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Well, watched a very interesting National Geographic/Nova episode on PBS Tuesday night on the excavation of the graves of Indians killed in the seige of Lima in 1536 entitled "The Great Inca Rebellion". Cause of death for most of the Indian casualties was not from European weapons but were from shattering blows to the head from the stone war clubs of other Indians! Common history purports that a handful of Spanish soldiers with guns, horses and steel weapons overwhelmed the stone age technology of the entire Incan empire. Looks like the truth is more apt to be a small band of Spanish soldiers won thousands of Indian allies with promises of self rule and these allies then bore the brunt of the fighting to topple an empire that was already having problems.

I caught part of it last night. They were testing a skull to see if it was the first record of a gunshot wound/death in the Americas.

Makes sense. The Incas would not have let anybody infiltrate their world unless they thought they could trust them. Spanish soldiers would not be in this category, but other native peoples would be. These "others" probably were bribed, and after a period of time, began the surprise massacre. They were probably killed too. Hence the disappearance of the Incan civilization.

The first documented case of a fatality by gun shot in the New World was very interesting, but the fact remained that the bulk of the dead died from wounds consistent with those casused by native weapons.

I think the general thinking on the matter is that the Incan empire was unstable to begin with after having expanded exponentially in a relatively short amount of time. Pizzaro seems to have had little trouble making allies among the various tribes already chafing under the empire's rule and had an Indian concubine himself as part of an alliance deal. What I think is likely is that, in a pattern all to familiar to European's dealings with indigenous peoples worldwide, the Spanish broke promises and ignored treaties. With a larger influx of European soldiers and settlers coupled with greater contact with the Indians, diseases decimated native populations crippling their cultures and allowing the Spanish to sweep into the power "vacume" created by the fall of the Incan empire.

This all makes much more sense than a relative handfull of Spanish soldiers conquering an Empire with armies numbering in the thousands if not tens of thousands.

History is fascinating, but it can repeat itself. 'Think so?