Category Archives: Ancient warfare

Francisco Pizarro’s Forgotten Army?

April 5, 2010

Who really conquered the Inca Empire? I found myself mulling over that question for the first time today, after reading a really fascinating new paper published online in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology by a team of American and Peruvian scientists. Led by Melissa Murphy, a physical anthropologist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, the team has just pored over the skeletal remains of 258 Inca men and women, who perished from extreme violence sometime between 1470 and 1540.

First, let me very briefly summarize the conventional view of the Conquest of Peru. According to the Spanish chronicles (the only surviving written source of the invasion), Francisco Pizarro set sail from Panama in January 1531 with 3 ships and 180 men. Landing near the port of Tumbes in the midst of a civil war in the Inca realm known as Tawantinsuyu, Pizarro and his men journeyed inland. At the Inca provincial town of Cajamarca, they laid an ambush and captured the Inca king Atawallpa, whom they subsequently executed. In November 1533, Pizarro’s force occupied the Inca capital of Cuzco, bringing the empire to its knees.

I personally don’t recall hearing or reading much about indigenous Andean peoples fighting on the side of the Spanish invaders. But as the new paper by Murphy and her team points out, aboriginal people certainly seem to have played a part in the Conquest of Peru, and perhaps quite a large part.

Murphy and her colleagues examined human remains excavated from two large Inca cemeteries in the archaeological zone of Puruchuco-Huaquerones, 7 miles from the center of Lima. Many of these individuals likely died during the ill-fated siege of Lima, when Inca forces tried to expel the Spaniards in 1536. As expected, Murphy and her colleagues found ample evidence of severe injuries caused by medieval European weaponry–the top spike of a polearm, the beak of a war hammer, and possible gunshot wounds. (Intriguingly, evidence of slashing injuries from swords is missing from these victims.)

But what I found especially intriguing in this study was the evidence that team-members found for wounds inflicted by indigenous weapons, such as clubs and maces. Indeed, as the authors note, “the majority of perimortem injuries to the cranium were likely due to blunt force trauma, probably from native weaponry like maces or clubs, with only a few of the injuries caused by Spanish weapons.”

Now of course, Spanish soldiers might well have picked up native weapons and used them expediently. But some Spanish chroniclers do refer on occasion to indigenous allies and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that they were under-representing the numbers in order to make themselves look especially courageous to readers back home.

Moreover, we know that the Incas had made a host of enemies during their own conquests, particularly on the northern coast of Peru. And these dissidents might have seen Pizarro and his men initially as liberators, before they truly understood the rapacity of the Spanish forces. Certainly, this is what happened in Mexico, when aboriginal people rallied to the banner of Hernando Cortez, eager to rise up against their oppressors, the Aztecs.

This new research by Murphy and her colleagues is the first forensic-style study of the Inca victims who fell during the Conquest of Peru. I really look forward to reading more.

The Emperor and the Horse

March 15, 2010

Last summer while I was researching an article for National Geographic magazine in Ecuador, I had the remarkable pleasure of staying at the Hacienda Guanchala. Lying almost exactly on the equator, the Hacienda Guanchala is the oldest colonial hacienda in Ecuador. Indeed, some of its buildings date back as early as 1580, and its shadowy corridors feel haunted by all the history that has passed through them.

I arrived at the hacienda late in the day, well after dark, and after dining there I retreated to my room and lit a fire in the old stone fireplace. Someone had left several glossy Spanish language magazines there, and so I began to thumb through them: they were all devoted exclusively to the Peruvian Paso horse. I had never heard before of the Peruvian Paso, and I was too tired to dig out my Spanish-English dictionary to begin translating the articles. But I was much struck by the athletic appearance of this horse–with its massive deep chest and its powerful looking haunches.

Yesterday, I came across a fascinating blog post on the Peruvian Paso. It turns out that the Francisco Pizarro and his men brought the ancestors of this horse with them when they landed in Tumbes in early 1532 and embarked on their invasion of the Inca Empire. And they later rode and led these horses by halter through the Andes to a fateful encounter with the new Inca emperor, Atahualpa, in the provincial center of Cajamarca.

