on about in these types of threads didn't even exist by their own reckoning prior to 1438 CE and an Incan state of any type doesn't predate roughly 1200 CE. Pre-Inca peoples and states had been smelting silver and copper from ores 1000 CE and melting native platinum with gold as a catalyst since roughly 1000 CE.

In the roughly five centuries they were in use, none of those techniques lead to iron working.
 
You mean like otl?

To be fair, it was pretty marginally used and as such the Inca really could be thought of as 'pre-bronze, dabbling in bronze'. More widespread use of bronze could be helpful, though. I think bronze-tipped projectile weapons, some armor (not too much, though, if you want to march an army through the Andes) and possibly bladed weapons could be very useful against conquistadors.
 
To be fair, it was pretty marginally used and as such the Inca really could be thought of as 'pre-bronze, dabbling in bronze'. More widespread use of bronze could be helpful, though. I think bronze-tipped projectile weapons, some armor (not too much, though, if you want to march an army through the Andes) and possibly bladed weapons could be very useful against conquistadors.

OK, good point.
 
How can the Incan way of life, not necessarily the empire, spread as far as possible? The Incas had the most potential to resist European colonists, animals, immunity from their animals, potatoes AND maize, and an efficient government. The Incas just had the bad luck to meet the conquistadors right after a civil war. Proof that OTL wanks white people:D

I once started a TL based on this premise: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=142360&highlight=Regiones

Never made it past the first post, though. I am thinking on continuing it some day. It wouln'd be and Incan Wank, but it would involve the Incas resisting the Spanish long enough for other Europeans to come visting.
 
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