Si Sheppard – How did a few hundred Spanish soldiers topple two empires?
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New episode with military historian Si Sheppard.The conquests of the Aztec and Inca empires might be the most shocking events in human history.Hernan Cortés and some hundreds of Conquistadors landed on a new continent they knew basically nothing about, and within 2 and a half years, conquered the 6 million strong Aztec empire.Then, a decade later, Francisco Pizarro did the same thing to an Incan Empire of some 10 million inhabitants.In both cases, the Conquistadors consistently beat native armies while being literally 100x (or even in some cases 1000x) outnumbered - and in many cases, did so without taking a single casualty.And they did this with 99% of their military forces being made up of the very natives they were trying to subjugate.We often forget how wild human history is. People talk about AI takeover as if it would be some crazy, unprecedented sci-fi outcome. But this would not be the first time an alien force whose motives the defenders barely understand use more advanced technology and diplomatic cunning to outmaneuver and then take over a much larger and long established existing order.Watch on YouTube; read the transcript.Sponsors* Jane Street’s intern projects are even more ambitious than I realized. One intern spent his summer researching LLM memorization, figuring out how to quantify and reduce it. This matters because, when Jane Street tests their models on historical data, they need to know that performance reflects predictive power, not just memorized outcomes. Another intern spent his time developing a new activation checkpointing scheme: his custom version ended up outperforming PyTorch’s native one. If you want to read about more 2026 intern projects or apply for Jane Street’s 2027 internships, go to janestreet.com/dwarkesh* Grok Bot can tackle the tasks you’ve been meaning to handle but just haven’t gotten around to. For example, SpaceXAI recently gave Grok Bot access to their procurement contracts, vendor spend, and usage data: it ended up identifying over $100,000 in potential savings for them. I decided to try this on my own spend, and Grok Bot found over $5,000 of savings for me, even though I run a pretty small team. Try it out yourself at x.ai/bot* Antithesis solves one of the biggest problems with traditional software testing: to test for a bug, you first have to be able to imagine it. Antithesis runs your system through thousands of parallel histories and steers your tests for you, injecting faults and generally trying to make everything as adversarial as possible. That way, your software gets tested against scenarios you’d never imagine but that could still arise in the real world. Learn more at antithesis.com/dwarkeshTimestamps(00:00:00) – Cortés’s conquest of the Aztecs(00:22:39) – Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca(00:26:59) – Explaining Conquistador military superiority(00:34:39) – Could the natives have beat the Conquistadors?(00:48:56) – The Aztecs and Incas did not get to learn from each other(00:56:11) – Why Spain still lost in the long run(01:07:47) – Why didn’t the Aztecs/Incas adapt better to European warfare?(01:14:16) – Conquistador motivation(01:26:22) – Why Mughal India also couldn’t play the Europeans off each other(01:33:42) – Diplomacy was just as important as technology This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com
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中英文字稿 
好，今天我与教授兼军事历史学家塞·谢帕德进行对话。我想和您讨论阿兹特克帝国和印加帝国的征服，因为这些事件是人类历史上最令人震惊的事件之一，在所有军事和外交成就中无可比拟。几个百名征服者来到一个他们全然不知的新大陆，短短几年内，就征服了拥有数百万人口的帝国。在这个过程中，他们往往在人数上以1比100甚至1比1000的劣势赢得战斗，很多情况下甚至没有一人伤亡。他们这样做时，其作战力量中99%以上其实是由他们即将征服的当地居民组成的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Okay, today I'm chatting with professor and military historian, Cy Shepard. I want to talk to you about the conquest of the Aztec and the Inca empires, because these are some of the most shocking events in human history, unparalleled among all the military and diplomatic achievements ever made. You have a few hundred conquistadors show up to a new continent they know nothing about, and within a matter of years, they subjugate empires which have millions of inhabitants in them. In the process of doing so, they are often winning battles where they are outnumbered 100x to 1, 1000x to 1, and in many cases not even taking a single casualty. They're doing this while upwards of 99% of their fighting forces are made up of the very natives that they're going to subjugate.
我想请你来谈谈这个话题。虽然我们不会把重点放在这个事件上，我们主要是聊历史，但人们往往把人工智能接管视为一种疯狂的科幻情景。然而，历史上这不是第一次外来力量能够利用外交手段和技术优势，超越并接管一个更大、更成熟的体系，而当地人却无法理解其动机。所以我希望你能帮助我们理解当时发生的事情。首先，我想听听科尔特斯和皮萨罗都做了些什么？这些征服行为是如何进行的？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And I wanted to have you on to talk about this episode. We're not going to focus on it. We're mostly talking about history here, but people think of AI takeover as this crazy sci-fi scenario, but this would not be the first time in history that an alien force with motivations that the natives don't understand is able to use diplomatic cunning and technological advantages to outmaneuver and then take over a much larger and well-established order. And so I wanted to have you on to understand what happened here. So first, I would love to hear the stories of what did Cortez do? What did Pizarro do? How did these conquests actually go down?
好的。谢谢大家。我非常高兴能在这里。是的，我们要讨论现代世界的诞生，这是在大约600到500年前发生的，这一过程创造了我们今天所处的现代全球化社会。这一切始于15世纪，当时欧洲在受到外部力量巨大压力的情况下被逼到了绝境，被切断了与东部核心经济力量的联系，失去了获取历史上推动欧亚大陆全球经济发展的香料和丝绸的途径，最终被迫进行创新。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Okay. Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here. And yes, we're talking about the birth of our modern world, which played out between 600 to 500 years ago and created the modern globalized community that we all participate in today. It began in the 15th century when Europe backed up against the wall of Europe under immense pressure from external forces and cut off from the core economic power bases of the east, the sources of the spice and silk that had driven the global economy historically throughout Eurasia, are finally forced to innovate.
葡萄牙的亨利王子等关键人物致力于将大西洋从一道障碍变成一条超级高速公路。在此过程中，几代船长通过报告潮汐、风向和他们侦察到的土地，逐渐累积了丰富的知识，绘制出更完整的地图。他们最终找到了绕过非洲南端直接到达印度的航线，从而省去中间商。同时，西班牙人则往西航行。我们尊重克里斯托弗·哥伦布的故事。1492年，他驶向蔚蓝的海洋。这是一种创业精神。他希望通过向西航行到达东方的市场。当然，他的计算完全错误，使他幸运的是，他不知道实际上有一个完整的大陆位于他以为日本、中国和香料群岛的位置。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Key names like Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal work on turning the Atlantic Ocean from a barrier into a superhighway. Generational knowledge accrued from captains reporting in on tides and wind currents and whatever land they've managed to reconnoiter, building out the map as they go along, are able to find a way around the south tip of Africa directly to India and therefore cut out the middlemen. The Spanish, meanwhile, are heading west. We honor the story of Christopher Columbus. In 1492, he sailed the sea blue. That was entrepreneurship. This was an expedition to arrive at the Oriental markets by traveling west. Of course, his figures were completely wrong and he was saved by the fact that, unknown to him, there was an entire continent in the place where he thought Japan, China, and the Spice Islands would be. Initial
人们最初认为这是一个令人失望的局面。但随着时间的推移，人们越来越清楚地意识到，这片土地、财富和人力资源蕴藏着可以被开发的潜力。1511年，一个名叫迭戈·委拉斯开兹的西班牙雄心勃勃的贵族控制了古巴，这是一个关键的转折点。他以古巴为基地派遣探险队去探索我们现在称为中美洲的海岸。后来在1518年，他把这个任务交给了埃尔南·科尔特斯，一个与他关系起伏不定的人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Perceptions were that this was a disappointment. But over time, it became increasingly apparent this was a source of potential in land, in wealth, and in people that could be exploited. A key turning point happened in 1511 when a Spanish ambitious nobleman seizes control of Cuba, de Velazquez. He sends out from this power base expeditions exploring the coast of what we would call Mesoamerica, Central America. Later in 1518, he assigns that task to a man who he's had a somewhat tempestuous relationship with, a man named Hernan Cortes.
他于1511年到达新大陆的古巴。由于他有一些法律背景，所以他担任书记官，并逐渐升任为古巴的首席法官。然而，他还有更大的野心。他获得总督的许可后，开始积极筹划。他开始招募人手，推进一个更广泛、更宏大的目标——不仅仅是探索海岸线，而是深入内陆，了解那里有什么，并争取掌控。当总督意识到科尔特斯的意图时，设法阻止他。1518年11月18日，关键时刻到来，总督到达海滨，正好看见科尔特斯乘船前往停泊在海上的船只。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
He'd arrived in the New World in Cuba in 1511. He had some legal training, so he served as a notary and worked his way up to being alcalde, which is chief magistrate on Cuba, but he had much greater ambition. And he takes this warrant from the governor and runs with it. He begins recruiting men to a much wider and much more ambitious goal, not just to explore the coast, but to penetrate into the interior, to find out what's there and to seize control of him. When the governor realizes what Cortes is up to, he tries to stop him. This great moment on 18th November, 1518, he arrives at the waterfront just as Cortes gets into a boat to go out to his ships offshore.
州长对他说：“你在做什么？” 而科尔特斯向他保证：“别担心，一切都在我的掌控之中。” 但实际上，州长在那时已经失去了控制权。 现在变成了科尔特斯的探险。因此，这就是背景。 正如你所说，他确实是在地图的边缘探索，他进入了欧洲人以前未曾涉足的未知领土。他在群岛多年磨练出的政治敏感，使他在早期阶段就能认识到大陆上存在一个强大的帝国势力，并了解到帝国的臣民们对这个领主或帝国权力的不满。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The governor calls out to him, "What are you up to?" And Cortes assures him, "Don't worry, I have this all under control." But of course, the governor had lost control at that point. Now it was Cortes' expedition. So this is the background. And again, as you say, he is literally going off the side of the map, right? He's entering terra incognita, unknown to Europeans previously. His political antenna, honed by years in the islands, enables him to appreciate at a very early stage that there is a significant imperial power which has hegemony here in the mainland, and that its subject, peoples, chafe under the authority of whoever this lord or imperial power is.
他来到了托托纳克人的土地，托托纳克人最近被一个自称为 "Meika" 的民族纳入了他们的帝国版图。因此，我们所知的 "Meiko" ，也在历史中因其神话般的起源地 "Aslan" 被称为阿兹特克人。为了简单起见，我们就称他们为阿兹特克人。托托纳克人不满这种统治，就像所有被征服和压制的民族一样。他们看到这些外来者的到来是个潜在的机会，可以摆脱强加给他们的权威。于是，在与托托纳克人建立这种关系后，科尔特斯开始向内陆进军，并进入了拉什卡兰人的领土。拉什卡兰人就像免疫系统一样立刻集合起来，试图击败他，并把他赶出他们的领地。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
He arrives in the lands of the Totonacs, who had recently been incorporated into the imperial orbit of a people who call themselves the Meika, hence Meiko as we know it, but have come down to history based on their mythical origins in a land called Aslan, as the Aztecs. So for simplicity's sake, that's what we'll refer to them as. The Totonacs resented this authority, as all subjugated and subordinated peoples do. And they saw the arrival of these outsiders as a potential opportunity to throw off the authority that had been imposed on them. So having established this relationship with the Totonacs, Cortes begins to march inland, and he enters the territory of the Lashkalans, who are like an autoimmune system immediately rallied to defeat him, to expel him from their territory.
但他与他僵持了一段时间。拉什卡人和他达成了一种新的安排。拉什卡人再次欣赏他的强大、力量和潜力，他们转而支持他，并将从此作为他深入内陆探险的向导和增援。
我们能在这里暂停一下，聊聊人数问题吗？科尔特斯带来了多少人？即使是塔拉什卡人的人数也远远超过科尔特斯的。所以即使只是僵持，已经是一个令人印象深刻的军事成就，特别是因为他是在没有本地支持的情况下战斗的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But he fights him to a standstill for such a period of time. The Lashkalans and he arrive at a new kind of arrangement. The Lashkalans again appreciate his strength, his power, his potential. They swing over to his side and will then henceforth serve as guides and reinforcements for his expedition deeper into the interior. Can we pause here and talk about the numbers? So how many men had Cortes brought with him? Even the Talashkalans had much larger numbers than Cortes did. So even the standstill is an impressive military achievement, especially because he's fighting without native support.
那么，现在的数字到底是多少呢？科尔特斯一方只有几百人，而拉什卡兰人一方则有几千人。在这个时候，来自旧世界和新世界的关键技术差异开始真正发挥作用。让我第一次对这个场景产生兴趣的是贾里德·戴蒙德的书《枪炮、细菌与钢铁》。书名中列出了西班牙人拥有的关键优势。实际上，枪炮的作用并没有那么大。一旦当地人克服了最初的震惊，他们意识到由于当时火器的装填时间非常慢，这些武器在战场上的作用并不如想象中那么重要。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So what are the numbers even at this point? A few hundred on Cortes's side and multiple thousands on the Lashkalans side. It's at this point that the critical technological differentials from the old and new world really began to come into effect. The classic text which got me invested in this whole scenario in the first place is Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. He enumerates in the title those critical advantages that the Spaniards had. Guns in reality weren't so significant. Once the native peoples got over the shock value, they appreciated given the very slow reloading times involved in firearms at that time that they weren't so significant as assets on the battlefield.
但是钢铁是至关重要的。当地的武器是用木头、石头和火山玻璃（黑曜石）制成的，这种材料在磨尖后像剃刀一样锋利，作为劈砍武器非常危险。不过，对于征服者们穿戴的钢铁盔甲，尤其是钢铁头盔来说，这些武器的效果要差得多。征服者们继承了源远流长的旧世界军事传统，使用了托莱多长钢剑作为刺击武器，来对付手持劈砍武器的本地战士。这些劈砍武器在攻击时，很容易让使用者暴露在敌人的攻击下，因此征服者们可以很快地将他们击退。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But steel was critical. Local weapons were carved from wood and from stone and from obsidian, that volcanic glass, which is razor sharp when honed to a point and quite dangerous as a slashing weapon. But against the steel armor and especially the steel helmets that the conquistadors were wearing, it was much less effective. And the conquistadors were drawing on military traditions of the old world that went back, incorporating long Toledo steel sword blades. They used those as thrusting weapons to take out indigenous warriors who were coming in with cut and slash weapons, which of course open up the side of the body to be taken out very early.
因此，这种技术与几代传承下来的军事训练和技艺结合在一起，使得征服者在战场上具有关键的优势。当然，他们并不是不可战胜的，而且科尔特斯再次运用了心理战术。他在战斗中也有损失，他小心翼翼地把阵亡的士兵埋在他们躲藏的房子下面，这样拉什·柯林斯就不会意识到他们实际上在近身战中也取得了一些胜利。这既是一场心理战，也是身体对抗的一部分。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So the combination of the technology with generations of inherited military training and skill meant that the conquistadors had that critical edge on the battlefield. Now they weren't invincible, and Cortez again playing those mind games. He was taking casualties and he was careful to bury his dead underneath the houses that they were sheltering in. So the Lush Collins wouldn't be aware that they were even having some successes in hand-to-hand combat. It was as much a mind game as it was a physical game.
当然，征服者携带的终极武器就是他们的马匹。我无法过分强调马匹对征服者多么重要，特别是在他们进入美洲大陆内部之后。他们有着外部的优势，比如船帆的动力，使他们可以在沿海的任何地方登陆。但在大陆内部，马匹则是决定性的武器。本地并没有类似的动物。虽然马的起源是在北美，但后来却在当地灭绝了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the ultimate weapon, of course, the conquistadors brought with them was their horses. I cannot emphasize or overemphasize enough how vital the horse was to the conquistadors once they entered into the interior of the American continents. They had the external asset, they had sail power, which enabled them to land anywhere they wanted on the coast. But in the interior, the horse was decisive. There were no native equivalents. The horse originated in North America, but it had subsequently died out.
当地人不仅没有马，实际上也没有任何负重的牲畜。负重动物没有被融入他们的经济、生活方式或军事中。接下来我们要谈到的印加人，他们确实有一种负重动物，就是美洲驼。在他们出征时，军队后面会跟着排成数英里的驮运队伍，满是运送物资的美洲驼。而阿兹特克人没有类似的负重动物。他们唯一的家畜是火鸡和吉娃娃犬。说到狗，征服者们还带来了这些大型的战争獒犬，它们身披铠甲，经过训练专门扑倒敌人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the local peoples had not just no horses, but no beast of burden generally. That was not integrated into their economies, into their ways of life, or into their military. The Inca, who we'll discuss in a moment, they did have one, which was the llama. And when they campaigned, their armies trailing for miles behind them would be these endless baggage trains of pack animals, llamas. The Aztecs had no equivalent. Their only domestic animals were the turkey and the chihuahua. And speaking of dogs, the conquistadors also brought these big war mastiffs, these fighting dogs, which wore armor and were trained to take down men.
再想象一下这种情况对土著人民有多么可怕的影响。然而，马匹是关键的资产。在进攻中，你可以冲破任何土著的阵型，因为他们不仅缺乏武器，还没有足够的训练或纪律来抵挡大规模的骑兵冲击。而且，如果征服者的情况不妙，他们可以比敌人快得多地撤退。因此，拉斯卡拉人非常看重所有这些优势的结合，并将其视为自己的机会。他们是中美洲最后一个仍能与阿兹特克人抗衡的重要势力。他们已经被完全包围。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Again, imagine the terrifying impact that would have for the indigenous people. But the horse was the critical asset. On attack, you could blast through any native formation, which didn't not just have the weapons, but the training or discipline to be able to stand up to mass shocked cavalry. And if things were going bad for the conquistadors, they could retreat much faster than of course, the enemies could chase them. So the Las Calas appreciate all these assets coming together, and they see this as their opportunity. They were the holdouts, the last remaining major entity in Mesoamerica, which was still able to go toe to toe with the Aztecs. They've been completely surrounded.
阿兹特克人每年都在通过这些形式上的花战来提高赌注，这些花战越来越明显地变成了征服战争。而拉斯卡拉斯人被切断了与海岸的联系，也失去了盐来源，对吗？所以他们被逼到了绝境。这对他们来说是个放手一搏的机会。如果我们与这些外来者结盟，毕竟他们人数不多，我们可能就有机会打破这个被强加给我们的战略困局。因此，他们决定倾向于与科尔特斯合作，并与他一同前往位于提斯科科湖中的阿兹特克帝国首都——特诺奇蒂特兰，这颗闪闪发光的明珠。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Aztecs were upping the ante every year with these ceremonial flower wars, which were becoming more and more obviously wars of conquest. And the Las Calas had been cut off from the coast and from sources of salt, right? So they were being pushed to the brink. This is a Hail Mary for them. If we ally with these outsiders, these strangers, who are just few in number after all, we may have some potential way to break out of this strategic trap that we've had imposed upon us. So they lean over to the size of Cortes and they travel with him to Tenochtitlan, the capital, the glittering jewel in the midst of Lake Tishcoco, the capital of the Aztec Empire.
