Dominic Sandbrook

And they told Atahualpa that foreigners would arrive and he would easily defeat them.

So, Atahualpa says, this oracle is absolutely useless.

And actually, there's a funny story.

The high priest, apparently, went to Cayamac to see Atahualpa.

And Atahualpa upbraided him in front of the Spaniards and said,

Your predictions are terrible.

You know, you're absolutely worthless.

Of course, I'm going to take all your gold.

You've absolutely shamed yourselves.

Yes, exactly.

And actually, the interesting thing, so Pachacamac.

Pachacamac dates back for more than a thousand years before the Incas.

This is not an Inca shrine.

It's part of the Andean world, but it's not part of their official state-sponsored sun religion, which they've been really trying to impose across the empire in recent decades.

That's right, yes.

They are high.

So Pizarro sends his brother Hernando to this shrine at Pachacamac on the coast.

And it's good for us that he did because some of the guys that went with Hernando wrote these fantastic memoirs of the conquest.

So a guy called Miguel de Estete.

And they write these really, there's some of the first kind of really lyrical descriptions of the South American landscape.