Cut the Incas some slack, pal. The Incas HAD to give the Spanish conquistadors amnesty. Otherwise, they would have been RASCIST!!

Funny how all those great native American civilizations have essentially disappeared from the face of the earth.

CyberCipher on June 21, 2007 at 1:53 PM

…which puts the lie to everything behind the whole reconquista movement and the Spanish language question at the same time.

I guess the Incans should have guarded their borders better – perhaps the Incan king had passed an Amnesty bill instead of enforcing Incan immigration laws…

darkpixel on June 21, 2007 at 1:23 PM

Cut the Incas some slack, pal. The Incas HAD to give the Spanish conquistadors amnesty. Otherwise, they would have been RASCIST!!

Funny how all those great native American civilizations have essentially disappeared from the face of the earth.

I’m sure Julius Caesar would be happy to hear that!
Veni, vidi, vici

You are right but not all black powder weapons use a patch to help create a seal, such as a revolver, or a rifled musket. Many of these fired what is called a maxi bullet. It looks like a modern bullet in most respects. I would think that the musket used by the Spanish in that time would have been a match lock or wheel lock. I have fired a reproduction match lock, and the ball did not use a patch. But all that is beside the point, the point is that the ball was not made of iron.

My mind is still trying to wrap itself around the murder of Otzi the Iceman and his death by arrowhead. I had no idea that things other than guns could kill people. I was under the impression that, prior to the invention of guns, people died of old age, heart break, and nothing else.

Africans used a short piece of something like rebar with a patch to hunt dangerous game using a musket at one time, before they started cutting their teeth on AKs.

Steel core and even solid steel bullets were not uncommon for African game before .458 Winchester or .460 Weatherby came along.

Confederate on June 21, 2007 at 9:11 AM

Actually, musket balls were notoriously loose-fitting, which accounted for some (but not all) of the range deficiency of the musket over the rifle. Even early rifle balls were able to be ‘rammed’ down the barrel by tapping the butt of the rifle against the ground if time was of the essence. For the shots that had to be truly accurate and powerful, rifle balls were wrapped in greased leather patches to catch in the barrel’s grooves to impart maximum spin…this was really the only time a ramrod was the only way to get the ball down the barrel.

I need more sentences with the word ‘trepanation’ in them!

Coronagold on June 21, 2007 at 6:47 AM

Oh please, I need that like I need a hole in my head.

Anyway, it’s obvious these people know nothing about black powered weapons.

“If you outlaw guns, then only outlaws will have guns”

Interesting stuff, however.

Couldn’t have said it better.

I was trying to condense the thrust of the idea about “why do some cultures remain unscientific”.

And emphasiize the vital need for a people to eschew delusional superstitions or wishful thinking in favor of hard and deadly inventiveness.

Europe was a crossroads and cauldron of a hundred competing power struggles, which honed the predatory cunning to a rapier point.

The “New World” was lost in fantasies of Turtle island and feeding the sun with human hearts, and so neglected their more important human task: developing better weaponry to stave of the bastards next door.

A lesson we’d better learn ourselves, since our “neighbors” burning effigies of Salman Rushdie in the islamic Zones aren’t going to be placated with 24 dollars worth of trinkets.

Iron balls can be made from or back into nails, chain or any number of things to build with.
Lead was used to make drinking vessels, utensils or items that are made into smaller or more intricate things easier.

Lead is much heavier than iron and therefore loads down a ship quicker and is more precious for household uses.

Early muskets didn’t have much accuracy or much range anyway why waste lead?
If indeed this was a gunshot to the head it was highly improbable that it was purposeful unless it was point blank.

I say it was suicide.

For not developing a high technology and instead chasing poor beavers.

profitsbeard on June 20, 2007 at 8:25 PM

Profitsbeard’s point is worthy on its own. However, I want to add that, accidents aside, one has to have legislated the right political conditions in order to obtain rapid advances in physics, chemistry, and biology, and in order to be able to take advantage of them by incorporating them into technologies. Technology, as important as it is, is probably very nearly last on a chronologically ordered list of new modes and orders; if you get everything else right, you get technology, but not otherwise. Technical stability or stagnation seems to be the usual condition; indifference to the knowledge of the conditions of technical advance allows the required conditions to decay and promotes a return to stability or stagnation.