Like other aspects of government and social organization, the military defense of the Inca Empire was well ordered and highly planned. The majority of evidence of warfare comes from the archaeological record which shows the high level of preparation. 
Many of these warehouses were only accessible via a window which could be reached by constructing stones steps leading up the wall. The second purpose of the fortresses was to control and dominate their conquered subjects. The provincial town of Paramongo was naturally defended by its topographical position but still a fortress was constructed. Other results included a store of raw material for the manufacture of public goods, supplies to relieve famine stricken or areas of crop failure and a means of providing luxury items for the ruling classes.
The all important expansion of the Inca empire was based around their standing armies, forced tributary status and their extensive communication systems. While the majority of taxpayers were agriculturalists, the sheer number of male workers to draw upon enabled the Incas to maintain a standing army, so the empire was ready to respond instantaneously to any threat. This army, of course, was also able to remain continually in service because of the tribute system and warehouses which provided food for the soldiers all year round.
The Inca army, which grew in size with the expansion of the empire, was mainly made up of armed foot soldiers practiced in the art of hand-to-hand combat. Their main weapon was the club which required two hands to operate but was capable of inflicting fatal head wounds. On the other hand, with the accumulation of the eastern jungle people, the bow and arrow became more common. This weapon could be used to kill enemy troops from a short distance.
Following Pizarro’s conquest of Peru in 1532, the Spanish chronicles of the era detailed many of the practices and rites of the subjugated Incan empire. Of these, perhaps the most shocking to the invading conquistadors was the Incan’s ”capacocha” ceremony: child sacrifice.
The chronicles tell us that sacrifice followed all major events in the life of the emperor: ascension to the throne, the birth of a son, death and so on. Such rites were also thought prevent illness, strengthen armies for battle and ensure the survival of the Incan people through appeasement of the gods.
One particular type of sacrifice, however, was said to please them more than any other. At mountaintop altars in the Andes, some 20,000 feet above sea level, Incan priests carved makeshift grottoes that would hold offerings such as statues of golden llamas, foodstuffs like peanuts and jerky and, often, a sleeping child. To the Incans, the peaks of the Andes were not just the home of the gods; rather, they were the gods themselves. The children’s mission in this life and the next would be service the gods in perpetuity from the top of the world.
Given the important role that the children were to play in the Inca’s mythological drama, they were not selected randomly and most were born into priestly or otherwise elevated castes. When their time came – usually between the ages of 9 and 14 – the chosen child would be adorned with bird feathers, symbolically painted with bright pigments and dressed in his or her finest clothes. They would then be subdued with maize beer or coca leaves and carried away from their parents - who themselves weren’t permitted to show emotion at the loss of their son or daughter. They were, after all, going to be worshipped alongside the gods.
From there, the ceremonial procession would carry their sacrifice a mountaintop of a priest’s choosing. The sedated children, after being pinned under a pile of stones with the rest of the day’s offerings, were then left to die of exposure. Jesuit missionary, Bernabe Cobo, speculated in 1652 that not all of the sacrifices were always interred alive, but were instead dealt a coup de grace prior to burial.
Cobo’s guess was confirmed in 1995, when archaeologists uncovered mummified body of an Incan girl at the summit of Nevado Ampato in southern Peru. A blow to the head killed her, shortly before she was frozen by the extreme conditions of the mountaintop. It was a process that would preserve her corpse for the next five centuries.
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Like all of the Incan sacrifice victims recovered from the Andes, the girl’s body had been unintentionally mummified. Unlike the Egyptians, who ritualistically dried and stuffed their dead to prevent decomposition, the Incan “mummies” just happened to be exposed to the precise conditions for natural freeze drying - a process that left their bodies, clothes and even expressions fully in tact. To date, nearly forty Incan mummies have been recovered from southern Peru to central Chile – and every one of them presents a perfectly preserved insight into the clothes, food, art and religion of a civilization long since vanished. | |||||||||||
The Americas presented to the European conquerors a vast area for expansion of their riches, military power, and territorial rights. After Columbus traveled the West Indies and opened the unknown area to further exploration by Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors, Portugal and Spain decided to divide their colonial rights between their respective countries along a vertical longitudinal line 970 miles west of the Cape Verde islands with the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494. This agreement between the two greatest exploring powers of the 15th century essentially split the non-Christian world so that Spain obtained rights to the lands west of the line while Portugal claimed all eastern lands including India, the East Indies and Brazil. Portugal’s claim to the Brazilian coast went unexplored for decades due to the unwelcoming natural terrain of the land and the dangerous native people. By 1530, the Portuguese conquerors managed to develop feudal plantation colonies along the coast of Brazil, thus establishing a foothold in that continent. 
