In a ruthless political move, Atahualpa directed the gold-hungry Spanish to loot two of the empire's most sacred temples. Both were located in regions loyal to his civil war rival, Huascar, effectively using the invaders as a tool to punish his internal enemies.

The Spanish didn't defeat the Inca Empire at its height. They arrived after a smallpox epidemic killed the emperor and a subsequent brutal civil war between his sons shattered the empire. This left the civilization politically fractured and militarily exhausted, making it ripe for conquest by a small force.

Once easily accessible gold was gone, the Spanish conquest of Peru transitioned from looting to institutionalized exploitation. Pizarro began granting `encomiendas`—huge tracts of land with thousands of indigenous laborers. This shifted the economic model from a short-term gold heist to a long-term colonial system based on forced tribute.

In a surreal display of dominance, Francisco Pizarro held a formal dinner with Atahualpa just hours after slaughtering thousands of his followers. He then had a mattress prepared for the Inca emperor to sleep beside him, a bizarre and intimate assertion of absolute control.

When encountering Inca temples, many Spanish conquistadors described them as "mosques." This was not an architectural comparison but a conceptual one, colored by their recent history of the Reconquista in Spain. Their primary frame for a non-Christian holy site was Islamic, preventing them from understanding Inca religion on its own terms.

For the Spanish, the first concrete evidence of a great southern empire wasn't raw gold, but a raft carrying manufactured goods like golden tweezers and mirrors. These items demonstrated a level of craftsmanship and social organization that signaled a truly advanced civilization, far more than simple resources could.

Beyond physical destruction, the Romans committed cultural annihilation. They seized and dispersed Carthage's libraries, which held its rich literary and historical tradition. By preserving only a single farming manual, Rome ensured that future generations would only ever hear the conqueror's version of events.

After executing Inca emperor Atahualpa, the Spanish installed his brother as a puppet ruler. This co-opted the existing power structure, making the conquest seem like a restoration of the natural order to local chiefs and smoothing the transition of power.

Despite building a massive, highly organized empire, the Incas had no written language. This means nearly everything known about their history and culture was recorded by the Spanish after the conquest. Their entire legacy is therefore filtered through the lens of their destroyers, creating a fundamentally biased historical record.