再次，这个戏剧性的时刻发生在科尔特斯通过堤道进入城市，与被称为"伟大演说家"、阿兹特克帝国皇帝的蒙特祖玛二世相遇时。这一刻代表了两个世界的相遇。他们之间的交流由科尔特斯的翻译兼情妇唐娜·马琳娜·马林切来进行，她成为两者之间的桥梁。这时的对话成为历史上最重要的转折点之一。那么，蒙特祖玛二世的视角是什么呢？他知道科尔特斯正在到来。这是他的帝国，他在各地都有使节、特使、侦察员和间谍。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And again, this is a dramatic moment when Cortes passes through the causeways out into the city, and encounters Moctezuma II, the Hue Latuani, as he was called, the great speaker, the emperor of the Aztec Empire. And these two worlds come together at that moment. The interface between them was Cortes' interpreter slash mistress, Donna Marina Malinche, as she became known, who is translating from one side to the other. So the dialogue that occurs then is one of those great tipping points in history. What was the perspective of Moctezuma II? He was aware Cortes was coming. This is his empire. He has envoys and emissaries and scouts and spies everywhere.
他们向他报告，有东西漂到了我们帝国的海岸，并且决心与我们会面。一开始，他与科尔特斯讨价还价，劝他离开。他送给科尔特斯贵重的礼物，但这当然只让科尔特斯更加贪婪。一旦科尔特斯得到了阿兹特克的黄金，他就决心一路前往中心。所以他继续玩着双重游戏。他的顾问和幕僚劝他不要让科尔特斯进入首都。他的兄弟奎特拉乌克对他说：“如果你允许这个人进入你的家，他会把你的家夺走。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And they're reporting back to him that something has washed up on the shores of our empire and it is determined to meet with us. He initially bargains with Cortes, urging him to leave. He provides him with precious gifts, which of course just inflames Cortes even more. And just once he's got hold of Aztec gold, he's just determined to go all the way to the center. So he continues playing this double game. His advisors, his counsel, urge him not to allow Cortes to proceed to the capital. His own brother, Quetlehuac, tells him, "If you allow this man inside your house, he will take your house away from you."
但莫克特苏马继续进行了。他因此受到历代历史学家的谴责。把征服者们引入帝国的核心是一大错误。但我实际上认为这可能是他最好的选择，无论他是否意识到了这一点。因为让科尔特斯作为他的客人留在特诺奇蒂特兰，比让科尔特斯这个不受控的因素在他的帝国内四处活动，与臣属民族交谈、可能煽动他们反对中央权威要好。他或许觉得科尔特斯真如他所说的，是来自广阔海洋另一边伟大皇帝的使者。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But Moctezuma proceeds. And from that, he's been condemned by generations of historians. This was a mistake to bring the conquistadors into the heart of the empire itself. I actually think that was his best option, whether he was aware of it or not, because it was better for him to have Cortes as his guest within Tenochtitlan than it was to have Cortes, this random element at loose within his empire, talking to the subject peoples, inflaming them possibly against central authority. He felt perhaps Cortes was what he said he was, an envoy from a great emperor on the far side of the vast ocean.
科尔特斯再次施展他的心理战术，他并没有任何授权证明自己是某人的外交官或大使。他不停地告诉任何愿意听的人：“我是代表强大的神圣罗马帝国皇帝查理五世发言。”当然，查理五世根本不知道埃尔南·科尔特斯是谁。科尔特斯又一次在即兴发挥。这种令人难以置信的即兴表演真是让人惊讶。就在这时，一个关键的转折点来了。消息从海岸上传来，说有一名阿兹特克的地区军官自作主张对滞留在海岸的征服者采取了行动，那些和托特纳克人在一起的征服者，有些人已经被杀了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Cortes, again with the mind games, had no warrant to say he was a diplomat or ambassador for anybody. He kept telling anyone who'd listen, "I speak for the mighty Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor." Of course, Charles V had no idea who Hernán Cortes was. Cortes, again, is just winging it. The incredible improvisation here. And for a moment, the stasis. The great turning point comes when word arrives from the coast that one of the Aztec regional military officers, on his own initiative, has taken action against the conquistadors left behind on the coast, the ones with the Totenacs, and some of them have been killed.
科尔特斯将此视为他的借口。他进入阿兹特克皇帝莫克特苏马二世的宫殿，告诉莫克特苏马为了他的安全，现在被西班牙人保护性拘留，他应该跟他们走，否则会有暴力发生。就在这一刻，莫克特苏马的整个世界观崩溃了。以前从未有人这样对他说话。他的心理在那一刻崩溃，他顺从地允许自己被带走。他告诉他的人民：“别反抗。我不想流血。我会和这些陌生人一起离开。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Cortes sees this as his pretext. He marches into the palace of Moctezuma II, the Aztec, Huey Latvani, tells him that for his own safety, he was now being taken under the protective custody of the Spanish, and he should come with him or else there will be violence. And this is the moment when Moctezuma's entire world view just collapses. Nobody had spoken to him like this before. His psychology just disintegrates at that point, and he meekly allows himself to be led away. He tells his people, "Don't resist. I don't want bloodshed. I will pass with these strangers."
然后，一旦科尔特斯被围捕，那些在海岸负责背叛他的人被抓到皇帝和整个宫廷面前活活烧死，这是一种阿兹特克人完全不熟悉的惩罚形式。他们在阴沉的沉默中观看这些。所以，一旦科尔特斯抓住了皇帝本人，一旦他控制了蒙特祖马，他实际上已经掌握了整个帝国。他通过蒙特祖马这个越来越成为傀儡的皇帝进行统治。蒙特祖马似乎被科尔特斯的魅力所迷住，仿佛是典型的斯德哥尔摩综合症。他为他们安排了一次城中豪华观光。科尔特斯再次展示了自己的力量，建造了小型帆船，并带着蒙特祖马在特斯科科湖上进行了一次航行。皇帝对这种利用风力在水上航行的新技术感到震惊。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And then once Cortes is rounded up, the officers at the coast, responsible for turning on his men there, he has them in front of the emperor and the entire court burned alive, which is a form of punishment totally unknown to the Aztecs. And they watch this in grim silence. So once Cortes has seized the emperor himself, once he has Moctezuma, he already has the empire. He governs through what is increasingly becoming his puppet. And Moctezuma seems to have fallen almost under the spell of Cortes, the classic Stockholm syndrome. He gives them a grand tour of the city. Cortes, and again, a subtle flex on his power, has brigantines, small sailing boats built. And he takes Moctezuma with them on a sailing cruise on Lake Tishkoko. And the emperor is astonished at this new technology of using the wind to sail on the water.
获得皇帝是关键。因此，皇帝的错误不是邀请科尔特斯进入城市，而是他自己也待在附近的宫殿里，这使他变得脆弱。如果他去了其他更远的地点，以朝圣或远征为借口，通过属下来统治，科尔特斯就会感到困惑。他不能去追赶皇帝，因为那显然太具挑衅性了。但没有皇帝在那里，科尔特斯的选择会极为有限。我不知道在那种情况下他会怎么做。但是因为蒙特苏马留在了他的首都，他就成为了目标。一旦他被抓住，这就成为了当时控制整个帝国的关键。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Having the emperor was the key. So the emperor's mistake wasn't inviting Cortes into the city. It was making himself vulnerable by staying there also in an adjacent palace. If he had gone to some further location, made some excuse, a pilgrimage or an expedition of some kind, and had ruled through subordinates, Cortes would have been baffled. He couldn't go chasing after the emperor. That would be obviously too provocative. But without the emperor there, Cortes would have had his options extremely limited. And I don't know what he would have done in that circumstance. But because Moctezuma stayed in his capital, he made himself the target. Once he was taken, this was the key to controlling the entire empire at that point.
显然，这个故事从“悲伤之夜”（La Noche Triste）继续发展。人们可能没有充分意识到，在皮萨罗有关印加帝国的故事（我们稍后会谈到）和阿兹特克帝国的故事中，西班牙人自己内部实际上也存在分裂，并且甚至相互争斗。也许你应该讲讲韦拉斯奎兹如何派另一个远征队去逮捕和拘捕科尔特斯，因为他超出了自己任务的权限。
当然了。我们之前提到过古巴的总督，他对于科尔特斯（Cortes）抢走了他的功劳而非常愤怒。因此，他又集结了一支远征军，因为科尔特斯抢走了他的风头。他派遣潘费尔·德·纳瓦雷斯（Penfield de Narvaez）带领这支比科尔特斯原来带的更大规模的军队，抵达海岸。科尔特斯意识到他必须迅速采取行动。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So obviously the story continues from there, La Noche Triste. What people might not appreciate about what happened here, in both the Pizarro story of the Inca empire, which we'll talk about later, and in the Aztec story, is that in both cases, the Spanish were themselves divided, and in fact, fighting each other. Maybe you should tell the story of how Velazquez sends another expedition to go capture and arrest Cortes for going beyond the prerogative of his mission. Absolutely. We left the governor on Cuba, of course, fuming. He rallies another expeditionary force because Cortes is stealing his thunder. And he sends us under Penfield de Navarrez, a larger force than the one Cortes brought with him originally. This lands on the coast. Cortes appreciates he has to move.
于是，他把他的部下之一，热血的阿尔瓦拉多，留在特诺奇蒂特兰负责事务，自己带尽可能多的人手前往海岸，与纳瓦雷斯面对面较量。在一场小规模战斗中，纳瓦雷斯被击败。然而，通过外交手段，他再一次赢得了总督派遣的整个远征队的支持。他对他们说：“朋友们，我们为什么要打斗？我拥有整个帝国的支配权。加入我吧，我们可以共享财富。”于是，他争取到了绝大多数新部队的支持，这些部队实际上成了他的增援力量。他返回首都，却发现形势已经对他不利。没能亲自指挥的问题在于无法到处兼顾。他的部下错误地认为阿兹特克人在集结反对他，于是率先发动了攻击。当时正值一个节日，贵族阶层，尤其是武士阶层正在庆祝，阿尔瓦拉多突然袭击，屠杀了所有人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So he leaves one of his subordinates, the hot-blooded Alvarado, behind in charge in Tenochtitlan, takes as many men as he can to the coast, confronts. De Navarrez defeats him in a minor battle. And again, the diplomacy wins over the entire expeditionary force that the governor had dispatched. He tells them, "My friends, why are we fighting? We have the empire at my disposal. Join with me and we can share in the riches." So he wins over the vast majority of this new force. It becomes effectively reinforcements. Marches back to the capital. He finds the mood is turned against him. The problem with not being in charge is you can't be everywhere. And his subordinate, assuming that the Aztecs were mobilizing against him, has had a preemptive strike. There was a festival. The aristocracy, particularly the warrior caste, were celebrating, and Alvarado just descended on them, massacred everybody.
幸存者们鼓舞并团结了民众。当科尔特斯返回时，发现自己实际上处于被围攻的状态。民众对他们的统治者胡伊·特拉托阿尼的失败感到愤怒。当科尔特斯试图安抚他们时，民众向他投掷石块。他身受重伤，最终要么是死于重伤，要么是被西班牙人杀死，因为对他们来说，他已经失去价值。现在科尔特斯被困在特诺奇蒂特兰城里，他决定突围。这就是你所说的“La Noche Triste”，即悲惨之夜，因为许多他的士兵没能撤出。他们在试图通过堤道逃出这座城时被杀，或者被迫退回宫殿，随后被活捉并祭献。科尔特斯带着少数剩下的部队成功逃脱，回到了特拉斯卡拉领地。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The survivors rally the population. And when Cortez returns, he finds himself effectively under siege. The people are so appalled now with the failure of their Huey Letoani. When he tries to pacify them, they throw stones at him. Mortally wounded, he either dies or the Spanish finish him off because he's no longer any use to them. So now Cortez is trapped in the city, in Tenochtitlan. He determines to break out. And that is, as you say, La Noche Triste, the tragic night, because so many of his men are left behind. They're either killed as they try to escape the city across the causeways, were forced to retreat back to the palaces, and they're taken alive and sacrificed subsequently. Cortez gets away with a minority of the troops still at his disposal and makes it back to Lashkalan territory.
这是整个战役至关重要的方面，其中包含两个关键特点。首先，科尔特斯拥有足够的攻击力量和足够的骑兵，可以在奥通博战役中击败试图歼灭他的阿兹特克人。阿兹特克人觉得他在逃跑，他们有人数优势，征服者们在逃跑中垂头丧气，科尔特斯本人也身负重伤。阿兹特克人认定可以歼灭他们，因为他们占了上风。但科尔特斯再次发现了阿兹特克将军的位置，他号召足够的骑兵冲破阿兹特克的防线，摧毁他们的指挥系统。阿兹特克军队由此崩溃，西班牙人得以逃脱。因此，在战场上，他们有马匹和钢铁武器，这是至关重要的优势。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
That was the critical aspect, the two features of the entire campaign. One, he has enough strike power with enough horses to defeat the Aztecs when they try to finish him off at the Battle of Otumbo. They feel he's on the run. They have the numbers. The conquistadors are dragging their tails between their legs as they flee. Cortez himself is grievously wounded. We can finish them off. And they had the numbers. They were winning. But again, Cortez identifies where the Aztec general is. He rallies enough horsemen to blast through the Aztec ranks and take out their command and control. The Aztec army disintegrates and the Spanish were able to flee. So the battlefield advantageous, they had their horses, their steel, critical.
但同样关键的是外交。如果拉什卡兰人在那时背弃了科尔特斯，他就完了。没有一个西班牙人能活下来，他们谁都无法返回海岸。但是拉什卡兰人出于他们自己的原因，而不是出于慷慨或人道主义的冲动来欢迎征服者，他们仍然认为我们是与这些人和我们的联盟站在一起的。所以他们给予科尔特斯庇护。他在身体上恢复，开始重建力量，并决心回到特诺奇提特兰。到了第二轮，这次我们不会再讲究外交礼节。拉什卡兰人对此有自己的看法，如果你今天去拉什卡拉地区，在那里的州长官邸，墙上有壁画。这些壁画从拉什卡兰人的角度描绘了科尔特斯和征服者。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But just as critical was the diplomacy. If the Lashkalan had turned on Cortez at that point, he would have been finished. Not one Spaniel would have survived. None of them would have made it back to the coast. But the Lashkalan see for their own reasons, not out of any generosity or humanitarian impulse to welcome back the conquistadors. They still see we are committed to these people and to our alliance. So they give Cortez shelter. He recovers physically, begins to rebuild his strength, and is determined to go back to Tenochtitlan. And for round two, and this time, we're not going to be indulging diplomatic niceties. The Lashkalans, their own perspective on this, if you go to Lashkala territory today, the governor's mansion there has murals on the wall. And these depict the Cortez and the conquistadors from the Lashkalan point of view.
这段文字描述了一种关系，这种关系不是上级和下级之间的，而是平等者之间的关系。你可以看到，双方被描绘在同一个尺度上，以平等伙伴的方式进行外交，而不是在下属和主导者之间的互动。拉什卡兰人态度强硬，他们要求从阿兹特克人手中获得领土，并在特诺奇提特兰得到自己的堡垒。拉什卡兰人认为他们在利用征服者，而不是相反。重要的是要记住，从远处看，阿兹特克帝国在地图上显得非常强大，但这实际上是一个殖民统治的产物。并且，不仅仅是一些独立的实体，如拉什卡兰人和塔拉斯卡人（我们之后可以讨论）对阿兹特克人持敌对态度，许多被其统治的民族也如此。沿海的托顿纳克人、特斯科科湖畔的查尔科各州都对阿兹特克的霸权和权威心怀不满。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And it's fascinating to look at how the relationship is not between a superior and an inferior. It's between equals. You see them depicted in the same scale, engaged in diplomacy between partners, not between subordinates and dominant figures. The Lashkalans drove a hard bargain. We want territory carved out of the Aztecs. We want our own fortress in Tenochtitlan after this is over. They saw this as them using the conquistadors, not the other way around, which is very important to bear in mind, that the Aztec empire from a distance, if you look at a map, seemed impressive. But this was an imperial construct. And not just the remaining independent entities, like the Lashkalans, like the Tarascans, who we can discuss later, were hostile to the Aztecs. So were so many of their subordinated peoples. The Tottenhacks on the coast, the Chalco states on the shores of Lake Texcoco, they chafed under Aztec hegemony and authority.
他们也把征服者视为一个机会，终于能摆脱阿兹特克人的控制和要求，并在很多方面实现复仇。因此，当科尔特斯为对特诺奇提特兰的新统治者库伊特拉瓦克进行最后的进攻做准备时，在他去世后，他的兄弟，最后一位统治者托马克上位。大批来自中美洲各地的原住民纷纷聚集在他的旗帜下。他强调他仍在战斗，并且拥有优势。更多的援军正在海岸抵达，并被整合到征服者的军队中。但进军特诺奇提特兰的军队中，征服者在数量上仅占约总人数的0.5%。绝大多数都是其他中美洲民族，他们把这场战斗视作与阿兹特克人之间的最终清算。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And they too saw the conquistadors as an opportunity to finally shrug off the authority, the demands of the Aztecs and get revenge in a lot of ways. So as Cortes builds up for the final campaign against Tenochtitlan against the new Hue Latouane, Kuitlahuek. And then after he died, his brother, the last of the Hue Latouane is called Tomac. He has indigenous people flocking to his banner from all over Mesoamerica. He's emphasized that he's still in the fight. He still has those advantages. More reinforcements are arriving at the coast and they're being integrated into the conquistador army. But the force that marches on Tenochtitlan, the total numbers, the conquistadors were maybe one half of one percent in raw numbers of that force. The overwhelming majority were other Mesoamerican peoples who see this as their final reckoning with the Aztecs.