The Spaniards meanwhile traveled in force to the West Indies in search of gold and other riches and by 1512 had conquered the larger of the islands of the West Indies. The Spanish quest for gold would remain unquenched however, until they set foot on the mainland of South America where they discovered gold and precious metals, finally achieving the objective of their original quest. With the discovery of gold, the Spanish Conquistadors began to exploit their newly discovered land by establishing colonies and mining operations and the general subjugation of the native populations. In the process the Spaniards decimated the Inca, Aztec, and Maya empires that had been in power and returned to Europe with the treasures of the New World. Spanish colonial rule would last for another 300 years before the growing unrest and desire for self-autonomy among the Spanish colonies resulted in their independence from the Spanish crown. 
The colonial efforts of the British rested in the small islands of the West Indies and later the colonies in North America. The islands inhabited by the native Carib and Arawak people ensured a steady stream of profits, as the English exploited their land with the production of sugar after the introduction of this crop in 1637. With the development of plantation systems in Brazil and the West Indies, the British and Portuguese invested themselves in the slave trade and commenced another chapter in the colonies’ history of labor exploitation. 
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The expeditions initially organized for the exploration and the opening of trade routes were followed by expeditions whose main goal centered on the conquest and subjugation of native peoples for access to their regions’ natural resources. The Spaniards were foremost in this expansionist thrust into South and Central America and established a lasting foothold through a growing religious, military, and commercial presence. In Central America, the kingdom of Guatemala (encompassing present-day Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica) was initiated under Spanish governance but largely organized and managed by Spanish entrepreneurs who maintained control of the area through their business activities and strengthened their own positions with the profits and influence they earned. The merchant class had the advantage of Spanish political support behind them and exploited production means in the new territories through political and coercive forces.
Provinces in Central America were ruled by a small quantity of governors, mayors or corregidores (magistrates.) Governorships were also military positions and so these were assigned only in the provinces threatened by outside forces. Eventually the position of mayor and corregidor became interchangeable. Towards the end of the 17th century only four governors, eight mayors, six magistrates and six exchequers, governed all of Guatemala’s eighteen provinces.
The mid to late 15th century in Europe introduced a great age of travel and exchange, termed the Age of Exploration and Discovery. In the two centuries that followed, European merchants and explorers would travel the world in search of goods and lands and sheer discovery in unprecedented numbers. The Portuguese and the Spanish were the earliest adventurers, soon followed by the British, French and Dutch, each eager to acquire new lands and riches in their quest to become the supreme European power. A time of global expansion was upon them. 
The interest in traveling beyond one’s own territory grew out of a change in mindset among Europeans. They began looking beyond their familiar lands with an appreciation for what new commerce and territorial expansion could do for them. New ideas and philosophies were stirring in Europe and a curiosity for new knowledge and new experience along with the promise of untold riches led monarchs of Europe to fund exploration. Famous European explorers that contributed to the changing world map included Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco da Gama, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Hernando Cortes, John Cabot and Samuel de Champlain, among others. 
The Spanish, in their turn, also began explorations in their search for new lands that would yield a different form of wealth through the discovery and mining of gold and silver. The Spanish also sought routes to the East but discovered, instead, the lands of the New World. Christopher Columbus was commissioned by the Spanish monarchs, Isabella I and Ferdinand V, to sail East to India via a Western route. He discovered for the Europeans many of the Caribbean islands and on one of his last voyages touched Panama. Later Spanish explorers such as Vasco Nunez de Balboa, Ferdinand Magellan, Hernando de Soto, Juan Ponce de Leon and Francisco Pizarro would expand upon his initial explorations and eventually open the lands of North and South America to Spanish colonization. 
The French, the British and the Dutch entered the race of discovery soon afterwards and began an era of expansion and conquest, as well as commerce, unseen in the West since the fall of the Roman Empire. English exploration began with the explorers John and Sebastian Cabot, funded by Henry VII, and yielded the islands of Labrador and Newfoundland in 1497. Following these discoveries and during the age of Queen Elizabeth I, explorers such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, and Sir John Hawkins, among others, embarked on their voyages of discovery during the Elizabethan reign of Queen Elizabeth I. They were referred to as pirates and privateers by their enemies, as other explorers were labeled conquistadors and exploiters by those whose lands they came upon. French explorers also made their contribution to the Age of Discovery, including Jacques Cartier, Jacques Marquette and Samuel de Champlain.