Atahualpa had just defeated the forces of his half-brother Huascar in a lengthy civil war, and he was resting with his wives, lords and elite bodyguard in the hills outside Cajamarca. He and his entourage had never before seen a horse. But in the preceding months, Inca scouts had sent them a good deal of intelligence about the Spanish invaders and the large foreign animal they rode.

Pizarro sent one of his bolder captains, Hernando de Soto, and several men out to Atahaulpa’s camp to invite him to a meeting in Cajamarca. To impress on the Inca entourage the power of horses, de Soto first led a charge on several of Atahualpa’s bodyguards, sending panic into the crowd. Then the Spanish captain reined his horse in sharply and trotted over to where Atahualpa sat on a low wooden throne. He nudged his horse so close to the divine king that the animal’s exhalations ruffled the braided royal fringe–a mark of imperial office–that hung from Atahualpa’s forehead. But the emperor betrayed no fear: he sat impassively as the animal gazed down at him.

Tragically the intelligence that Atahualpa had received about the Spaniards was badly flawed. His scouts informed him, for example, that the Spanish could not ride their horses in the dark. So Atahaulpa delayed his arrival at Cajamarca for the meeting until late afternoon the next day. But the Spanish forces and their horses were ready and waiting, quickly slaughtering the emperor’s bodyguard and taking Atahualpa himself a prisoner.

Seldom has one breed of horse witnessed so much tragedy and misery.

My apologies to subscribers who received a garbled version of this blog earlier today. Something went a little wrong in the blogging software this morning.

The Civil War’s First Scorched Earth

February 25, 2010

Archaeology magazine has just published a story I wrote on an almost completely forgotten tragedy of the Civil War. In 1863, the Union Army razed and laid waste to nearly four counties in Missouri–a year before the better known scorched-earth destruction of Atlanta, Georgia, by General William Tecumseh Sherman and his forces. Archaeologist Ann Raab, a Ph.D. student at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, and her colleagues are now excavating sites in what is still known as “The Burnt District.” They are bringing to light a virtually unknown chapter of the Civil War–incredible work. Archaeology has posted an abstract of the article here. I will have more to say about this story in a future post.

The Burner of Books

January 26, 2010

The China Daily News carried a very cool story this week on a major new archaeological discovery in Hubei province. According to Shen Haining, the director of Hubei’s cultural heritage bureau, excavators working in a tomb that dates back to the Warring States period of China’s history (475-221 B.C. ) recovered a trove of water-saturated bamboo strips covered in inked Chinese characters. Resembling a snarl of soggy noodles, the strips are remains of ancient and exceedingly rare Chinese books–a find that is sure to generate huge interest in China and abroad.

Perhaps a little Chinese history is in order here to help make sense of this find. The Warring States period, as its name clearly suggests, was a time of massive violent military clashes. Lords of seven major states all vied for supreme power in tianxia (which means “all under heaven”), and they threw huge infantry armies bristling with mass-produced iron weapons at one another. These armies also boasted for the first time in Chinese history archers with crossbows and soldiers fighting on horseback, both of which completely transformed military engagements in the Far East, rendering them far more horrifying.

The period came to an end finally when one of the combatant lords, Qin Shi Huang, subjugated all his rivals. But while the new emperor brought peace to China, he committed a grave sin against history and literature. Fearing that all earlier books would cast doubt on the legitimacy of his rule, Qin Shi Huang ordered most Chinese books of the day to be burned and he had scholars who possessed such forbidden writings buried alive–making bamboo-strip books dating from the Warring States period rare indeed today.

You might ask yourself why we should care today about the fate of these lost Chinese documents, many of which were recorded on bamboo strips. Well, it turns out that amid all the bloodshed and chaos of the time, many of China’s greatest thinkers were discussing warfare and dreaming of peace. Many of their works were undoubtedly lost in the destruction ordered by Qin Shi Huang, though a few, including the very famous meditation The Art of War, survived to the present thanks to later copyists.

I am dying to find out what the soggy bamboo strips in the newly discovered Hubei tomb will hold. “It’s still to early to tell,” Shen told the China Daily reporter. “Let’s wait and see. Archaeology is all about surprise.” Hear, hear.

