When the Andean region was invaded by Pizarro's troops in 1532, 40 years had passed since the fall of both Granada and the first of the Caribbean islands to the Castilians and more than twenty years since the invasion of Mesoamerica. An entire generation of Europeans – almost two – were knowledgeable in the ways of ‘heathens’ and ‘Indians’. The children they had fathered in the New World were now grown; they spoke the languages of their mothers. Fathers and sons heard tales of other, even more remote, places with richer peoples, south of Panama. Rumours of societies in the Andes were commonplace among the settlers on the Isthmus, some think even in Brazil. One Portuguese, Aleixo Garcia, heard enough to encourage him to join a Chiriguano raid against the highlands; marching in from the south-east, they attacked Inka installations at least five years before Pizarro invaded from the north. Long after the Pizarro clan had enforced their claim to the Andes, other pretenders insisted that they had been first to hear of these kingdoms.

It is from such tales and the later accounts of eyewitnesses that our knowledge of the Andean civilizations in 1532 is primarily drawn. It is very incomplete knowledge; even the scholarly community is not always aware how fragmentary the record remains. Archaeology could help but for the marginal position still held by archaeologists in the Andean republics (in sharp contrast to Mexico). Millions may have read Pablo Neruda's ode to Machu Picchu and millions more have visited the monument, but no one knows which segment of Inka society inhabited the site.