这再次显示了科技与外交的结合。科尔特斯知道，要想攻下这座城市，他必须控制湖泊。此外，他们的创新也需要硫磺来制造火药。他们有枪械，但没有火药的话就毫无用处。因此，他们派出了一支探险队深入山中，前往波波卡特佩特火山，并用绳子吊在火山口里，从中挖掘出用来制作火药的关键成分——硫磺。另外，他们还有人建造了预制的战船，将这些船分成不同的部分，然后由无数的搬运工人跨越山脉，将这些预制的船只部件运送到湖边。最后，这些部件被组装起来，浮上湖面，从而他们就掌握了湖泊的控制权。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And this is the integration, again, of the technology with the diplomacy. Cortes knows to take the city, he has to control the lake. Again, the innovations, they need sulfur for their gunpowder. They have guns, useless without gunpowder. So an expedition goes into the mountains to the volcano, Papacatepetl, and they dangle with ropes inside the caldera of the volcano, scooping out the sulfur they need as the critical ingredient for their gunpowder. Another one builds prefabricated brigantines, boats, in their different sections, and then has untold numbers of porters, human load bearers, bring these prefabricated pieces over the mountains to the lake. They're assembled, and then they loosen the lake, and then now they have control over the lake.
将技术和创新与当地人力结合，这支力量在最终战役中对抗特诺奇蒂特兰。我其实对这些故事并不了解，这真是让人惊讶。一种情况是，即便有人知道这个故事，他们可能也不了解实际发生了什么，因为他们通常将阿兹特克人或印加人视为一个团结的单一民族。而我认为一个更好的比喻可能是：想象俄罗斯和乌克兰已经进行了一百年的堑壕战，双方的敌意加深，俄罗斯还带走数以万计的乌克兰人进行活人献祭。如果这时有外来力量对乌克兰人说，“我们可以帮你们进军莫斯科”，我想乌克兰人很可能会愿意达成协议。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So bringing together the technology, the innovations with the local manpower, and this is the force directed against Tenochtitlan in the final battle. I actually didn't know those stories. That's crazy. One of the ways in which, to the extent people are even aware of the story, they might not understand what actually happened, is they have this model of the Aztecs or the Incas as this cohesive single nation. And I think a better model might be something like, imagine if it's Russia and Ukraine have been doing trench warfare for a hundred years, and imagine the animosity, and then also the Russians are taking tens of thousands of Ukrainians and doing human sacrifices with them. And then if some foreign force comes in and says to the Ukrainians, "We can help you march into Moscow," I think they'd have a pretty decent odds of getting some agreement there.
当然。俗话说，“敌人的敌人就是朋友。” 在外交和战争中，这一点总是非常重要的。直到上周，我才真正意识到Jane Street实习项目的雄心壮志，因为我亲眼看到了一些项目。例如，一位实习生花了一部分夏天时间研究LLM的记忆问题，试图找出如何在不影响样本外表现的情况下量化并减少记忆。这很重要，因为每当Jane Street用历史数据评估一个新模型时，他们需要确保模型的表现反映的是其预测能力，而不仅仅是对过去结果的记忆。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Absolutely. The old phrase is, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," and diplomacy war, that's always very important. Yeah. I don't think I actually appreciated the ambition of Jane Street's intern projects until last week, when I got to see some of them for myself. For example, one intern spent part of his summer researching LLM memorization, figuring out how to quantify and reduce it without hurting out-of-sample performance. This matters because whenever Jane Street evaluates a new model on historical data, they need to know that its performance reflects predictive power, not just memorization of past outcomes.
另一位实习生设计了一种自定义的激活检查点方案。激活检查点允许你用计算来换取内存。通过在反向传播时重新计算部分激活值，而不是在前向传播后存储所有激活值，这位实习生找到了一种方法，可以识别出重新计算成本最低且能够释放大量内存的激活值。这使得他的版本性能超过了PyTorch自带的方案。这只是两个例子，Jane Street还撰写了更多相关内容。这些文章将会分批发布，目前已有几篇上线，包括这两个例子，剩下的将在接下来的几周内发布。如果你想阅读这些文章，或者想申请Jane Street 2027年夏季实习职位，请访问janestreet.com/thwarkesh。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Another intern built a custom activation checkpointing scheme. Activation checkpointing lets you trade compute for memory. You recalculate some activations during backprop, instead of storing them all after the forward pass. This intern found a way to identify the activations that are cheapest to recompute, but that still free up a lot of memory. And this allowed his version to outperform PyTorch's native one. These are just two examples, but Jane Street has written about a bunch more. These write-ups are coming out in batches. The first few are live now, including these two, and the rest will be published in the coming weeks. If you want to read them, or if you want to apply for Jane Street's 2027 summer internships, go to janesstreet.com/thwarkesh.
从技术到外交，从疾病到战术，有太多有趣的问题可以探讨。在深入这些问题之前，我想先完整讲述一下故事。让人印象深刻的是，十年后皮萨罗征服秘鲁的印加帝国与科尔特斯的故事非常相似，他基本上就是照搬了科尔特斯的策略。但我希望大家对这里大致发生的事情有一个了解。可能可以从卡哈马卡战役开始讲起，这可能是人类历史上最为惊人的不对称军事遭遇。我希望你能简单回顾一下至少这场战役，然后是整个故事，然后我们再进行一些分析。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
There's so many interesting questions to ask from everything from technology, to diplomacy, to disease, to tactics. Before you get to that, I think just to round out the story, in many ways, what's striking about the conquest of the Incas in Peru under Pizarro 10 years later is how similar it was to Cortez's story, how much he just basically followed the playbook. But I want people to have a sense of roughly what happened here. Starting, I think, maybe with the Battle of Cajamarca might be the most astonishing military lopsided encounter that has maybe ever happened in human history. So I would, yeah, if you can recapitulate a bit of the, at least that battle, and then just the overall story, and then we can do some analysis from there.
当然。当科尔特斯在1521年完成对特诺奇提特兰的征服时，他接受了最后的投降并占领了这片领土，最重要的是，他占据了社会的顶层位置。为了尽可能保留现有结构，西班牙征服者们只是除掉了当地的贵族，并把自己插入到权力的最高点。这种策略后来继续被应用到美索美洲的其他地区，但效果较差，因为那些地方现存的政治实体并不如特诺奇提特兰那么复杂。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Absolutely. When Cortez consummates his conquest of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the last of the surrenders to him and how he occupies the territory, and most importantly, the top of the social hierarchy, the existing structure, as much as possible, is allowed to persist. The conquistadors just decapitate the local nobility and insert themselves at the top. Now, this is the playbook that will continue to be applied less successfully throughout the rest of Mesoamerica because the existing political entities there aren't so sophisticated.
尽管如此，总是有关于失落黄金城的传闻。越来越多的征服者涌入新大陆，希望从中获利。其中一名探险者是科尔特斯的远房表亲，名叫弗朗西斯科·皮萨罗。他与科尔特斯会面，得到了如何进行征服的"秘籍"。随后，在一次征服者的冒险中，他找到了筹集到人力和船只资金的方法，开始沿着南美洲西海岸向南推进，越过赤道，最终到达现今的秘鲁。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Nonetheless, there are rumors, there are always rumors of lost cities of gold, and more conquistadors are now flooding into the new world to seek advantage of this. One of this is a distant cousin of Cortez named Francisco Pizarro. He met with Cortez and got the playbook, as you say, about how this is to be done. And then again, in one of these conquistador business ventures, he finds the funding for men and ships and begins pushing south down the west coast of South America, crossing the equator and finally arriving in what is now modern day Peru.
他找到了他所寻求的，一个文化高度发达的文明，事实上，其领土规模远超科尔特斯在中美洲所遇到的。这片土地属于印加帝国。当他抵达时，印加内部正爆发内战。前任萨帕印加（皇帝）瓦伊纳·卡帕克于1525年去世后，他的两个儿子阿塔瓦尔帕和瓦斯卡尔反目成仇。阿塔瓦尔帕刚刚赢得了内战，正前往印加首都库斯科，准备正式加冕为新的萨帕印加。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And he encounters what he's looking for, a sophisticated culture on the scale, in fact, in terms of territory on a much broader scale than Cortez had encountered in Mesoamerica. This is the land of the Inca. When he arrived there was civil war. The previous Sapa Inca, Huayna Capac had died in 1525, and his two sons, Adahualpa and Huascar, turned on each other. Adahualpa had just won the civil war, and he was proceeding to Cuzco, the Inca capital, to be formally enthroned as the new Sapa Inca.
这时，他听说有陌生人进入了他的领地。据说，有168名男子被推入安第斯山脉，他们似乎在寻找他，但理由不明。1532年，他在一个叫做卡胡马克的地方遇到了他们。他看到的不是威胁，而是机会。就像莫克特苏玛二世被建议不要与这些人打交道一样，阿达瓦尔帕的使者同样也报告说：“他们不是真心的人。”我们可以消灭他们。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And that's when word arises to him that strangers have entered his realm. And again, we're talking 168 men pushed into the Andes mountains and are seeking him out for reasons unknown. He encounters them outside a place called, as you say, Kajumake in 1532. And he sees not threat, but opportunity. And just like Moctezuma II had been advised to not treat with this people, so does Adahualpa's envoy, who reports to them, "These are not men of good faith." We can take them out.
他们通常睡在一起。晚上，我们可以在他们待的地方放火，一举将他们全部消灭。但是，阿塔瓦尔帕对他们可以提供的东西感兴趣。他见过那些马，事实上，皮萨罗特意用马来让萨帕·印加大为惊叹。皮萨罗派出他的一个得力副官展示骑术，并且著名的是，他直接朝萨帕·印加及其廷臣们冲去。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They tend to sleep together. At night, we can set fire to wherever they're staying and just take them all out in one fell swoop. But Adahualpa is interested in what they have to offer him. He's seen the horses. He's seen, in fact, Pizarro made a specific case of impressing the Sapa Inca with his horses. He sends one of his key lieutenants to put on a display of horsemanship. And famously, he charges right at the Sapa Inca and all his court.
马停在阿塔瓦尔帕面前几英寸的地方，喷着鼻息。阿塔瓦尔帕面无表情，丝毫不显得惊讶，并表示，“我会在我选择的时间与您的主人会面。” 西班牙人离开后，他下令处决他的宫廷成员，包括那些在面对敌人时退缩或显示出恐惧的将领，以此来表明不要被这些人吓到。他派遣了一支数万人的部队，阻断敌人的退路。随后，他带着庞大的军队在卡哈马卡与皮萨罗会面。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the horse stops just inches from Adahualpa's face, snorting and breathing. And Adahualpa is absolutely stony-faced and professes to be unimpressed and says, "I will meet with your master at the time of my choosing." After the Spaniards leave, he has all of his court, including his generals who flinched or showed fear, executed, just to make the point that we're not to be intimidated by these people. He sends a blocking force, tens of thousands of men, to cut off any retreat. And then he proceeds to meet with Pizarro at Cajamarca with the vast expanse of his army.
在秘鲁有一句话，说阿塔瓦尔帕（Adahualpa）原本打算把皮萨罗（Pizarro）置于死地，但最终皮萨罗却反败为胜。在阿塔瓦尔帕进入一个狭窄的庭院空间时，皮萨罗发动了埋伏。他利用所有的火炮和火枪制造震撼效果，还让他的骑兵冲锋。阿塔瓦尔帕被迅速压制并被俘虏。这种战略再次体现了书中所言的策略：直捣黄龙，占领社会等级最顶端的人物。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
There's a saying in Peru that Adahualpa was planning to have Pizarro for lunch, but Pizarro ended up having him for breakfast. Once he enters into the confines of a narrow, constricted courtyard space, that's when Pizarro lets off the ambush. He lets fly with all his artillery and all his musketry for the shock value, unleashes his horses. And Adahualpa himself is overwhelmed and taken prisoner at that point. So this again is the playbook, the copybook, as you say. Go to the top, seize whoever is at the very pinnacle of the social hierarchy.
你掌控着整个结构。为了让大家了解到具体的数据，印加帝国总共有大约一千万居民。在皮萨罗与皇帝遭遇的第一次战役中，他手下只有大约160到190名征服者。而阿塔瓦尔帕的军队人数虽然没有确切的数据，但他面对的是刚刚赢得印加帝国内战的军队，规模在数万甚至十万以上。我见过一些估计认为有10万到20万人，但可以肯定的是有数以万计的士兵。所以大约100多人对抗几乎十万人的军队。这就是第一次战役。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
You control the entire structure. And just so people know the numbers here, the Incan empire overall has some 10 million inhabitants. During this first battle where Pizarro encounters the emperor, he has some 160, 190 conquistadors. I think the numbers are known for exactly how many Adahualpa had, but he's facing off the army that has just basically clinched the civil war in the Inca empire, and is around tens of thousands of bigs. I've seen some numbers that are like 100,000 or 200,000, but certainly in the high tens of thousands big. So 100 something against almost 100,000. That's the first battle.
令人惊讶的是，这100名征服者据说杀死了大约1万名敌人，或者至少是几千名阿塔瓦尔帕的士兵，而他们自己却没有任何伤亡。他们在第一次与印加帝国的交战中，就杀死了接近1万名敌人，并且自身无一伤亡。这对于双方而言，应该都是一种震惊的经历。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
What is astonishing is that these 100 conquistadors, I saw some numbers that are like, they killed like 10,000 of the enemy, or at least thousands of Adahualpa's troops. They suffer zero casualties. So they kill close to 10,000 of the enemy. They suffer zero casualties. This is the first encounter that the Inca empire has ever had with the conquistadors. I think that must have been shocking from both sides' perspective.
我希望你能在这里做一些分析，这可能吗？你怎么能有一个结果，一个军事结果，导致战绩比达到无限大，比如说1万比0？对吧。征服者们自己在遭遇的前一晚承认，印加军队在Cajamarca周围的山上宿营，点起的篝火多得就像夜空中闪烁的星星。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And I want, if you can do some analysis here, how is it possible? How can you have an outcome, a military outcome where you can have literally a KD ratio of infinity of, you know, 10,000 to zero? Yeah. The conquistadors themselves admitted the night before that encounter, there were so many campfires from the Inca army scattered across the hills surrounding Cajamarca. It looked like the twinkling of stars at night.
征服者们自己承认，当他们看到印加士兵陆续进入这个庭院时，出于恐惧甚至无法控制自己的膀胱。他们明白这里的风险。然而，最初的震撼力足以让他们坚持下去。印加人以前从未听到过任何形式的火药武器声响。他们帝国的创建者是派查库特克，意为“雷霆持有者”。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the conquistadors themselves admitted when they saw the number of Inca troops filing into this courtyard. They were losing control of their own bladders out of fear, right? They knew what the risks were here. But the shock value of that initial impetus was enough to carry them through. The Inca had never heard gunpowder weapons fired in any format before. The ancestral founder of their empire was Pachacuti, which means the thunder bearer.
看到这样一个真实世界中的例子，实在是令人震惊。事实上，火炮和火枪造成的实际物理损害相对较小，但爆炸以及陌生人似乎能够控制雷电这一事实，在心理上必定是极具冲击力的。当皮萨罗放出战马时，这一幕对于印加人来说是前所未见的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But to see a real-world exemplar of that, that must have been just beyond shocking. So the actual physical damage that the cannons and haquibuses inflicted was fairly minor. But the explosion and the fact that these strangers seem to be able to control the thunder must have been psychologically devastating. And then it came down again to that steel and those horses, right? When Pizarro unleashed the horses, this is something that the Inca.
正如你所说，这些人是老练的战士，是内战的胜利者，是在前哥伦布时代安第斯战争中水平高超的战略家和战术家。他们是当时的佼佼者。但是，这超出了他们对世界的全部理解。他们从未见过马，更不知道当一个骑手坐在带马镫的鞍上冲锋时，马能带来的冲击力。他们没有相应的战术来抵御这种攻击。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As you say, these are veteran warriors, the winners of a civil war, strategists and at a tactical level within the framework of pre-Columbian Andean warfare. They were the top dogs. But this is something outside of their entire understanding of the universe. They'd never seen a horse before or knew what it could do if you integrate a rider into the saddle with stirrups and the shock value of that charge. They had no doctrine to push back against that.
心理上的影响是他们试图逃跑。他们绝望地拼命想翻越围墙，甚至挤到墙都被身体推倒为止。一些人逃到了乡下，西班牙人骑马追赶，逐个将他们击倒。最后阻止这场屠杀的唯一原因是夜幕降临，西班牙人在黑暗中无法继续追捕。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the psychological impact was that they tried to flee. They were piling up against the walls in their desperation to scramble over them to the point where the walls finally gave way under the press of all those bodies. Some of them escaped into the countryside and the Spaniards rode after them, just running them down as they fled. And the only thing that stopped the massacre at the end was night was falling and the Spaniards in darkness couldn't continue the pursuit any longer.
所以，当某件事完全超出了即使是经验丰富的战士也无法理解的范围，并以一种他们完全没有心理准备或应对经验的方式发生时，就会出现这种情况。此时，他们的“战斗或逃跑”本能全然占据上风，而在这个实例中，逃跑成为了胜者。如你所说，此次事件中唯一的受害者是皮萨罗他自己。当他试图抓住阿塔华尔帕（Adahualpa）将其俘虏时，其中一位过于热情的同伴挥剑过来，却切到了皮萨罗的手。这是征服者们在这关键时刻所遭受的唯一伤害。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So it's what happens when something totally outside the universe of even veteran warriors plays out in a way that they have no mental appreciation of or able to draw back any kind of library of how do I respond in this situation. The fight or flight instinct just completely takes over and the flight was the winner in this instance. As you say, the only casualty was Pizarro himself. He's reaching for Adahualpa to take him prisoner and one of his more enthusiastic comrades slashing and manages to cut his hand as he does that. That was the only injury any of the conquistadors suffered at this critical moment.
好的。那么，你能解释一下为什么即使他们骑着马，也显得那么无懈可击吗？直观上来说，如果你有成千上万的士兵，难道不能蜂拥而上去对付骑兵吗？很多骑兵都会死去，你只需要把穿着铁甲的家伙从马镫上拉下来，然后击败他，不是吗？欧洲人确实知道怎么做到这一点。例如，瑞士人就已经证明了骑马的骑士是可以被从马鞍上击落并打败的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Yeah. So give me a sense of how is it that you can have, even if they're on horses, how is it that they're just so impenetrable? It's like if you have a hundred, I guess intuitively you would think that if you have tens of thousands of troops, can't you just swarm a cavalry and many of them will die, but just, you know, like pull that guy in a steel armor off the stirrups and take him down and then just kill him? Europeans knew how to do that. The Swiss, for example, that already proved that a mounted knight could be knocked out of the saddle and defeated.
