Guns, Germs, and Steel - Transcript Episode 2: Conquest - PBS

You need to be crazy to walk with a pot, but you must be beyond salvation if you arrive to a campand you don’t use that pot to cook. Ataxalpa had an idea that these were sub-humans. Whatcould a few horsemen and a hundred or so Spaniards do to the powerful Inca? Virtually nothing.Art depicting Spanish in battleVoiceover: But Ataxalpa’s spies don’t realize that the Spanish are armed with some of the bestweapons in the world. At the time of the conquistadors, Spain had the biggest army in Europe,orchestrated from the imperial capital, Toledo. For more than 700 years the Spaniards had beenat war, fi ghting against the Moors and other European armies. There was an arms race in Europe.To survive, the Spaniards needed to keep up with the latest in weapons technology.Man and Jared fi ring and loading gunsVoiceover: By the 1530s, the Jacobus was an important part of the Spanish arsenal. Gunpowderhad originally come from China, but its use as a weapon was pioneered by the Arabs. InEuropean hands, guns became lighter and more portable, and were used for the fi rst time by footsoldiers on the battlefi eld. The Jacobus was still a crude weapon, but would go on to change theface of warfare.Jared Diamond: To us moderns, this gun doesn’t seem useful for anything, it’s like a joke. Its aimis terrible, it takes a long time to reload, and while the shooter’s reloading it a swordsman wouldcome in and kill him, but the Incas hadn’t even gotten this far, and even this gun, with its soundand with the smell and with the smoke and with every now and then a person that it managesto kill, would have been terrifying to someone who had never seen this before. This would havebeen shock and awe, 1532 style.Sword smith at work as Jared watchesVoiceover: For all its bluster, the technology of gunpowder was still in its infancy. The real powerof the conquistadors lay elsewhere, with the production of steel. Toledo had some of the bestsword smiths in the world. But why were people here able to craft deadly steel weapons, while theIncas were still making simple bronze tools?Man handling swordJared Diamond: There was nothing innately brilliant about Europeans themselves that allowedthem to be the ones to make high quality swords. Just as with guns, swords were the result of along process of trial and error that began outside Europe. People started working with metal inthe Fertile Crescent 7,000 years ago, and because Europe is geographically close to the fertilecrescent, Europeans inherited this metal technology.But they took this technology on to a new level. European soldiers demanded stronger, longer,sharper swords.Jared Diamond: This is what a Toledo sword looks like when it’s fi nished. This particular one ismodeled on the sword that Pizarro carried. It’s a fearsome weapon.It’s used for stabbing and it’s also used for slashing, and I can easily understand how the personwielding the sword could kill dozens of people within a short time.Mike Loads, Historical Weapons Expert: Swords like this, rapiers, represented a high point ina very sophisticated metalworking technology. You think about what the qualities are that areFor more GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL ...go to: www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/Copyright. Lion Television Limited. 2005. All Rights Reserved.