Guns, Spears, Inscriptions, and Magical Thinking

January 21, 2010

I wasn’t terribly surprised to read the Associated Press story this week about the biblical inscriptions that appear on certain American military weapons issued to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dismayed, yes. (Wasn’t the American government trying to distance itself from the notion that it was engaged in a modern Christian Crusade against the Infidels? ) But shocked, certainly not. As archaeologists and historians can attest, such inscriptions are part of a very old tradition, one that goes back many hundreds of years in cultures across Eurasia.

For those of you who missed it, here’s the much boiled down version of the AP story. For the past 30 years, a Michigan-based military contractor known as Trijicon Inc. has put scriptural citations in raised letters on the sides of its products, which include combat rifle-sights. According to the AP article, U.S special operations forces in the Middle East currently carry Trijicon’s Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight into battle: it bears the inscription JN8:12, a clear reference to the Gospel of St. John, Chapter 8, verse 12, which reads: “When Jesus spoke to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” The folks at Trijicon clearly think that this verse will go a long way in assisting American soldiers in their hour of need.

But the idea of inscribing a weapon with a sacred text to protect its owner is a very ancient one. Indeed it dates back at least 2000 years, to a time when metalsmiths closely guarded the secrets of forging iron weapons, creating an air of mystery and magic around them. The inscriptions these ancient smiths forged on sword blades or along spear tips seemed to further enhance this power.

History is replete with wonderful examples. Early Islamic warriors, for example, carried Damascus-steel swords inscribed with verses from the Qur’an. Lord Egerton’s classic book, Indian and Oriental Arms and Armour, describes one sword that possessed several inscriptions from the Qur’an–some for good times (“In everything there is speedy victory from God”), others for more perilous encounters ( “God is the best of Protectors.”). But the Moslem warriors were not alone. Japanese samurai also brandished swords inscribed with inspiring phrases–in their cases, from Buddhist or Shinto texts.

My favorite example of inscribed weaponry, however, is the Spear of Kowel, shown in the photo above. It was discovered one spring day in 1858 in Poland by a ploughman preparing his field for planting. Made of iron and thought to date to the 3rd century A.D., the Spear of Kowel bears a simple but slightly ambiguous message. Depending on who you read, the inscription reads “brave, bold rider,” “going to the target,” “goal runner,” or simply “attacker.”

If Trijicon had to inscribe some kind of message on its rifle sights, why couldn’t it have chosen something simple and to the point like that, instead of dragging biblical texts into Middle Eastern wars that are already plagued by fundamentalism.

How Early Wooden Armor Defeated Russian Firearms

January 15, 2010

As regular readers will know, I’ve been thinking a lot this week about ancient forms of body armor. I got started on this subject last weekend, when I read about new research on the cloth armor that Alexander the Great and his army favored. But a question from reader Dan Hilborn and a very cool post over at Northwest Coast Archaeology (one of my favorite blogs) have led me to the subject of wooden armor, specifically the armor Tlingit men wore into battle against Russian traders in the late 18th century.

The Russians coveted furs — primarily the sea-otter fur, which is the thickest and warmest of any mammal on Earth. By the 18th century, these traders had pretty much exhausted the sea-otter populations that once flourished in Siberia’s kelp forests, so they sailed further east along the coast of the Bering Sea, searching for new kelp forests and more sea-otters. Along the Aleutian Islands, Alaska and eventually northern British Columbia, they spied abundant sea-otter habitat

Initially, the Russians traders sailed into Aleut villages, taking women and children hostages in order to force the men to bring them pelts. They did not hesitate to murder their captives if things didn’t go their way. In 1745, a Russian group slaughtered 15 Aleuts on the island of Attu, just to strike terror into the hearts of the villagers. The Aleut people, in turn, tried to expel these ruthless invaders from their lands, but Russian firearms and Russian diseases took a terrible toll.

Eventually, the Russians worked their way southward into Tlingit territory. Like many Northwest Coast peoples, the Tlingit fished the bountiful rivers and coasts of their territory and hunted sea lions and other sea mammals. They had a rich, complex culture, with chiefs, nobles and even slaves. To settle grievances with their neighbors, they embarked on raiding parties from time to time, outfitting themselves in armor made from the one of the most bountiful materials in their territory: wood. Tlingit men carved alder into slats and rods, then lashed these pieces together to form sturdy, lightweight armor.