如果你让士兵们肩并肩地站在一起，用长矛锁定阵地，以保持马匹在一定距离之外并削弱它们冲锋的势头。但这需要两方面：第一是技术，第二是执行这种策略所需的纪律、训练和制度知识。而中美洲的战争中，队形非常松散，战士们之间有很多空隙。而这对于骑兵来说是最不利的，因为马匹可以利用这种松散轻松地冲破迎面而来的任意阵型。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
If you have men shoulder to shoulder locked in place with long pikes to keep those horses at a distance and break up the impetus of their charge. But that requires one, the technology and two, the discipline, training and institutional knowledge to do that. Mesoamerican warfare was very loose in its formation. Warriors with a lot of space between them, which is the worst thing that you can do in regards to cavalry because the horses can take advantage of that looseness to just blast through any formation that's coming at them.
在一些描述中，前哥伦布时期的社会被认为是天真无邪、像孩子般的，似乎无力应对。但实际上，他们确实尝试过应对。因此，我们需要牢记这一点。在各个层面上，阿兹特克人和印加人都努力采取反制措施，以抵消征服者的优势。其中一个重要的例子就是空间的利用。当科尔特斯于1521年再次到来时，阿兹特克人通过将他们引入自己的城市——这个城市由桥梁和堤道连接的岛屿组成——来限制骑马的优势，因为这里的环境不利于骑马。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Now, one depiction of the pre-Columbian societies is that they were somehow childlike, innocent and couldn't have responded. They did try to, and it's important to bear that in mind. At every level, both the Aztec and the Inca sought to put in place countermeasures to negate the advantages that the conquistadors had. One of the critical exemplars is confined space. The Aztecs, when the Cortes showed up in 1521 for round two, by drawing them into their city, which was a network of islands connected by bridges and causeways, that minimized the advantages of the horses because that's not good horse country.
他们学会了从屋顶上战斗，并从高处用石头或其他随手可得的东西投掷敌人。他们在建筑物中开了人可以通行的大洞，以便在人马无法追击的情况下从一个建筑物溜到另一个。他们学会了利用这些优势，并了解水的制止力量。有趣的是，这些战术是在完全没有相互联系的情况下发展出来的。在科尔特斯攻打特斯科科湖上的一个小城市拉帕尔帕时，阿兹特克人打破了湖中的堤坝，淹没了城市，这使得许多征服者及其盟友被淘汰。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They would learn to fight from rooftops and pelt the enemy with stones or whatever they could from heights. They built man-sized holes in buildings so they could slip from one to the other where the horses couldn't chase them. So they learned to use those kind of advantages. They learned the stopping power of water. Interestingly, both completely under-connected. They had no relationship with each other. But against Cortes, when he was taking one of the smaller cities on Lake Texcoco, it's La Palpa, the Aztecs broke the dikes in the lake and flooded the city, which took out a number of the conquistadors and their allies.
在那种环境中，金属盔甲对征服者不利。它会把他们拖到水底。如果他们等到夜幕降临，西班牙人入睡时发动袭击，可能会全歼对方。后来，当征服者们进攻奥兰蒂坦博时，印加人又一次洪水泛滥，让河水漫堤，再次将征服者的骑兵困住。由此可见，他们在不断适应。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In that environment, of course, the metal armor works to the disadvantage of the conquistador. It drags them to the bottom. If they'd waited until nightfall, when the Spaniards were sleeping, they might have bagged all of them. And to the Inca too, later, when the conquistadors moved on Olatintambo, again, the Inca flooded the river, allowed it to burst its banks and again bog down the conquistador cavalry. So they were adapting.
他们缴获了敌人的武器，用征服者的剑固定在长木杆的末端，自创了长矛策略。尽管没有人教导，他们凭直觉认为，用长矛保持与马匹的距离可以抵消敌军的优势。印加人使用他们在南美捕猎大鸟时用的武器——流星锤，来缠住马的腿。在一个著名的事件中，一位阿兹特克战士故意让征服者用长矛刺中自己，他紧紧抓住穿透身体的长矛，使征服者无法动弹，他的同伴便能蜂拥上前，把征服者从马鞍上拉下来。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They took captured enemy weapons. They learned to fix conquistador swords to the end of long wooden poles, improvising pike tactics. Again, without being instructed to, they just intuited that keeping horses at a distance with long spears would be a way to negate the advantages that they had. The Inca employed the bolas, which they'd used for hunting, the great birds of South America, to tangle the legs of horses. One famous incident, an Aztec warrior allowed himself to be speared by a conquistador and gripped hold of the spear, the lance, as it was in his body, fixing the conquistador in place so his supporters, his colleagues, could swarm and take him out of the saddle.
所以他们在尝试即兴发挥。阿兹特克人在俘获西班牙士兵后，利用他们来学习如何使用缴获的弩。印加人抓住西班牙人后，也会让他们传授如何使用火器。而印加抵抗运动的领袖曼科·印加则亲自学习骑马，以向他的人民展示我们也可以做到这些。所以他们在努力，但学习曲线太陡峭，要在短时间内完全掌握这些外国技术和战术对他们来说实在太困难了，因此无法真正将其用于己方的优势。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So they were trying to improvise. The Aztecs, with their captured Spanish prisoners, used them to learn how to use captured crossbows. The Inca, when they captured Spaniards, would use them to give instruction on how to use these firearms. And Manco Inca, the leader of the Inca resistance, made a point of learning to ride a horse himself, to demonstrate to his people that we can do this. So they were trying, but the learning curve was so steep and the time frame to internalize foreign technology and foreign tactics was too short for them to really be able to deploy it to their advantage.
好的，这一点值得强调。科尔特斯在两年半的时间里征服了阿兹特克帝国，也就是如今的墨西哥。他用了几百名士兵对抗拥有六百万人口的帝国。十年后，皮萨罗在大约五年的时间里也用类似的方法征服了印加帝国。这些征服的速度之快真让人难以置信。尽管理论上他们本可以找到方法来对抗骑兵等威胁，但他们几乎没有时间去适应和应对。同时，他们的整个社会结构正在崩溃，疾病也在传播，还有巨大的心理冲击。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Yeah. And this is worth emphasizing. Cortez takes over the Aztec empire, and what is now Mexico, in two and a half years. So a couple hundred men, an empire of six million people, two and a half years. Pizarro does the same thing for the Inca empire, 10 years later, in about five years. So it's insane how fast these conquests happened. And just how little time that the, even though in principle they could have figured out ways in which to combat cavalry and things, just how little time they had to adapt. All the while their whole social structure is disintegrating, there's disease, etc. There's all this psychological shock value.
现在，在我们讨论其他问题之前，显而易见的一个问题是，如果你一次又一次地重新进行模拟，只是改变一些细节，比如改变领导者，变更阿兹特克人或西班牙人的领导者，那么在这些模拟中，有多少比例会在几年后西班牙人依然控制了这些帝国。因为当你第一次了解这些历史事件时，会觉得这简直是不可思议且不可能的结果：几百人征服了拥有数百万人的帝国。然而，当你深入了解更多后，就会开始觉得，或许事情也只能是这样发展。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Now, the obvious question to ask at this point, before we go to other ones, is if you re-ran the simulation again and again, if you just change a few things here and there, change the leader, change the leader for both the Aztecs or for the Spanish in these conquests, in what fraction of the simulation do, within a matter of a few years later, the Spanish end up in control of these empires anyways. Because when you first learn about them, it actually sounds like an outrageous and impossible outcome that a few hundred men would take over empires of millions of people. And when you learn more about it, then you begin to think, well, I guess it couldn't have been any other way.
但我不知道这是否是你的观点。在宏观层面上，有很多因素决定了历史的发展。有那些缓慢运转的大轮子，比如地理和气候。然后在前景中，还有那些小轮子，即每个关键人物。而这实际上是一个大轮子和小轮子相互结合的过程。是的，如果科尔特斯在多次机会中被早早除掉，那么没有领袖、没有方向的征服者们可能会瓦解，而征服可能就在那个阶段终止。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But I don't know if that is your opinion. There are the grand scheme of things. There are multiple wheels that define history. The grand wheels that grind slowly, geography and climate. And then the small wheels in the foreground are the individuals, the key players themselves. And this is an integration of that process, the big wheels with the small ones. Yes, if Cortez, which could have happened on multiple occasions, had been taken out early, the conquistadors, leaderless, rudderless, may well have disintegrated. And the conquest may have been aborted at that level.
皮萨罗再次出现在故事中，阿塔瓦尔帕犯下的关键错误是主动进入了皮萨罗设下的陷阱。如果他派遣使节从远处进行谈判，可能就能挫败皮萨罗的野心。作为那些留存下来的整合后的印加帝国的领袖，他也许能够利用人数优势在短期内赢得战役。当印加人最终反抗征服者时，弗朗西斯科·皮萨罗已经占领了库斯科。他剥夺了寺庙中的黄金和白银，被称为太阳的汗水和月亮的泪水，并将其运回欧洲。随后他回到海岸线上，着手建立利马，未来将成为秘鲁现代首都的城市。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Pizarro, again, Atahualpa's critical mistake was inserting himself into Pizarro's trap. If he had sent envoys to keep the negotiations at a distance, he may have been able to frustrate Pizarro's ambitions. And as the head of what remained, an integrated Inca empire, he may have been able to use those numbers to win the campaign in the short term. When the Inca did finally turn on the conquistadors, Francisco Pizarro has seized Cusco. He stripped the temples of their gold and silver, the sweat of the sun and the tears of the moon, as it was called. Shipped it back to Europe. He goes back to the coast to set up Lima, what would become the city of Lima, the modern capital of Peru.
库斯科的危险在于它地势较高且远离海岸，而海岸是西班牙人利用他们绝对海军优势的地方。问题出在他把同父异母的兄弟留在库斯科掌权，他们激怒了被皮萨罗扶植为傀儡统治者的曼科·印加，结果引发了彻底的叛乱。曼科·印加号召他的人民，围攻库斯科，占领了主导城市的伟大堡垒萨克萨瓦曼。他的一位将领基索·尤潘基切断了从海岸来的援军。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The danger with Cusco is the fact it's elevated and away from the coast, which is where the Spaniards, of course, with their absolute monopoly over naval power have the advantage. His problem was he left his half-brothers in charge back in Cusco, and they provoke Manco Inca, who had been set up as Pizarro's puppet ruler, into outright rebellion. He rallies his people. He lays siege to Cusco. He takes Saksahuaman, the great fortress that dominates Cusco. And he has one of his generals, Quizo Yupanqui, cut off reinforcements arriving from the coast.
如果印加人能利用他们对地形的了解，他们就能够在整体战斗中取胜。来自海岸的皮萨罗正带领援军前往内陆，以解救库斯科。而奎佐则等待他们进入狭窄的山道和峡谷，在两端设置阻碍，然后从高处用巨石和其他材料消灭敌人。越来越多的西班牙探险队因此被歼灭。在这种情况下，通过利用地形优势和对地形的深刻理解，印加人在局部战斗中能够取得胜利，但他们无法在库斯科取得决定性的胜利。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Inca could win set-piece confrontations if they used their terrain and their knowledge of it to their advantage. Pizarro from Lima on the coast is taking reinforcements and pushing them into the interior to relieve Cusco. And Quizo is waiting until they enter narrow defiles and passes through the mountains, blocking both ends, and then using boulders and other material to just obliterate them from the heights. And more and more of these Spanish expeditions are being annihilated. So at that level, when they use the terrain and their institutional knowledge of it to their advantage, the Inca are able to win set-piece battles, but they can't seal the deal in Cusco.
译文：曼科犯了一个错误，命令奎佐攻击利马。他认为我们现在占有优势。我已经把他们困在了库斯科。我们消灭了他们的增援部队。只要摧毁他们沿海的城市，问题就会解决。然而，攻击利马意味着要穿越开阔地带，这使得西班牙人利用了他们的优势。将军被杀，整个攻击行动崩溃。在库斯科，确实有少数西班牙人困守在几个加固建筑中，拼命坚守。他们日夜都受到攻击。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And Manco makes the mistake of ordering Quizo to attack Lima. He feels we have the advantage now. I've bottled them up in Cusco. We've annihilated their relief columns. Take out their city on the coast, and the problem is over. But attacking Lima meant passing across open ground, which made the Spanish then unleash their advantage. The general is killed and the whole assault collapses. Back in Cusco, yes, there's a handful of Spaniards holed up in just a couple of fortified buildings, desperately holding on. Day and night, they're under assault.
从心理层面来看，击鼓声、吟唱声以及不断袭来的投掷物把建筑物点燃，他们本来可能全军覆没，但有两个原因让他们幸存下来。第一，库斯科的开放庭院和广场对骑兵来说是很好的地形，而他们仍然有马。第二，更为关键的是，通过与当地人的外交手段，他们获得了一种优势。被称为Mitmai或Yanakona的被征服奴役者，即被印加帝国纳入其中的被征服人民，在忍受这些权威的统治时，将这些外来者视为最终摆脱印加统治的机会。因此，奇怪的是，在库斯科长期的战斗中，越来越多的当地人选择加入被围攻的西班牙人一方。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The psychological aspect to it, the beating of drums and the chanting and the constant rain of missiles to set their building on fire, they would have been wiped out, except for two reasons. One, the open courtyards and plazas of Cusco are good terrain for cavalry, and they still have their horses. And secondly, again, critically, the asset through diplomacy of the local peoples. The subordinated Mitmai, as they were called, or Yanakona, serfs, the defeated and subordinated people of the Inca had brought forcibly within their imperial structure, chafing under those authorities, see these outsiders as their chance to finally break free of Inca authority. So strangely enough, as it may seem, more local peoples had kept joining the besieged Spaniards during the whole battle of Cusco, which played out over many, many months.
在这场战斗中，西班牙人的盟友数量比开始时更多，因为印加帝国内部有很多不同的族群。从厄瓜多尔的卡纳里亚人，到亚马逊盆地的查查波亚人，甚至是曾经与印加争夺库斯科控制权的阿亚马卡人，都越来越多地站在西班牙人一边。而这些当地人的力量是关键的资源，没有他们的支持，西班牙人早已在库斯科被消灭。因此，可以说，西班牙人把自己插入了一个帝国势力圈。这个帝国从远处看地理广阔、人口众多，但实际上是由一个小型精英统治阶层无情地统治着整个系统。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the Spaniards ended up with more allies than they started during this battle, because there were so many people within the Inca empire. From the Canaria, who were from Ecuador, to the Chachapoya, from the Amazon basin, to even the Ayamarca, who used to be rivals with the Inca for control of Cusco itself, increasingly side with the Spaniards. And that local manpower was the critical asset. Without that, they would have been wiped out at Cusco. So again, it's the Spaniards inserting themselves into an imperial orbit, which from a distance looks impressive with its geographic expanse and its total population, but which had been ruthlessly dictated to by a tiny elite of a hierarchy who would impose themselves over the entire system.
记住，只有很少一部分人说纳瓦特尔语，这是一种阿兹特克帝国的官方语言。也只有小部分人说库斯科语，印加帝国自己的官方语言。虽然是印加帝国，但它是由多个不同民族构成的。当这些民族看到机会时，他们选择站到西班牙人一边。值得记住的是，阿兹特克人和印加人本身在他们自己的世界里就有点像征服者的角色，对吧？大约有十万真正的印加人却在统治着一个有一千万人口的帝国。所以他们自己也是一个帝国力量。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Remember only a small number of people spoke Nahuatl, the imperial language of the Aztecs. Only a small number spoke Cusco, the imperial language of the Inca themselves. It was the Inca empire, but it was constructed from multiple, multiple different ethnicities. And when they saw their chance, they took it to side with the Spaniards. Yeah, it's worth remembering that the Aztecs and the Incas are themselves sort of the equivalent to the conquistadors in their own world, right? There's a hundred thousand or so actual Incas that are controlling an empire of 10 million people. So they are themselves an imperial force.
回到之前的问题，也就是这些胜利到底有多大程度上是偶然的。听起来你是在说它们确实是偶然的，对吧？因为如果你指出那么多情况，比如说如果事情稍微不同一点，库斯科的围城就会成功或者科尔特斯会在战斗中被杀等等。这些事件的最终决定因素还是那些背景力量，那些穿越历史的巨大齿轮，比如地理环境和气候结构等因素。另外一个因素是，欧亚大陆有如此多的可驯养动物，比如绵羊、奶牛、山羊、骡子、猪，尤其是马，这些动物与人类在生态环境中的互动，为传染性疾病的进化创造了背景条件，这些疾病在欧亚大陆之间传播开来，无论是地方性还是大流行病，我们对它们的名字都很熟悉。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Going back to the question then of how contingent these victories were, it kind of sounds like you're saying they are contingent, right? Because if you're pointing out all these cases in which if things had gone slightly differently, the seas of Cusco would have worked or Cortez would have been killed in battle and stuff. The ultimate factor to go down to those background forces, the great wheels that grind through history, yeah, the geography and climate structure, one other factor. The fact that Eurasia was so stacked with domesticable animals, sheep, cows, goats, mules, pigs, and above all horses, and human interaction in biomes with those domesticated animals created the context for the evolution of contagious diseases, endemic or pandemic, that ripped back and forth through Eurasia and we're familiar with all their names.
这在新世界中从未发生过。那里的人民没有对一些疾病（如天花）所产生的免疫力，而且对我们现在认为普遍存在的各种传染病也缺乏免疫力。我认为，即使阿兹特克或印加在短期内取得胜利，长期的人口危机也会削弱他们社会的功能，使其难以保持统一和抵抗更长时间。由于被统治者感受到统治者权威的减弱，内部压力会导致他们的分裂，而这正是前哥伦布时期社会的普遍循环。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
That never occurred in the new world. The people there had no acquired immunity to diseases such as the big one, smallpox, but beyond that the whole galaxy of communicable diseases that we're now familiar with as being universal. I think even if the Aztecs Inca had won the short term proximate victories, the longer term demographic crisis would have undermined the functional capacity of their societies to remain integrated and to resist much longer. The pressure within them from their subject peoples as they felt the authority of their overlords beginning to weaken would have led to their fragmentation, which is the overarching cycle of pre-Columbian societies generally.
