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the east. While still alive, its left side was opened, and by inserting the hand they drew forth the heart, lungs and entrails; the whole must come out together from the throat downwards. They regarded it as a most happy omen if the lungs came out still quivering. After they had sacrificed the llama lamb, a great quantity of other young, female and male llamas was brought for the common sacrifice. Their throats were cut and they were flayed. Their blood and hearts were all kept and offered to the Sun. Everything was burned to ashes.

The same Spanish writer tells us that while real llamas were being slaughtered, the rulers of the provinces also brought to the Incas models of llamas made of gold and silver as tokens of the great animal wealth of the region. Our llama may have been one of these tokens. Alternatively, and less comfortably, it may have been part of one of the other Inca religious rituals. Selected children of the elite were ritually exposed and left on the mountain peaks as living sacrifices to the mountain spirits, and little gold llamas like ours have been found beside their dead bodies.

The wealth of the Inca Empire depended not only on the vast herds of llamas but also on the Incas’ ability to force their conquered subjects to work for them. The subjects, however, weren’t by any means as docile as the llamas, and many Andeans – dispossessed and exploited – resented the Incas as alien aggressors:

Inca tyranny is at our gate … If we yield to the Inca, we shall be obliged to give up our former freedom, our best land, our most beautiful women and girls, our customs, our laws … We shall become for all time this tyrant’s vassals and servitors.

The Inca hold on many of its provinces was fragile. Continuous rebellions tell of potential weakness, which turned out to be crucial when Pizarro returned to conquer Peru in 1532. Some of the local elites immediately seized the opportunity to ally with the incomers and throw off the Inca yoke.

As well as being joined by a growing number of rebels, the Spanish had swords, armour and guns, none of which the Incas possessed – and crucially they also had horses. The Inca had never before seen men on the backs of animals, nor had they seen the speed and agility with which this combination of man and beast could move. The Inca llamas must have suddenly looked hopelessly delicate and slow. It was all over fairly quickly – a mere couple of hundred Spaniards massacred the Inca army, captured their emperor, installed a puppet ruler and seized and melted down their gold treasures. Our little llama is one of the rare survivors.

The Spanish had come to Peru lured by tales of enormous quantities of gold. But they discovered instead the richest silver mines in the world and began to mint the coins that would power the world’s first global currency. The Inca measured the wealth of their empire in llamas. The Spanish would measure theirs, as we shall see in Chapter 80, in silver pieces of eight.

74

Jade Dragon Cup

Jade cup, from central Asia

AD 1417–1449

We’ll lead you to the stately tent of war,

Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine

Threatening the world with high astounding terms,

And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.

In these words Christopher Marlowe fixed for ever the European image of Tamburlaine, still a legendary force in Elizabethan England. A couple of hundred years earlier, by 1400, the real Tamerlane had become the ruler of all the Mongol lands except China. The heart of his empire was the region we now know as the ‘stans’ – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan. That huge area in central Asia has always had a fluctuating history, where empires build, crumble and fade – until another empire rises and the cycle begins again. It is a region that has inevitably had two faces – one looking towards China in the east and the other towards Turkey and Iran in the west. Samarkand, Tamerlane’s capital, was a major city on the great Silk Road that linked these two worlds. Much of this complex cultural and religious