The Smithsonian Institution holds several really spectacular examples of the traditional Tlingit armor. I particularly love the Tlingit battle helmet beautifully carved from a very hard spruce burl. The helmet itself is shaped like a very fierce-looking (and tattooed) man’s head and would have been worn atop the fighter’s head. According to the Smithsonian notes, “it would have been “impossible to split open with a club.” (The two images accompanying this blog show other Tlingit armor from the collection of a Spanish museum.)

But back to my story. After seeing images of Tlingit war gear, I began to wonder how effective it was in battle against the Russians and their firearms. I knew that the Tlingit had put up a very strong fight against the Russians, even capturing their settlement, New Archangel, on Sitka Island in 1802. But an account of one battle in Carl Waldman’s book, Atlas of the North American Indian, really caught my attention.

In their attack on Russian-led forces in Prince William Sound, writes Waldman, the Tlingit “wore animal masks to protect their faces as well as chest armor of wooden slats lashed together with rawhide strips, which actually repelled Russian bullets.” (The italics are mine.)

I would never have guessed that well-made wooden armor could deflect a bullet. It looks to me as if we don’t give early armorers nearly enough credit.

Replicating the Armor of Alexander the Great

January 13, 2010

I think that there are few things more delightful and amusing to watch than an adventurous archaeologist in the act of trying replicate ancient drinks, hunting techniques, weapons, or other long vanished technologies. Who knew, for example, how punishingly difficult it was to chew one’s way through dozens of pounds of milled corn to make chicha, the beer of choice for the Inca and other Andean peoples? I had no idea until I began looking into the experiments of Penn State archaeologists Patrick McGovern and Clark Erickson and their associates at Dogfish Head Brewing & Eats.

Yesterday, I found a very intriguing YouTube video of the experiments that University of Wisconsin historian Gregory Aldrete and his student Scott Bartell conducted on linothorax, the ancient linen armor worn by Alexander the Great and his army. I wrote about their research on this remarkable kevlar like gear in my post yesterday, but seeing is really believing. Check this out.

Cloth, a Body Armor of Choice?

January 12, 2010

I think it’s safe to say that the ancient world is absolutely full of surprises. While most of us have long envisioned Alexander the Great donning a gleaming bronze cuirass for battle, new research presented last week at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America reveals that one of the greatest military generals in history and his soldiers favored a much humbler form of body armor–cloth.

Gregory Aldrete, a historian at the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay, and his student Scott Bartell, became interested in Alexander’s armor after collecting more than two dozen different classical descriptions of a type of cloth armor known as linothorax, made of linen. The Greek historian Plutarch, for example, describes Alexander’s gear on the day he headed into the famous Battle of Gaugamela in 331 B.C. and decisively defeated the forces of the Persian king Darius III. Alexander, says Plutarch, wore “a breastplate of folded (or doubled) linen.”

Intrigued by this, the two historians set out to replicate linothorax. They scrambled to find linen made from hand-harvested and woven flax, and then painstakingly glued the layers of linen together with two types of glue available in the ancient world –one made of rabbit skins and the other from flax seeds. The two historians then set up a kind of ancient firing range, shooting arrows and thrusting swords at the linothorax. “The laminated layers function like an ancient version of modern Kevlar armor,” Aldrete told a reporter from Discovery News, “using the flexibility of the fabric to disperse the force of the incoming arrow.”

What I find particularly fascinating is the fact that soldiers in both the Old and New World developed cloth armor. Aztec warriors, for example, wore a kind of quilted cloth-armor jacket or tunic known as ichcapuipilli for combat against the Spanish invaders. This battle gear consisted pieces of unspun cotton sandwiched between two layers of cotton: the armor measured nearly two fingers in thickness and, according to Ross Hassig’s fine book, Aztec Warfare, was capable of deflecting both arrowheads and atlatl darts.

Inca soldiers, too, wore a form of cloth armor. The attire couldn’t protect its wearer against cannon fire or Spanish steel swords, but it clearly had some advantages. It was comfortable, lightweight, and probably very cool in the heat of mid-day. So some 16th century Spanish soldiers themselves adopted it, wearing cotton armor into battle in the Andes.

Clearly, there is more to cloth than meets the eye.