他们令人非常震撼，实际上，当你考虑到他们所面对的困难时，他们就显得更加令人钦佩。他们的金字塔不是通过役畜或车轮的帮助建造的，而是完全依靠纯粹的人力和巧妙的运用来完成构建的。而被征服的民族会为了自由而反抗。我们可以看到美洲历史中反复出现的循环，例如，当科尔特斯抵达时，特诺奇提特兰可能是地球上最辉煌的都市之一，既美丽又富饶，人口密集。而如果他是在1619年而不是1519年抵达，他会看到那是一片沼泽，只有一些被苔藓覆盖的土丘和小山从中升起。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They're extremely impressive, in fact, more impressive when you consider the disadvantages they had to struggle with. Their pyramids were built not through the assistance of beasts of burden or even the wheel, but simply through pure manpower and the application of that to construct it. The subject peoples would have broken for freedom. We see the recurring cycle of Mesoamerican history, for example, that when Cortes arrived, Tenochtitlan was one of the greatest metropolis perhaps on earth, beautiful and rich and heavily populated. A hundred years later, if he'd arrived in 1619 as opposed to 1519, he would have found a swamp with moss-covered mounds and hills rising out of it.
当然，类似的情况可以在特奥蒂瓦坎找到，这座曾统治中美洲的伟大都市曾经兴起、扩张，吸引了大量人口，但也因此过度消耗了其环境，最终陷入崩溃。我认为，阿兹特克人可能也会经历类似的命运。因此，无论是西班牙人还是随后的欧洲殖民者，总会在海岸地区立足，然后逐步向内陆推进。有可能最终殖民者和土著居民之间会形成一种更为均衡的关系。但是我认为，从长远来看，所有这些文化最终都会融入庞大的欧洲帝国体系中。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The parallel to that, of course, is Teotihuacan, the previous great metropolis which dominated Mesoamerica. It rose, it expanded, it attracted a huge population, it overstressed its environment, and it collapsed. I think the Aztecs naturally would have gone the same way. So one way or another, the Spanish or even subsequent ways of European colonists would have entrenched themselves at the coast and would have perhaps almost slowly pushed inland. It's possible that you would see a more balanced relationship between the colonists and the indigenous peoples. But I think in the longer term, they all would have been folded into the grand European imperial framework.
我们现在已经到了这样一个阶段：如果有一个基于计算机的任务，一个个人助理能在一小时内完成，那么人工智能也可能可以为你完成。随着时间的推移，人工智能变得越来越通用，所以这些新的人工智能助手所需的指导比以前少得多。举个例子，SpaceX 的人工智能给予 Grokbot 访问他们的合同、供应商支出和使用数据的权限，并请它识别潜在的节省。结果它发现了超过 10 万美元的节省，这些节省主要来自于未使用的软件服务座席和不必要的附加服务。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So we've gotten to the point now where if you have a computer-based task that a personal assistant could knock out in an hour, AI can probably just do it for you. AI has gotten more and more general over time, so these new AI assistants need much less hand-holding than they used to. For example, SpaceX AI gave Grokbot access to their contracts, vendor spend, and usage data, and asked it to identify potential savings. It ended up finding over $100,000 worth, mainly made up of unused SaaS seats and unnecessary add-ons.
我尝试用Grokbot来管理我的支出，结果超出了我的预期。它检查了我所有的SaaS工具，通过查看每个用户的最后活跃日期，帮我找出了哪些席位可以停止支付。它查看了我的计费设置，告诉我哪些工具适合按年支付而不是按月支付。它还给我发信息，询问我是否确实在使用一些怀疑没用过的订阅，比如LinkedIn Premium，并问我要不要取消它们，我选择了取消。总的来说，Grokbot帮我节省了超过5000美元，即便我们只是一个小团队。看起来在六个月内，我可以完全消除每周最烦人和最感觉没效率的工时。你现在就可以让像Grokbot这样的AI助手帮你完成实际工作，它已经让我的生活中很多小事变得更加轻松。访问 x.ai/bot 试试看。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I tried this on my own spend and Grokbot found more than I expected. It went through all my SaaS tools and figured out which seats I should stop paying for by looking at the last active date for each user. It looked at my billing settings and told me which tools I should pay for annually instead of monthly. It also messaged me about a couple subscriptions it doubted that I was actually using, like LinkedIn Premium, and asked me if I wanted to cancel them, which I did. All in, Grokbot found over $5,000 of savings, even though we're a pretty small team. It seems quite likely that within six months, I'll get to completely eliminate some of the most annoying and least productive feeling hours of my week. You can already give real work to AI assistants like Grokbot, which has been making a bunch of small things in my life easier. Go to x.ai/bot to try it out.
我们确实知道一些其他土著力量，它们能够长期抵抗欧洲列强。我想，有一些刚刚在美国南北战争中打完仗的军队或部队，被派去对抗一些土著部落。因为即使在19世纪后期，仍然有土著力量能够抵挡欧洲的入侵。当然，比如科曼奇人等等。所以在我看来，可能是因为他们太过于集中，一旦皇帝垮台，整个体系就随之瓦解，而其他部落则更为分散。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
We do know examples of other native forces who resist European powers for a very long time. I think there's some platoon or army that has just finished off fighting during the American Civil War that has to go down and then go fight some native tribes. Because there is still, even late into the 19th century, you know, native forces which are able to resist European incursions. Of course, you know, with the Comanche and so forth. So it does seem to me that they, like, maybe just because they were so centralized, you get the emperor and the whole thing falls, and whereas other tribes are more dispersed.
你说得完全正确。你提到的关键术语是“分散”。阿兹特克和印加的脆弱性在于他们社会的等级结构。整个系统对处在社会等级顶端的人的绝对忠诚是这一体系的核心。例如，阿兹特克的Huaylatuani和印加的Sape Inca。一旦这个核心人物被动摇，整个体系就可能瓦解，甚至可以通过中间人或傀儡来进行统治。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
You're absolutely right. The key term as you used it was dispersal. The vulnerability of the Aztec, the Inca, was that hierarchical nature of their society. And the absolute loyalty that the system had invested into who was at the top of the social hierarchical tree, the Huaylatuani for the Aztecs, the Sape Inca for the Inca themselves. Taking that individual destabilizes the whole system, potentially even means that it can be functionally governed through the use of intermediaries or even puppets.
正如你所说，被驱散的民族，如科曼奇人，甚至还有美洲中部的玛雅人，他们的城邦彼此之间强烈捍卫自治权，这意味着西班牙人无法一举消灭玛雅人。他们不能像对待阿兹特克人一样对待玛雅人，而是必须一个接一个地攻陷他们的城市。这个过程漫长而艰苦，直到17世纪末才最终完成。而即便如此，仍有反抗的火星在燃烧。许多方面来看，你去中美洲的高地地区，人们仍在使用祖先的语言，而且在说西班牙语前他们首先说的就是这些语言。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The dispersed peoples, as you say, the Comanche, even the Maya in Mesoamerica, whose city-states jealously asserted and defended their autonomy against each other meant that the Spanish couldn't take out the Maya in one fell swoop. They couldn't do to the Maya what they'd done to the Aztecs. They had to reduce their cities one by one. And it was a long, laborious process that took almost to the end of the 17th century to finally consummate. And even then there was still smoldering dissent. In many ways, you can go to the highlands of Central America and they still speak the ancestral languages. It's the first one before they speak Spanish.
是的，殖民大国可能会遭遇激烈的反抗。就像1876年在美国发生的卡斯特最后一战，当时第七骑兵团在小大角被全军覆没，因为他们失去了主动权。当时，他们面对的是暂时集结在一起的战士，这些战士骑着马，使用枪支，然后迅速分散开来。因此，很难将他们“钉住”，这常常令殖民者感到挫败。最终，他们进行了漫长而接近全面战争的过程，才让这些战士屈服。他们在各地设置铁丝网，而屠杀野牛则是为了破坏当地的文化基础和食物链，以迫使最后的抵抗势力屈服。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Yes, colonizing powers can find aggressive bite back. Just look at Custer's last stand as late as 1876 here in America, the entire 7th Cavalry wiped out the Little Bighorn because they lost the initiative. And at that point, they were fighting warriors who had come together temporarily, riding horses, firing guns, and then dispersing afterwards. It was very hard to pin them down and that was often a frustrating aspect. It took a long process of what amounts to really total war to finally bring them to heel. Setting up barbed wire everywhere and of course, slaughtering the buffalo to take away the basis for their culture and their food chain to finally bring the last holdouts to heel.
这可能是一个漫长而复杂的过程。印加人和阿兹特克人自己也发现了这一点。他们即使在将整个区域纳入帝国后也没有最终完全融合。阿兹特克人包围了并逐步削弱了莱什卡兰人。然而，在西部地区，也就是今天所谓的梅科瓦卡和普里普切人或塔拉斯坎人，他们也有自己的帝国。他们能够与阿兹特克人势均力敌。阿兹特克人第一次进入塔拉斯坎领地时遭遇了灾难。一个关键原因实际上是技术。阿兹特克人没有与南美的联系，而塔拉斯坎人却有。不论是从语言证据、服装选择，还是植物和动物的交换，尤其是在技术方面，都表明他们之间存在某种联系。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So it can be a long, protracted process. The Inca and Aztecs themselves found that out. They never consummated, even incorporating their entire zones within their empires. The Aztecs had surrounded and was slowly reducing the Leshcalans. But to the west, and what's Mecohuaca and the Puripuche people, as they're called today, the Tarascans, had an empire of their own. And they were able to go toe-to-toe with the Aztecs. The first time the Aztecs crossed into Tarascan territory, it was a disaster. A key reason for that was actually technology. The Aztecs had no connection with South America. The Tarascans somehow did. We know from linguistic evidence and costume choice, some exchange of flora and fauna, and above all in technology.
塔拉斯坎人能够冶炼金属。像印加人一样，他们可以冶炼铜，并用其制造箭头。他们大量使用配备铜头的弓箭手，对入侵的阿兹特克军队造成了毁灭性的打击。如果这种技术交流在南北美洲之间更广泛地进行，可能会成为一种平衡力量。如果阿兹特克得到了来自南美洲的骆马，那将对他们非常有利。新大陆是有锡的，是的。那么为什么没有铜和锡制成的青铜呢？他们从未制造过。在以石器为主的中美洲地区，确实没有出现青铜。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Tarascans could smelt metal. Like the Inca, they could smelt copper, and they used that to form the points of their arrows, and their massed archers with their copper-tipped arrows were decimating the invading Aztec forces. So the exchange, if it had been on a broader scale between North and South, would have been potentially an equalizing force. If the Aztec had had llamas from South America, it would have been dramatically to their advantage. There is tin in the New World. Yes. So no bronze? Why did we not get bronze with copper and tin? They'd never made it. That's certainly not in Mesoamerica where everything was stone.
他们真是两头不讨好。他们能够熔炼银和金来吸引西班牙人的贪婪，但却无法熔炼铁来抵挡他们。对。在此之前，你会以为他们应该先做一些铜和锡来制作青铜吧。其实，印加文明中是有青铜的。哦，真的？好的。如果当时阿兹特克人也能获得青铜，那他们在作战中要更有攻击性。虽然青铜无法与铁抗衡，但总比石头好。对，比黑曜石强。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They're the worst of both worlds. They could smelt silver and gold to attract the greed of the Spaniards, but they couldn't smelt iron to hold them off. Right. No, but before that, you would have thought that they would have done copper, tin, get bronze. They did have bronze in the Inca world. Oh, really? Okay. And if the Aztecs had had access to that, again, they'd have given them a much more aggressive fighting stunt. Bronze can't stand up against iron, but it's better than stone. Right. Yeah. Or obsidian.
这段话的大意是说，我认为这其中一个重要的方面是，欧洲人彼此之间在互相学习，而当地人则没有互相学习。比如，科尔特斯从征服伊斯帕尼奥拉岛中吸取了经验，当然，在征服阿兹特克人时，他也有很多即兴的策略。而皮萨罗则非常清楚科尔特斯十年前所做的一切，基本上是遵循同样的方法。反观印加人，可能甚至不知道阿兹特克人的存在。因此，欧洲人的知识积累要比当地人多得多。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So this is, I think, an important part of what happens here, which is that the Europeans are learning from each other, but the natives are not learning from each other. Right. So Cortez learned from the conquest of Hispaniola. Of course, he has a ton of improvisation in the way he approaches the conquest of the Aztecs. And then Pizarro just knows the whole details of what Cortez did a decade earlier, basically follow the same playbook. Yes. It's not clear to me that the Incas even knew the Aztecs existed. No. So you just have a much more accumulation of knowledge than the other one is able to accumulate.
是的。他们的社会是封闭的，非常孤立。追溯到更早的时代，我认为如果让哥伦布前的美洲人民有真正长期抵御欧洲人的机会，唯一的分歧点可能就是再往前推500年，让李夫·埃里克松和北欧人在格陵兰，他们知道北美的存在。当他们探索时，将其命名为Helluland、Markland和Vinland，并试图殖民这块新大陆。但由于他们人数太少，当地的抵抗又太激烈，最终被迫撤退。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Yeah. Their closed worlds, they were very insular in their societies. To go further back in time, I think the only divergence that would have given pre-Columbian peoples a real long-term chance to hold off the Europeans, if we reversed the clock another 500 years back to leave Ericsson and the Norse in Greenland, they knew of the existence of North America. Helluland, Markland, and Vinland, as they called them, as they explored them. And they tried to colonize the new world. Their numbers were too few, the local resistance was too fierce, and they were forced out.
如果维京人在新大陆能够长期定居，他们或许可以逐渐引入欧洲的技术、欧洲的牲畜，特别是欧洲的疾病到美洲。这样，当500年后征服者到来的时候，他们会遇到一些对欧洲疾病已有抵抗力、懂得如何使用铁器并骑马的人。如果真是这样，那就无法预料会发生什么了。这样的历史将会非常有趣。如果维京人真的在那里建立了定居点，新大陆会是什么样子呢？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
If the Vikings had been able to claim a long-term presence in the new world, they may have been able to drip feed European technology, European beasts of burden, and above all, European diseases slowly into the Americas. So that 500 years later, when the Conquistadors did show up, they'd have met a people who had some resistance to European diseases, knew how to work iron, and were riding horses. If that was the case, all bets are up. That would be such an interesting history. What does the new world look like if the Vikings had actually set up there?
那真是很有趣。Pizarro在Cortez策略上的最大创新是什么？我认为，关键就在于尽可能密切地遵循已有的蓝图。他们直接攻向权力顶层，建立起一个沿海据点，这也是Cortez非常看重的策略。这样，如果内陆的局势不利，还有一个安全的基础可以撤退。起初，沿海基地是征服者们使用的策略，后来葡萄牙人、英国人、法国人都建造了这些重要的沿海堡垒。由于他们垄断了海上技术，当地或土著居民几乎无法将其从中驱逐。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
That's very interesting. What was Pizarro's greatest innovation on Cortez's strategy? I think, essentially, the key to it was following the blueprint as closely as possible. Go right to the top, establish a coastal sediment, which Cortez also was very invested in, so you have a secure base to fall back to if what's happening in the interior is not playing out. A base on the coastline was originally with the Conquistadors, but more broadly, the Portuguese, British, French, subsequently, they would build those key strongholds on the coast, which, because of their monopoly over nautical technology, means they were effectively unable to be extricated by any local or indigenous population.
人们往往低估了欧洲扩张成功的一个重要因素。最终，他们拥有坚固的堡垒。他们长期积累的知识让他们知道理想的堡垒应该是什么样子。这些锯齿状的星形要塞、防护墙和城垛，这些都最大化了火力。即便是欧亚文化，甚至清朝中国也难以应对这种防御。前哥伦布时期美洲的人民在面对这样规模的防御工事时几乎没有机会。印加人、阿兹特克人甚至没有围攻战的经验。他们没有攻城武器，没有冲撞锤，投石机之类的工具。因此，一旦欧洲人在坚固的据点驻扎下来，将他们赶出去是非常困难的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And that's one thing that people tend to underestimate with the success of European expansion. At the end of the day, they had the fortresses. Again, the long institutional knowledge of what a perfect fortress should look like. Those jagged edge star parameters and revetments and battlements, which maximized firepower. Even Eurasian cultures, even the Qing Chinese struggled to be able to deal with that. The peoples of the pre-Columbian Americas had no real chance of storming defenses on that kind of a scale. The Inca, Aztecs, even didn't have siege warfare. They didn't have siege weapons, battering rams, catapults, nothing like that. So once the Europeans dug into fortified positions, it was very hard to move them out of that.
皮萨罗所处的环境与这个环境截然不同。墨西哥的高原虽然海拔不低，但与安第斯山脉相比，还是有所不同。我曾经在喜马拉雅山的高处待过，因海拔太高而呼吸困难。所以，他们能够在如此高的地方行军作战，实在令人惊叹。他们身上穿着几十磅重的盔甲和装备，这展现了他们多年艰苦生活锤炼出的身体耐力和内心核心动力。因为这一切的价值必须足够高，才能支撑他们的努力。所以，科尔特斯和皮萨罗总是在同辈中脱颖而出，因为他们必须不断展示自己的成功。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Pizarro's own environment was quite different from that. I mean, the highlands of Mexico were quite elevated, but the Andes mountains that the conquistadors were moving into. I mean, I've been at elevation in the Himalayas and I was struggling to breathe with the altitude sickness. So how they're able to move to those heights and then be able to fight battles is really astonishing. With many dozens of pounds of armor and equipment. Yeah. It speaks to their physical stamina honed over many years of hard living and the core motivations. This had better be worth it. So that's why Cortez and Pizarro were always kind of first among equals. They had to keep demonstrating success.
他们必须在任何情况下都成为“领头狗”，因为他们周围有许多雄心勃勃的人，其中一些人的地位或主张与科尔特斯或皮萨罗同样合法。而科尔特斯始终掌控着局面，但皮萨罗在最后失去了控制。当他的一 rival 派系冲进他的家时，他遭遇了人生的终结。他是在与他自己的西班牙同胞斗争时战斗到最后，而不是对抗土著人民。让我感兴趣的是，在这些征服过程中，一旦皇帝被捕获，比如印加的阿塔瓦尔帕和阿兹特克的蒙特祖马，他们认为接下来会发生什么？他们为什么合作？他们认为最终会有什么结果使他们处于有利地位？他们是否以为给西班牙人足够的黄金后，他们就会离开？他们究竟有什么打算呢？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They had to be the alpha dog in all circumstances because around them were many ambitious men, some of whom had titles or claims that were just as legitimate as Cortez or Pizarro. And Cortez was always on top of that situation. Pizarro, of course, at the end, lost control. He met his end as a rival faction storms his household. And he went down fighting, not against the indigenous people, but against his fellow Spaniards. Right. What I find interesting about these conquests is that once the emperor is captured, Atahualpa for the Incas and Moctezuma for the Aztecs, what is it that they think is going to happen? Why are they cooperating? What is the end story in which they come out on top? Do they think that the Spanish were going to leave if they give them enough gold? What is their end game there?
这是个好问题。我的意思是，我认为莫克特苏马二世从被科尔特斯捕获的那一刻起就发生了变化。因为之前的记录显示，莫克特苏马是个无情的专制统治者。他把所有权力集中在贵族手中。以前，人们还有可能从外部进入权力核心圈，但他禁止了这种可能。在对下属的控制上，他几乎像斯大林一样。他还将儀式性花战升级为对拉什科林人不断包围和歼灭的战争。所以，他在各个方面都是个独裁者。也许这是他人生中第一次被要求按别人说的去做，因而导致他精神上的彻底崩溃。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
That's a good question. I mean, I think Moctezuma II, from the moment when Cortez seized him. Because previously, the records of Moctezuma reflect that he was a pitiless autocrat. He centralized all power in the aristocracy. Previously, it used to be possible to work up from outside the circle into the inner circle, but he forbade that. He was almost Stalinist in his authority over his underlings. And he was the one who was amping up the ritualistic flower wars into successive campaigns of encirclement and annihilation for the Lash Collins. So he was, in every sense of the word, an autocrat. Perhaps it's for the first time in his life being told what to do just led to a complete psychological break.
因为一旦科尔蒂斯掌控了他，他似乎就完全改变了态度，愿意成为科尔蒂斯的傀儡。他总是试图在不挑战科尔蒂斯权威的情况下，找到一种既能满足科尔蒂斯要求又对自己人民有利的方式。最终，他并不是被科尔蒂斯抛弃，而是被自己的人民抛弃，因为他们意识到他出卖了他们，他不得不下台。在阿兹特克历史上，像他这样被单方面罢免的事情此前从未发生过。他是第一个被自己的人民否认并被替换的最高首领。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Because once Cortez had hold of him, he seems to have pulled a complete 180 switch and become essentially, willingly, Cortez's puppet. He was always trying to do what Cortez wanted in a way that would still be beneficial for his people, but would not rock the boat so much in terms of Cortez's authority. In the end, it wasn't Cortez's disposal. It was his own people because they realized that he had sold them out and he had to go. His being unilaterally deposed, that had never happened before in Aztec history. He was the first Huey Latuani to be repudiated by his own people and replaced by someone else.
但是，他以为会发生什么呢？他看起来好像很清醒，对吧？确实如此，西班牙方面描述他为人举止优雅，显然很聪明，而且能够适应当下的情况。他学会说西班牙语非常快，还学会了玩牌和国际象棋。我认为，他是在尽可能地融入当地。但是同时，我觉得他也在和自己的人取得联系，也许他在等待时机来完全动员自己。可能他只是觉得自己从未真正获得过那样的机会。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But what did he think was going to happen? He seemed like he had his wits about him, right? He did, and the Spanish accounts referred to that he had a regal bearing, was clearly intelligent, and he was adapted to the situation. He learned to speak Spanish very, very quickly. He learned to play cards and chess. He was, I think, trying to integrate himself as much as possible. At the same time, though, I think he was also reaching out to his own people, and he was waiting, perhaps, for his opportunity to fully mobilize him. Perhaps he just felt he never quite got the opportunity to do that.
请记住，交易的条件是，如果他把科尔特斯交给他们，并且走进房间说，"我可以用黄金和白银把这个房间填满到这么高，"卡扎罗就承诺会释放他。也许他真的认为对方是个守信的人，但事实是卡扎罗并不是这样的人，在得到他想要的东西后，就将他绞死了。因此，很可能是他误解了卡扎罗，把他当成了同等地位的人，认为国王之间不会这样对待彼此，但实际上他面对的只是一个不讲诚信的投机商人，而非一个真诚交易的人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Because bear in mind, the deal was, if he provided Cortez and he walked into that room and said, "I can fill it up this high with gold and silver," and Cazaro had promised to be released at that point. Perhaps he actually felt that this was a man of his word, but Cazaro in no case Cazaro was, and had him garottened to death after getting what he wanted. So it may just be that he misinterpreted Cazaro as someone who was on the same level, that kings don't do this to other kings, but he was dealing with a free-booting entrepreneur, essentially, not someone operating in good faith at all.
好的，从宏观角度来看，思考一下西班牙新大陆征服的真正成就其实挺有趣的。基本上，他们是冲着黄金和白银去的。从某种意义上来说，他们就像一群对当地文化甚至这片新大陆的生产能力毫不关心的“剪纸机”。他们只在乎这些金属，而这些金属本身并不是生产性资产，对吧？它们无法直接创造财富。就像加密货币一样，如果你想想黄金和白银是什么。那么，他们对这些金属简直入迷。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Okay, so zooming out, it's sort of interesting to think about what this Spanish New World conquest really accomplished. So they're basically after gold and silver. In a weird way, they're sort of like paper clippers who don't really care about this indigenous culture or even the productive capacity of this new continent. They just care about these metals, which are not in and of themselves productive assets, right? They can't generate wealth. They're basically like crypto, if you think of what gold and silver are. So they're just obsessed with this.
起初，我们昨天谈到了这个话题，这有助于他们筹集资金。你知道，现在欧洲处于一个艰难的境地，因为奥斯曼帝国和其他力量的存在。收复运动刚刚发生。因此，西班牙人在与控制伊比利亚半岛部分地区的阿拉伯军队作战。他们用这些黄金和白银来支付国内的防御费用。但是，如果你思考一下实际发生的事情，这并没有创造出新的净财富，对吧？这基本上只是欧洲人之间的财富再分配，因为如果他们把金银视作货币，现在金银的相对比例已经改变了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Initially, we were talking about this yesterday, this helps them fund the. You know, Europe's in a tough spot at this time because the Ottomans and other forces are. The reconquest does just happen. So the Spanish have been fighting off Arab armies that had control over parts of the Iberian Peninsula. And they use this gold and the silver to, I guess, help pay for the defenses back at home. But if you think about what's really happening here, there's no new net wealth that has been generated, right? It's just basically redistribution among Europeans, where if they're using bullion as currency, now the relative ratio of bullion has changed.
这段文字的意思是：你会经历通货膨胀和某种形式的财富再分配。这基本上是指政府在印更多的钱。这样做并不会创造更多的商品或生产力。至少在一开始，西班牙从新大陆没有获得任何新的生产能力。变化在于这个时期明朝统治着中国，而明朝在纸币流通方面做得非常不好，导致没有人信任纸币。每次出现通货膨胀，政府就推出新货币，结果人们积累的财富变得一文不值。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So you get inflation plus like some redistribution. It's basically the government printing more money. It doesn't create more stuff. There's no productive. At least initially, the Spanish are not getting any new productive capacity out of the new world. What does change is that during this period, the Ming dynasty is in charge of China and it has really messed up the circulation of paper currency. Nobody trusts it. Every time there's inflation, they just make up a new currency and people's stocks of wealth are totally worthless.
因此，当时西班牙人在新大陆建立了银矿，然后将这些银子运往中国。然后，中国则向欧洲运送了数百万件瓷器，以及大量的丝绸、香料和精美商品。基本上是数百吨实质商品，不知道是不是达到了上千吨。这种交换的本质上是一种媒介，主要是为了弥补明朝时期缺乏可靠的交换手段这一现实。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And so now the Spanish set up the silver mines in the new world and they ship that silver off to China. And China is then sending millions of pieces of porcelain and tons and tons of silk and spices and fine goods to Europe. Basically hundreds of tons of real goods. I don't know if it might have been thousands of tons. In exchange, we're basically a medium of exchange, basically to make up for the fact that they don't have a reliable means of exchange at the time in the Ming dynasty.
我认为，这是一个重要且有趣的观点，即西班牙殖民地在新世界中的作用是什么。从整体来看，它并没有创造任何净新财富。从某种意义上来说，它基本上是在帮助免费获取中国的一些东西。征服者们中的很多人其实并没有真正意识到他们所取得的成就，其中有些人在征服过程中失去了生命。而那些幸运的、有能力的人则活得足够长久，得以在所谓的“庄园”上定居下来。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And I think that is an important, interesting piece of like, what is a function of the Spanish colonies in the new world? It's not generating any net new wealth. In the grand scheme of things, it's basically helping get, I don't know, Chinese stuff for free in some sense. Yeah. The conquistadors really didn't appreciate what they'd accomplished, many of them. Some of them died doing what they did. The ones who were lucky, were good, lived long enough to settle down on what were called encomiendas.
这是指当地的庄园地主，他们雇佣许多当地人来为他们耕种土地，这类似于一种农奴制。后来，这些庄园被官僚人员所取代。一旦征服者们扫清了道路，来自西班牙的官僚们就会前来开始管理和治理那些后来的墨西哥、秘鲁以及整个南美洲。南美洲的征服者们反抗这种变化，最终被武力平息，以确保南美洲留在西班牙帝国之内。一旦这一目标实现，这个过程就彻底融入了西班牙帝国的轨道，这也是第一个 "日不落" 的帝国。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
That's local estates with many of the local peoples to farm the land for them, kind of peon serfdom. The later iteration was the bureaucrats. Once the conquistadors had cleared the ground, the bureaucrats would arrive from Spain and they would begin running and administering what would become Mexico, Peru, South America generally. The conquistadors in South America rebelled against that had to be put down by force to retain South America within the Spanish empire. Once that was accomplished though, the whole process became very integrated into the Spanish imperial orbit, the first empire in which the sun never sets.
一旦西班牙人在现在属于玻利维亚的波托西发现并开采出大量白银，他们就为真正的全球化找到了最后一块拼图。起初，正如你所说，黄金和白银都流向东方，进入了查理五世国王及其儿子腓力二世国王的金库。两位国王利用这些财富进行传教防卫和扩张战争，以抵御奥斯曼帝国的进攻，保持对荷兰的控制，并且理想情况下，通过无敌舰队将天主教这一真实的使徒信仰重新带回英格兰。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Once the Spanish had discovered and exploited a mountain of silver at Potosia, what's now Bolivia, they put the last piece of the puzzle in place for true globalization. Initially, the gold, silver was all going east, as you say, into the coffers of King Charles V and his son, King Philip II, for their wars of evangelical defense and expansion against the Ottomans to keep the Netherlands under their control to ideally, through the armada, bring the one true apostolic faith of Catholicism back to England.
当然，大多数这些冒险活动都以失败告终。正如你所说，最终对西班牙的净影响相当负面，因为每年从宝船运抵西班牙的大量白银注入了欧洲，导致流动性大幅增加，这实际上只是引发了通货膨胀，推动物价上涨。事实上，西班牙的实际工资在这一时期有所下降，因为虽然流动性过剩，但这导致即便是基本商品的价格也比以前高得多。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Most of those ventures, of course, were failures. As you say, the net impact for Spain was ultimately quite negative because by infusing Europe with this enormous expansion of liquidity through the silver that was pouring off the treasure ships every year arriving in Spain, all they were doing was importing inflation and pushing prices up to levels. Real wages in Spain actually fell during this period because, yes, there was excess liquidity, but this meant prices for even staple goods were much higher than they had been previously.
最终的负面影响是，源源不断的白银就像一种诱人的毒药，使得西班牙从未发展成我们所说的功能性资本主义。西班牙未能建立资本市场或独立的银行体系，而这些在当时的荷兰和英格兰正在兴起。因此，那些国家走在了前面，而西班牙和葡萄牙则落在后面，在19世纪没有真正实现全面工业化，并在20世纪依旧非常落后、贫穷且以农业为主。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the ultimate negative effect was that the seductive drug essentially of having silver on tap meant that Spain never developed towards what we call functional capitalism. It never developed capital markets or independent banking systems that were emerging in places like the Netherlands and England during this period. So those powers moved ahead while Spain and Portugal were left behind, didn't really fully industrialized during the 19th century, were left very rural and poor and backward by the 20th century.
他们至今仍在追赶当时的影响。所以西班牙在这方面的平均收益非常有限。确实，我们能够负担1571年在勒班陀对抗奥斯曼帝国所需的舰队，这是好的。但是就社会发展而言，这种增长实际上进入了停滞期，并持续了数百年。正如你提到的，另一个关键点是中国。在西班牙完全能够开发南美洲的银矿后，他们可以利用对太平洋洋流和风向的逐渐了解，将大型船只向西航行到菲律宾和他们在东方的基地——马尼拉。从那里，他们可以与来自日本、暹罗，尤其是中国的商人会面，用开采出的银子交换具有实际价值的商品。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It's still now that they're catching up from that. So the average Spanish gain from this was quite marginal. Yes, we can afford fleets necessary to face off against the Ottomans at Lepanto in 1571, which is good. But in terms of the development of the society, that really plateaued and stayed that way for hundreds of years. The other side of the equation, as you mentioned, is China. Yes, once the Spanish had fully become able to exploit the silver mines of South America, they could then take advantage of their developing knowledge of the Pacific oceans and wind currents to send those great ships west to the Philippines, to Manila, their base in the Orient. And from there, meet with merchants coming from Japan, from Siam, and most of all from China, bringing goods with real practical value for exchange for that extracted silver.
所以正如你所说，西班牙人用多余的流动资金购买有价值的商品，而这带来的真正好处并不是整个国家结构上的优势。没错，征服者的行为在历史上将真正全球化的最后一块拼图拼好。贸易不再仅限于跨欧亚大陆或跨大西洋，而是跨全球。如今，这些网络在某种程度上影响到了每一个人。而明朝在17世纪40年代中期也意识到了这一点，当时整个帝国的交换基础完全转向了白银。当在17世纪上半叶，由于多种原因白银的获取被切断或至少减少时，明朝在最糟糕的时刻遭遇了现金危机，正当满族已经逼近，他们无法再为军队提供资金。他们无力支付军事费用来进行抵抗。因此，满族在这一绝佳时机乘势而入，击败了明朝，并取而代之成为中国帝国领域的新霸主。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So as you say, the Spanish are buying goods with value, with excess liquidity, and the real benefit from that is not something that's structurally to the advantage of the country as a whole. So yes, what the conquistadors did was historically put the last pieces of the puzzle in place for true globalization. Trade is no longer trans-Eurasian or even trans-Atlantic, it's trans-global. The networks now affect everybody at some point along the line. And the Ming found that out in the mid-1640s when there was a cash crisis, having fully transferred the basis of exchange in their empire to silver. When access to silver was cut off or at least minimized for a number of reasons during the first half of the 17th century, the Ming, at the worst possible time, with the Manchu at the gates, could no longer fund their armies. They couldn't pay to put a military in place to hold them off. So the Manchus moved in at a moment of supreme advantage, blew out the Ming, and replaced them as the new hegemons over the Chinese imperial zone.
是的。有趣的是，将西班牙人在新大陆取得的迅速而惊人的成功与同时期在弗吉尼亚建立殖民地的英国进行对比。在那个时期，有许多信件表达了人们对弗吉尼亚公司的不满，认为这简直是在浪费英国的资金和生命。没错，很多人死去，他们发现这里根本没有任何可以耕种的东西，也没有什么可以获取的资源。当然，从长远来看，英国失去了对新大陆的控制权，但在一段时间内他们确实获得了一些富有成效的新殖民地。我不太确定该如何正确看待这件事情。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Yeah. It's interesting to contrast the Spanish who had immediate and outrageous successes in the New World with the English around the same time who were setting up the colony in Virginia. And there's so many letters from that time where people are complaining about the Virginia company is just literally a waste of English money and-- Like lives. Yeah, exactly. And just like, everybody's dying. Yeah. They're not getting-- There's like nothing to farm here. There's nothing to get out of this. In the long run, of course, I guess the British did lose control of the New World. But for a while, they did gain these productive new colonies in the New World. And I don't know the right way to think about this.
我的意思是，有一种观点认为，西班牙人因为早期的迅速成功而建立了一种榨取式的制度。他们的定居方式主要依赖资源的掠夺，长期来看，并没有带来可持续的生产能力。而英国人则被迫进入不同的模式，因为他们没有如西班牙那样轻松获得大量的财富，而是不得不建立一些生产能力及相关制度，以更有效地利用美国、加拿大等地的资源和机遇。再看看荷兰和英国，这两个在帝国主义中后来居上的新教国家，因为宗教原因在欧洲被边缘化。尤其是荷兰，自然资源几乎为零。在这种环境下，他们被迫进行创新思考如何实现资本增值和真正的经济扩张。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I mean, there is this way of thinking about maybe the Spanish set up this extractive because they had this very quick initial success. They set up a very extractive settlement, which didn't result in net productive capacity in the long run. Whereas the British were forced, because there was no, you know, just like crazy bullion floating around, they were forced to build up some productive capacity, build up these kinds of institutions that would allow them to make most use of America, Canada, and so on. Yeah. You look at the Netherlands and England, the two late comers to the game of imperialism, Protestant powers marginalized for that reason in Europe. And the Netherlands especially has nothing. Natural resources, absolutely zero. So in that environment, you're forced to innovate and think about how you can achieve capital gain and true economic expansion.
每个人都想要快速解决问题的方法。这种心理很容易理解。我们参与彩票就是因为这种心理，对不对？但是要小心你所希望的，因为你可能真的会得到它。而那些已经享受到了快速解决方法的社会，比如通过矿产像黄金或白银，或者通过某种单一作物生产来拥有垄断地位的，他们会对此感到满足。他们陷入一个仅为此目的存在的环境，无法在此基础上进一步发展。甚至在美国，我们可以看到南北之间的差异。那条地理界线以下的地区，确实可以获得快速解决方法，比如投入资本购买奴隶，让他们种植可以快速获利的经济作物，比如最初的烟草，还有靛蓝、甘蔗，当然还有棉花这一主要作物。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Everybody wants the quick fix. Understand it. We play the lottery for that exact reason, right? But be careful what you wish for them because you may just actually get it. And those societies that have arrived at the quick fix, whether that's gold or silver or monocultural crop production of some kind, which gives you a monopoly on its provision, they become satisfied with that. They become trapped within an environment that exists solely for that purpose and they don't develop beyond the essential thresholds that that allows for. Even here in the US, we can look at the difference between the North and the South. That geographic line, below that line, yes, you can get the quick fix. You can put all your capital into buying slaves and have them work at providing cash crops, which is tobacco, the original one, indigo, and sugar, and of course the big one, cotton.
北方没有那些优势。你不能仅仅购买土地并从中提取资源。你必须考虑如何赚钱。这就是为什么北方的投资都流向了那些具有长期生产力的领域，如贸易和商业、先进的资本市场和银行系统，当然，还有工业化。这一切都发生在北方。因此，当1860年代的分裂到来，北方和南方开战时，所有的优势都在北方。不仅仅是人口，还有工业基础和资本市场，这些对北方制定一个实际能赢得与南方冲突的长期战略都是必需的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The North didn't have those advantages. You couldn't just buy land and then extract the resource from it. You had to think about how to make money. And that's why all the investment money in the North was going into things with long-term productivity, into trade and commerce, into advanced capital markets and the banking system, and of course into industrialization, right? That all happened in the North. So when the rupture came in the 1860s and the North and South went to war, all those advantages were with the North. Not just population, but the industrial base, the capital markets necessary for it to put in place a winning long-term strategy for actually defeating the South in that conflict.
从长远来看，一个重要的教训就是，如果从一开始生活过于轻松，可能会导致某种程度上，我不想称之为懒惰，但或许是在长远来看更有利的替代方案中缺乏远见。在这一集的早些时候，我问了Sai，如果你可以让征服的过程重演一千次，有多少次会是西班牙人掌控局面？如果阿兹特克人从维京人那里学会了冶铁技术会怎样？或者如果西班牙人没有带来天花？又或者如果科尔特斯早些时候去世了呢？显然，在历史上，这些假设只是思维实验。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
That again is the long-term lesson, that having life too easy from the beginning leads to a certain, I don't want to call it laziness, but lack of vision perhaps, in alternatives that may in the longer term actually be more advantageous. So earlier in this episode, I asked Sai, if you could rerun the conquest a thousand times, how often do the Spanish end up in control? What if the Aztecs had learned ironworking from the Vikings? Or the Spanish hadn't brought smallpox? Or Cortez had died earlier? Obviously with history, counterfactuals are just thought experiments.
但是使用软件，你实际上可以对其进行测试。Antithesis软件测试平台能够通过成千上万个并行的历史场景运行你的系统，让你可以探索任何你想要的反事实情境。比如，如果一个数据包丢失了，你的软件会如何表现？如果网络发生变化呢？或者机器在处理过程中突然故障了呢？重要的是，你不需要亲自设计这些反事实情境。传统测试的一个大问题是它只能覆盖你已知的情境分布。要测试一个漏洞，你首先得想到它。这些测试有点像花战。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But with software, you can actually test them. The Antithesis software testing platform runs your system through thousands of parallel histories, letting you explore any counterfactual you want. How does your software perform if a packet gets dropped? What about when the network directs? Or the machine dies mid-right? Importantly, you don't have to come up with these counterfactuals. One big problem with traditional testing is that it only covers a distribution that you know. To test for a bug, you first have to imagine it. These tests are sort of like the flower wars.
翻译如下：
阿兹特克人在对已知对手的仪式性战斗中取得的成功让他们感觉自己像是世界上最强的军事力量，但他们对科尔特斯的到来仍然没有准备。Antithesis通过引导你的测试来解决这个问题，它会注入故障，把一切尽可能地变得对抗性。这样一来，你的软件就能在你从未想象过但可能在现实世界中出现的情境下进行测试。访问 antithesis.com/thvarkash 了解更多信息。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Aztec success in these ritual battles against known rivals made them feel like the best military in the world, but they're still unprepared for Cortez. Antithesis solves this by steering your tests for you, injecting faults and making things as adversarial as possible. That way, your software gets tested against scenarios you'd never imagine, but that could still arise in the real world. Go to antithesis.com/thvarkash to learn more.
追溯到阿兹特克和印加时期，其中一个显著特点就是他们的战略和战术常常非常糟糕。比如，由于阿兹特克人的军事冲突以俘虏受害者进行祭祀为基础，有许多情况都是科尔特斯本人被打倒在地，甚至被从马背上击落。但阿兹特克人并没有趁机杀掉他，而是试图俘虏科尔特斯进行祭祀仪式，这让他有机会逃离险境。另一个在这些冲突中常犯的重大错误是，按照传统方式，将领们往往会佩戴大量装饰，这使得他们在战场上容易被敌人识别。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Going back to the Aztec-Incas, one thing that's remarkable here is just how bad their strategy and tactics often were. For example, because Aztec military conflict was based around capturing victims for sacrifice, there are many cases where Cortez himself was laying on the ground and had been knocked off his horse. But instead of just killing him on the ground and guarding their advantage, the Aztecs were trying to seize him to go have some sacrifice water and this allowed him to get himself out of the thorny situations. Another huge mistake that would happen in these conflicts is that in the traditional way in which this military conflict would happen is that the general would be garnished and aplumbed with all of this extra, you know, decorations basically, which would make him easy to identify in a battlefield.
如果你的骑兵可以直接发现敌方将领的位置，那么你可以直接攻击并消灭他，整个敌军会溃散。这相当于破坏了他们的指挥系统。即便你有十万大军，只要指挥官被杀，其余的士兵就会逃散。另一个例子是库斯科之战。当时几百个西班牙士兵抵抗大规模的起义。如果起义军在晚上就持续发起攻击，而不仅仅是试图入侵，那西班牙士兵就无法得到休息，很快就会筋疲力尽。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And if you have cavalry that can just see, here's where the general is. Let's go get, go directly to him, kill him. The whole enemy force will rout. It just makes your entire chain of command. You might have a hundred thousand troops, but then your general dies and everybody else routes. Another example, the battle of Cusco. A couple hundred Spaniards defending against this huge rebellion. If the rebellion had just kept attacking at night, instead of only attacking to invade, the Spaniards would have never gotten a chance to rest and would have just, you know, been depleted pretty quickly.
但相反，他们让士兵在晚上休息，而不是利用他们的绝对人数在不同时间轮换攻击。我感到困惑的是，征服者面对的并不是一群热爱和平、对战争一无所知的嬉皮士。阿兹特克社会和印加社会都是围绕战争组织的。所有成年男性都接受过战士训练。可以说，它们就像是新世界的斯巴达，对吧？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But instead they would let them rest at night, wouldn't use their overwhelming numbers to do rotations that would attack at different times. Now, why I find this confusing is that it's not like the conquistadors arrived at the doorsteps of a bunch of peace loving hippies who didn't know anything about war. Aztec society, Inca society was organized around warfare. All adult males were trained to be warriors. It was the, it was basically like the Sparta of the new world, right?
那么，我们如何理解一个非常军事化的文化却缺乏进行即兴应变的战略能力呢？你看，科尔特斯（Cortez）在即兴应变，皮萨罗（Pizarro）也在进行大量的即兴应变。为什么他们无法做到同样的事情？其中有很多因素，其中之一就是文化和宗教方面的原因。他们的战争能带来地位的提升。战士们常因将俘虏带回特诺奇蒂特兰（Tenochtitlan）进行献祭而受到认可。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So how do we understand how a very military focused culture did not have the strategic wherewithal to do this improvisation that, you know, Cortez was doing improvisation. Pizarro was doing a bunch of improvisation. Why weren't they able to do the same thing? There are a lot of factors, one of which is that cultural, the religious aspect to it. The warfare was rewarded by increase in status. The warriors would be recognized for bringing captives back to Tenochtitlan for sacrifice.
在囚犯中甚至存在一种等级制度，比如四个托托纳克人相当于一个奇奇马克人，因为奇奇马克人是北方的一个较为野性的部落，他们比托托纳克人更加勇猛地战斗。从某种程度上来说，这与欧洲文化有一定的相似之处。在整个封建时代，活捉敌人而不是杀死他们有很大的优势，因为这样可以将他们赎回给家人，从而至少在经济上获利。从某种意义上说，阿兹特克人的做法可能更有道理，因为牺牲敌人意味着他将永远消失。而把敌人卖回给他的家人意味着他可能会卷土重来，你可能在未来的战场上再次遇到他。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
There was even like a hierarchy in terms of the prisoners, like that four Totonaks were worth one Chichimac, because the Chichimac were a wilder tribe to the north and fought more fiercely than the Totonaks did. To a degree, there's a certain overlap with European cultures. There was great advantage throughout the feudal era in taking your enemies alive, as opposed to killing them, because then you could ransom them back to their families and you can come out of that ahead in terms of at least financial gain. In a way, the Aztec model is, it makes more sense because sacrificing your enemy means you'll never see him again. Whereas selling your enemy back to his family means he's up for round two and you might face off against the same guy across a future battlefield.
即使是国王，比如在普瓦捷战役和帕维亚战役后的法国国王，也曾被俘获并遭受各种侮辱。因此，在某种程度上，这两者有些相似之处，但更全面地来看，你是对的。阿兹特克人确实更倾向于俘获对手，而不是杀死他们。在多次事件中，他们甚至曾将科尔特斯控制在他们的刀下，但因为急于将他带走而未能成功。他的同伴有时甚至愿意牺牲自己来营救他。这是他们战争方式的一部分，深深根植于他们的文化、信仰和整个民族的价值观。这种信念在我们讨论的框架内是很难被改变的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Even kings, the kings of France after the battles of Poitiers and Pavia were captured and then subject to various indignities. So to a degree, there was a certain level of overlap, but more holistically, you're right. Yes, the Aztecs did fight ideally to capture, not to kill. And there were multiple episodes when they did have Cortes himself under their knives, but were so desperate to haul him off. His compatriots, sometimes sacrificing themselves, were able to rescue him. So that was an aspect of their warfare ingrained in their culture, in their faith, in the religious expression of the values of an entire people. Difficult to tilt that within the framework that we're talking about.
如果我们正在与来自另一个星球的外星人作战，我会在这里请求大家放弃基督教，因为涉及的道德观念太多，而从其他信仰中可能获得更有效的战斗技能。然而，在有限的时间内不可能重新定位整个社会。以库斯科的情况为例，就像著名电影《斯巴达300勇士》。斯巴达人能够在温泉关抵挡住数量上的绝对劣势，因为那里非常狭窄。在库斯科，幸存的征服者退回到两座入口狭窄且防御严密的建筑中。库斯科的街道也非常狭窄，这意味着即使敌人人数众多，也只能通过这些狭窄的通道推进。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I'd be asking people here, if we're fighting aliens from another planet, to give up Christianity because there's too much invested in terms of its morality and more effective combat skills will be derived from following some other faith. It was not possible to reorient an entire society in that limited time frame to do that. The Cuzco situation, we could, to use a famous film example, the movie 300. The Spartans are able to hold the pass of Thermopylae because against overwhelming numbers, it's very, very narrow. Within Cuzco, the surviving conquistadors fell back to two heavily fortified buildings with narrow entrances. And the streets of Cuzco are quite narrow as well, which means that even those overwhelming numbers could only be channeled down through those narrow avenues.
这些攻击可以相对有效地被阻挡，即使是人数较少的征服者和越来越多的本地盟友也可以做到。他们用金属盔甲建立防御，能够挡住这样的攻势。而且，一旦压力减轻，他们就会在更广阔的广场和周围的乡村中放出他们的战马，寻找孤立的部队进行歼灭。这种策略对印加人来说是非常打击士气的。最初，印加人是处于优势的，对吗？他们在曼科的号召下振作起来，打算彻底解决这些入侵者。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And those could be blocked relatively effectively, even by the small numbers of conquistadors and their increasing numbers of native allies, able to put in place with their metal armor blocking operations that could hold those kind of frameworks. Beyond that, when the pressure came off, then they would unleash their horses, largely through the wider plazas and then the surrounding countryside, looking for isolated detachments to take out. And this effect was demoralizing on the Inca. They initially had the advantage, right? They were rallied by Manco. We're going to deal with these barbarians once and for all.
但随着围困的挫折感持续不断，越来越多的人逃跑了，有些人在夜晚悄悄离开，要么是投靠敌方，要么是回家与家人团聚，对吧？要知道，这支军队规模庞大，各类人都有。许多士兵本身就是被征服的民族，对印加并没有忠诚可言。问题在于，他们需要回到家乡的农田上收割庄稼，以赶在冬天来临之前完成。事实上，无论是在前哥伦布时期的美洲，还是历史上大部分时间的欧洲，战争的性质都受制于一年一度的耕种和收割周期。因为你需要人在农田里耕作，如果他们不在的话，没有足够的粮食储备来度过冬天及翌年，日子会非常艰难。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But as the frustration of the siege drags on, there's more and more defections, men slipping away at night, either to switch sides or just go back to their homes and families, right? Again, this army is huge, very diverse. And many of those recruits are peoples who've been subjugated and have no institutional loyalty to the Inca. The bottom line is they need to get home to their farms to get the harvest before the winter. And the nature of warfare in the pre-Columbian America and in Europe, for much of its history, was driven by the annual cycle of planting and harvesting the crops. You need the men on their farms to do that, because if they're not there, then you face a very hard year coming up if you don't have enough crops set aside to get you through the winter and the following year.
因此，出于所有这些原因，尽管印加帝国拥有庞大的军队人数，他们却无法同时在战斗中充分利用这些优势。如果他们能在山间小道上截住整支正在行军的征服者军队，或许可以在那种环境下赢得一场阵地战。马匹无法在陡峭的山坡上冲锋。如果他们巧妙地用巨石和树木堵住两端，步兵也动弹不得。这样，你就能将敌军困住，这些优势将变得毫无用处。金属盔甲无法保护你免于从高处滚落的两吨重巨石的袭击。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So for all those reasons, the Inca, yes, with those huge numbers, weren't able to really overwhelmingly apply them at the same time. If they'd caught perhaps the entire conquistador army marching through one of those mountain passes, yes, they may have been able to win a set-piece battle in that environment. The horses can't charge up the steep slopes. Both ends, if they're blocked, cleverly with boulders and with trees, mean the infantry's not going anywhere either, you have them essentially pinned down, all the advantages would have been useless at that point. Metal armor won't protect you from a two-ton boulder rumbling from the heights right into your face.
如果他们能这样安排，在小范围内是可以实现的，但要像那样把所有征服者聚集在同一时间同一地点，是从未发生过的。是的，是的，是这样的。所以基本上是没有足够的时间来制定战略。再次说到那个令人震惊的短时间内的陡峭学习曲线，时间实在太短了。因此，回头来看，这些令人难以置信的战斗中，一方有数千人阵亡，而另一方却没有损失。但据我了解，这对于征服者们来说也是个意外。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
If they've been able to arrange that, on small scales they were, but to get the entire conquistadors in one place at one time like that, that never happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically it was not enough time to accumulate the strategy. Again, it's that shockingly short, steep learning curve. It just wasn't enough time. Yeah. So in retrospect, you have these outrageous battles with, you know, thousands of deaths on one side and zero deaths on the other side. But my understanding is this came as a surprise to the conquistadors as well.
于是，为什么有上百名男子愿意去挑战一个拥有一千万人口的帝国，并且说，"你们的任务是接管这个地方"呢？这就像是在18世纪的英国空降一百名海军陆战队员，然后对他们说，你们必须掌控议会一样。这些人怎么会愿意做这样的事情呢？这可以归结为经典的推拉因素。他们来自一个自豪的新国家——西班牙，而这个国家在1492年才统一。他们知道自己的历史充满斗争，包括统一半岛和完成"收复失地运动"。他们有着自豪的战士背景，但实际上并没有太多的成就可展示。尤其是极端那杜拉地区，这是很多征服者的故乡，那里的生活质量很低，土地贫瘠，农业生产力低下。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And so how were some hundred-odd men willing to go confront an empire of 10 million people and say, your job is to take this over? It would be sort of like dropping a hundred marines into 18th century England and being like, okay, you better come out the other end with control over parliament. How is this a thing that they were willing to do? The kind of classic push-pull factors, right? They came from a proud land, a new country, Spain, and we'd come together in 1492. And they were aware their history was one of struggle, uniting the peninsula and consummating the reconquistas. So they had a proud warrior background, but little to show for it, really. Again, the quality of life, particularly in Extremadura, which is the province in Spain where so many of these conquistadors originated from, was a land of hardship. It was small farms and dusty terrain and unproductive.
他们意识到自己生活在一个更广阔的世界中。这种心态在历史上许多男性中都很常见。他们为了摆脱耕地为生的命运，选择了一条风险极高、甚至可能致命，但也可能获得巨大回报的道路。数百年来，许多人为了这样的理想参军作战，参加各种军事行动，即使是在异国他乡。 一旦他们了解到外面有一个全新的大陆，即便是像我这样的普通人也有可能在那片土地上获得成功，我唯一拥有的资产就是我的战斗技能。 新大陆的吸引力便变得不可抗拒。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And they were aware of a wider world around them. And it's like so many men have throughout history. They see their only path forward as being anything more than dirt farmers is to seek a career of high risk and potential, even fatal outcomes, but possible great reward as well. Men have joined armies, militaries, fought in campaigns, not even there aren't, even other peoples for many centuries, millennia now, for that reason. And the attraction of the new world, once they're aware that out there is a whole new land where it's possible for even a small man like myself to become something, to become somebody, all I have as an asset is my fighting skills.
是的，我可以继续参加对抗摩尔人或土耳其人的战役，但这些都是高风险、低回报的行动。是的，我会在本土水域作战，但潜在的回报是什么？这些土耳其人也能打，对吧？我从大西洋的另一边得到的信息是，那边的风险要低得多，而且潜在的回报要高得多。这意味着要穿越浩瀚的海洋，要非常依靠自己，并与那些同样无情的人为伍。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And yeah, I could keep fighting in the campaigns against the Moors or against the Turks, but those are high risk, low return ventures. Yeah, I'll be fighting in my home waters, but what will the potential rewards be? These Turks can fight, right? The message I'm getting from the far side of the Atlantic is. The risks there are much lower and the potential rewards much higher. It means traveling across a vast ocean. It means essentially being very self-reliant and falling in with men who are just as cutthroat as I am.
这些士兵的士气中，宗教的重要性有多大？因为回过头来看，我们会想，他们能与庞大的军队对抗，但他们其实不知道他们要征服的帝国在哪里。他们不知道帝国的首都在哪儿，甚至从未见过这些地方。他们对需要处理的联盟关系一无所知，也不知道需要面对的军队规模，更不了解需要穿越的地形和地理环境。所以，我仍在尝试理解，他们是如何获得这种自信，靠你和几百个战友的力量，就敢去挑战一个庞大的帝国。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
How important is religion in the morale of these soldiers? Because in retrospect, we're like, okay, they were able to take on huge armies, but they didn't know, they didn't even know that there was an empire there to take over. They didn't know where its capital was. They'd never seen it before. They knew nothing about what are the alliances that they need to maneuver. What are the sizes of the armies we need to face? What is the basic terrain and geography that we need to navigate? And so I'm still trying to understand how they gained the confidence, you and your couple hundred buddies, to go and take on a huge empire.
我不太明白，他们是不是认为上帝会确保他们的安全呢？我该怎么理解呢？科尔特斯和皮萨罗在他们的远征中都带有宗教人士，为他们提供精神上的需求。回顾历史，科尔特斯和皮萨罗在他们的著作中对此大书特书。他们声称对阿兹特克人社会中至关重要的人祭习俗感到震惊。我没有理由怀疑他们的愤怒是假的，因为亲眼见到这样的事情确实会令人震惊。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I don't know, but do they just think God would make sure that they're okay? Yeah, how do I understand that? Cortes and Pizarro both had men of the cloth traveling with their expeditions to provide for their spiritual needs. And Cortes and Pizarro, in retrospect, would make a great deal of this in their writing. They were professed to be outraged, particularly by the Aztec cult of human sacrifice, which was integral to their society. I don't see any reason why that would be untrue. I mean, it would be shocking to actually see that happen.
科尔蒂斯和蒙特祖玛邀请他登上特诺奇提特兰两座巨大金字塔中的一座顶端。他注意到祭司们全身被黑色泥土或颜料覆盖。而内部地面都是洒落的血液，散发出令人恶心的气味。我认为他们肯定对这种情况感到震惊，并因此从拆除这些迷信民族的古老神像、将其转变为唯一真正的信仰中获得某种程度的正当性。通过这样做，你可以在多方面减轻内心的不安。在现实层面上，我在这里是为了获取我所能得到的东西，但我在履行上帝的旨意，因此当我在一天结束时需要承担责任时，我可以得到某种赦免。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And Cortes and Moctezuma invited him to the top of one of the two great pyramids in Tenochtitlan. He remarks the priests were adored from head to foot in black clay or body paint. And the interior was black with spilled blood and it stank a bomb. So I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be genuinely mortified by that. And they would take a certain degree of legitimacy from tearing down the ancient idols of these superstitious peoples and raising them up to the one true faith. You can solve your conscience in many ways by doing that. That in real terms, I'm here for what I can take, but I am performing the will of God and therefore I have some absolution when I'm called to account at the end of the day.
有时，人们会试图在很低级的追求中寻找更高的意义，这在那时正是如此。回到动机问题，最初的征服相对容易。加勒比地区的岛屿居民，包括现在称为波多黎各和伊斯帕尼奥拉、古巴，这些地方的人们在技术层面上处于较低的水平，也没有统一的组织或强大的军事力量。而且，在岛屿上，他们无处可逃。虽然可以逃到古巴的山区，但最终他们仍会被追捕。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So men will sometimes seek to find a higher purpose in what are very low endeavors, which is what was playing out at that time. Again, coming to the motivation, the initial conquests were relatively easy. The island populations in the Caribbean, what we now call Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, Cuba, the peoples there were quite low on the tech tree, were not unified, did not have a significant military presence. And of course, on islands, there's nowhere for them to run. You could run into the mountains of Cuba, but eventually they would all be hunted down.
当时他们觉得这里的收获非常容易。而他们充满热情的态度是，为什么在大陆上会有不同呢？当然，他们确实遇到了激烈的战斗。一些曾与土耳其交战的老兵在事后表示，这是他们经历过的最艰苦的战斗之一。但到了那时，他们也看到了潜在的回报要高得多。当他们到达提什科科湖时，他们惊叹不已，仿佛刚刚到达传说中的亚特兰蒂斯。在这个湖泊周围的城市中，到处都有城市分布，最庞大的城市仿佛漂浮在水上，就像威尼斯一样，但更具戏剧性，拥有高耸的神庙。这一切让他们感到震撼，同时也激起了他们的贪婪。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So the feeling was the pickings here are pretty easy. And the enthusiastic attitude was, well, why would it be any different in the mainland? Of course, they did run up against heavy fighting. And some of them would say afterwards, the veterans of wars against the Turks. This was some of the hardest fighting I've ever been through. But by that point, they'd seen that the potential rewards are much higher as well. When they arrived at Lake Tishkoko, they would marvel as if we'd have just arrived in Atlantis, right? To be in this place on this lake with these cities arranged around its edges and the biggest city of all appeared to be floating on the water like Venice, except even more dramatic with its high temples. And to them, this both awed them and inflamed that greed that they had.
科尔特斯本人也向莫克特苏玛的使者承认了这一点。他说：“我和我的人有一种心病，只有黄金才能治愈。”于是，莫克特苏玛送给他羽毛头饰和所有传统的徽章。他还送给他玉石和黑曜石，这在阿兹特克世界中是极为珍贵的象征。科尔特斯很高兴地戴上了羽毛头饰，并把它寄回给国王。但他真正的目的是什么呢？就是那些小小的金饰品。当西班牙人捡起这些黄金时，当地人会谈论他们好像猴子一样叽叽喳喳，对黄金着迷。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And Cortes himself admitted as much to Moctezuma's envoys. He said, "My men and I suffer from a disease of the heart that only gold can cure." So Moctezuma sent him feathered headdresses and all the traditional regalia. He sent him jade and obsidian, which in the Aztec world would have been symbols of great regard. And Cortes was happy to put on the headdress and he sent it back to the king. But the little trinkets of gold that he was getting, right? That was the real end purpose. And the local peoples would talk about how the Spanish were chattering like monkeys as they were picking up these gold and were fascinated by it.
好的。顺便说一下，伯纳尔·迪亚兹是科尔特斯探险队的一员，并记录了后来发生的事情。他在他的记录中基本上提到，我们经过的每一个城镇，甚至是帝国外围的小村庄，几乎每座庙宇和城市都留有大量的人祭遗骸。这是这个社会的一个普遍现象，西班牙人可能对此感到震惊。而且，很难用任何形式的人道主义动机来解释西班牙人的行为。他们表现出极大的意愿，甚至可能比其他任何欧洲征服者更糟糕，西班牙人在新大陆大规模屠杀了大量无辜的妇女和儿童。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Yeah. And by the way, Bernal Diaz, who was on this Cortes' expedition and wrote a first-hand account of what happened afterwards, he basically says in his account that basically in every single town we come across, even in small outlying villages on the empire, every temple, every city just has tons of human sacrifice remains left over. So this is just an endemic part of the society that I guess must have horrified the Spanish. I mean, it's hard to square any sort of humanitarian, even plausible motivation to the Spanish. They were just very willing. And I think maybe even worse than almost any other European conquest ever, the Spanish in the new world just massacre huge swaths of innocent women and children.
就像真正意义上的种族灭绝，不仅仅是因为疾病，而是故意的种族灭绝。对，确实有大量的强奸和侵犯事件发生。所以，这并不是在解放这些人，让他们摆脱压迫的枷锁。至少，没有任何一个合理的说法可以解释这就是他们在做的事情。有些人可能会辩称，从长远来看，这对这些人是有益的。但是，正如你所说，短期内的情况却无可争议，他们带来了巨大的猎犬，仅仅为了娱乐而将男人和女人扔给狗，看着他们被撕裂。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Like the literal genocide, intentional genocide, not just disease. Yeah. Crazy amounts of rape and assault. So there wasn't a sense of like, we're freeing these people from the shackles of oppression. Or at least there's no plausible story you could tell where that's what you're doing. They would argue in the long term, it's in these people's interests. But of course, in the short term, as you say, the accounts are unambiguous about this, throwing men and women to those huge hunting dogs that they brought with them for sport, to watch them being torn apart.
他们可以为中美洲的这种牺牲文化找到合理理由，因为这种文化已经深入这些人的思维中，这是地方性的。一场接一场的牺牲活动会按照某些特别的危机、重大行动或类似事件而达到高潮。有一些记载，尽管这些记载可能被扭曲了，但它们描述了几乎工业化水平的人祭仪式。被囚灭口的话，从金字塔建筑群一直延伸到堤道上。一个接一个，他们被带上金字塔的顶端，进入庙宇。四位祭司，每人负责一只手臂或腿。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They could rationalize that in Mesoamerica in reference to that cult of sacrifice, which was endemic, ingrained into the the mentalities of those people. There was a regular cycle of sacrifice and that would peak according to particular crises, major campaigns, or the like. There are accounts, again, these are distorted accounts, but an almost industrial level of human sacrifice that the parade of prisoners who've been drugged to keep them pacified, stretched from the pyramid complex all the way through to the causeways. One after the other, they'd be worn up to the top of the pyramids, to the temple complex. Four priests, each would take an arm and a leg.
好吧，第五个人会使用黑曜石刀片开一个切口，然后取出心脏，把它献给神灵。我去过那些金字塔，它们是可以走进去的。通往顶端的台阶非常狭窄，你几乎必须侧身走上去，这是故意设计的。因为在心脏被取出并烧掉后，身体会被从另一侧滚下去，而台阶如此陡峭，就是为了让身体能一直滚到最底部。然后，那位俘获了敌人的战士会把尸体带回家食用。这是他作为战士胜利的终极体现，是他在字面上将打败的敌人内化。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Well, a fifth one would use an obsidian blade to open an incision and pull out the heart, which we offer to the gods. I've been to those pyramids, the ones that you to walk in. The steps leading up are very, very narrow. You almost have to walk up sideways, deliberately so, because when the heart had been taken out and burned, the body would be tumbled off the far side and the steps were so steep to allow it to tumble all the way to the bottom. And then the warrior who'd taken that prisoner would then take the flesh home to be consumed. It was the consummation of his victory as a warrior to take on, literally, internalize the defeated enemy.
所以，就像你所说的，这是一个世界不需要的循环。我不会为此找任何借口。但是，那些参与者的动机并不是无私的。充其量，这只是一种有利的副作用，是对殖民过程甚至实际种族灭绝的遮掩。而在南美，这种行为更没有正当性，因为那里根本没有这样的传统。印加人偶尔会将一位少女献祭，带到高山上进行麻醉，如今仍能找到这些少女的木乃伊遗体。但这非常罕见且特定，并没有大规模人祭的根深蒂固的文化。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So this was, as you say, it's a cycle that the world is better off without. I'm not going to make any excuses for it. But the motivations of those who did that, that was not selfless. It was, at best, a beneficial side effect, window dressing on the process of colonization and even literal genocide. And it had even less validation in South America because there was no such tradition at all. The Inca would very occasionally take a virgin sacrifice into the high mountains where she'd be drugged and you can still find the mummified corpses of these girls. But that was very rare and very specific. There was no ingrained culture of mass human sacrifice at all.
好的，这里有一个让我觉得很有趣的问题：为什么西班牙人能利用不同原住民部落之间的分歧来达到他们的目的，但原住民却不能以同样的方式利用西班牙人之间的分歧呢？我们知道，西班牙人之间其实也有很大的分歧，对吗？比如，有一支更大的部队被派去逮捕科尔特斯。同样，我们虽然没有详细说过，但在皮萨罗的探险中，他的副手阿尔马格罗也非常不满，因为皮萨罗获取了几乎所有的战利品。阿尔马格罗回去后，在曼科·印加围攻库斯科之后再次围攻并占领了库斯科。因此，在这些探险中，多次出现西班牙人内部互相对抗的情况，但他们却仍能征服规模更大的帝国。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Okay. Here's a question I find very interesting. Why is it that the Spaniards are able to weaponize the divisions between the different native forces to their own advantage? But the natives are not able to do the same with the Spaniards. So we know that there are significant divisions among the Spaniards, right? Literally, there's a whole much larger force that is sent over to arrest Cortez. Similarly, we didn't get into this much, but in Pizarro's expedition, his second-in-command, Almagro, is pissed off that basically Pizarro is getting all the spoils. He comes back, lays siege to Cusco after Manco Inca has laid siege to Cusco and captures it. And so they were literally fighting, you know, in multiple cases in both these expeditions. The Spanish are fighting each other while they're taking over a much larger empire.
为什么曼科·印加或蒙特苏马不能利用这些分歧来巩固自己的权力？这是个好问题。关键的不同在于，这些冲突发生在西班牙征服者的内部，他们都属于同一个体系，都是卡斯蒂利亚人，都是西班牙人，大多数人有着共同的背景。他们之间的对抗主要是个人之间的竞争。如果出现一种生存危机迫使他们互相对抗，我认为这将是不可能的，因为在面对共同威胁时，他们会团结起来，共同应对。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And why is it that the Manco Inca or Moctezuma are not able to use these divisions to their own advantage to stay in power? That's a good question. The critical difference is this is happening for the conquistadors within the Spanish orbit. They're all Castilians, they're all Spaniards, shared common backgrounds for most of them. And their confrontations were personal rivalries within their system. If confronted by an existential crisis to pit them against each other, I think that would have failed because their bottom line was, they would have united if they felt there was a common cause against them that would have forced them to do that.
对于当地人来说，这些差异涉及整个社会的外部和内部因素。奎特拉瓦克在拉诺切特里斯特（悲惨之夜）期间击退西班牙人后，继任了他的兄长蒙特祖马二世的位置。他派遣使者前往特拉斯卡拉人和塔拉斯卡人，希望建立一个扩大的或全新的三方联盟，以团结具有共同利益的原住民共同对抗外来者。特拉斯卡拉的年轻一代对此进行了思考，但多年来一直与阿兹特克人作战、将其视为最终生存威胁的老一辈人却拒绝了这一可能性。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Whereas for the local peoples, these are differences between entire societies, both the external and internal factors here. Kuitlahuek, who succeeded his brother, Moctezuma II, after driving the Spaniards out during La Noche Triste, he sent emissaries to the Lascalans, to the Tarascans to build an expanded or new triple alliance, to come together as native people with a common interest against these outsiders. And the Lascalan younger generation thought about it, but the old men who still retained power, who had been fighting against the Aztecs for decades and saw them as, in the end, the existential threat, repudiated this possibility.
塔拉斯坎人不想与阿兹特克人有任何关系。我们是敌人，一直以来都是如此，将来也会是。这个问题是你们自己的，也许你们会被打败，对我们来说没有损失。因此，他们无法克服那些在历史上根深蒂固的敌对情绪。土著人唯一能做的办法是在不同的欧洲势力之间周旋，这一点在后来确实发生过。但是，阿兹特克人和印加人的问题是，他们面对的唯一外国势力是西班牙人，他们是唯一的外来者。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the Tarascans wanted nothing to do with the Aztecs. No, we are enemies and always have been and always will be. This is your problem, and maybe you'll get taken out, no loss to us. So they couldn't overcome the kind of institutional hostilities, which go way, way back through their history. The only way that the indigenous people could have played the same game, and to a degree this did happen later, was to play different European powers off against each other. But of course, the problem for the Aztecs, for the Inca, was the Spanish were the only game in town. They were the only outsiders they'd encountered.
如果在新大陆殖民的早期阶段，英国人、法国人、荷兰人甚至奥斯曼帝国都参与其中，当地人可能就会意识到这些是不同的文化，并利用它们之间的对立来获得自己的利益。这本可能是他们当时的策略，但在那个时期这样的情况并不存在。现在，我们应该谈谈关于其他殖民事件的情况，我知道你对于发生在这些事件中的一些情况进行了思考。比如在印度，我们确实有很多不同的欧洲殖民势力。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
If the English, French, Dutch, even the Ottomans, had been players in new world colonization at that very early stage, it may have been possible for local peoples to identify, okay, these are different cultures. We can play them off against each other to our advantage. That may have been the game, but at that time, it wasn't possible. Now, we should talk about the, I know you spent a little bit of time thinking about the, what happened in all these other episodes of colonialism as well. In India, for example, we do have many different European powers.
为什么莫卧儿王朝无法一直通过让其他势力互相制衡而保持对印度的控制呢？莫卧儿帝国在奥朗则布统治下于18世纪初达到鼎盛时期。然而，他的继任者缺乏某种力量，可能是权威、魅力或其他你想定义的特质，无法维持他几乎接管全印度所建立的霸权。莫卧儿王朝的根本问题与满族在17世纪征服明朝并建立清朝时遇到的问题相似。尽管清朝的版图达到历史最大，但他们始终被视为外来者。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And why was it not possible for the Mughals to play them off each other indefinitely, to keep control over India? The Mughal, I mean, it peaked under Orang Jeb at the beginning of the 18th century. Subsequently, his successes didn't have whatever you call it, the authority, the charisma, the riz, whatever you want to define it, to maintain that hegemony, which he'd established by almost taking over all of India. And the Mughals was at root, had the same problem that the Manchu did when they conquered the Ming in the 17th century. And they built the Qing dynasty, China, the greatest physical extent I ever had, but they were always outsiders.
他们不是当地土著。在背景中，总有一种模糊的怨恨，那就是他们被外国人统治着。这种情况在他们不断取得成功时还算可以，但当势头停滞，开始倒退时，当地权力经纪人就开始思考：“也许脱离帝国比继续留在其中更有利。” 因此，无论是莫卧儿的印度还是满清的中国，都是在这种权力的最终基础上暗藏着这样的致命缺陷。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They were not indigenous to the population. In the background, there was always that vague resentment that were being ruled here by foreigners. And that was okay while they were going from success to success, but when the momentum halts and it begins to roll backwards, that's when the local power brokers begin to feel to themselves, "Maybe we have more to gain from breaking away from the empire than we do from remaining within it." So both Mughal India and Manchu China had that kind of fatal defect, as it were, coded into the ultimate basis for their authority.
即使没有欧洲人的介入，我认为莫卧儿帝国也会达到顶峰并最终瓦解。接下来发生的事情可能更像是一块拼布，由不同的政权组成，有些较大，有些较小。我认为马拉塔联盟会成为一个重要的势力，但也无法将整个次大陆纳入其统治范围。当然，我们可以看看中国历史，总是一个循环：一个朝代的兴起达到顶峰，然后衰退进入混乱，接着一个新的帝国霸主在该地区崛起。我认为，无论欧洲人是否干预，这种循环都会继续存在。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So even without the Europeans, I think the Mughal Empire would have peaked and it would have disintegrated. Now, what would have happened next would be more like a patchwork quilt of different authorities, some larger, some smaller. The Maratha Confederacy, I think, would have been a major player, but not one that could incorporate the entire subcontinent within its authority. And of course, we look at Chinese history. It's the constant cycle of the rise of a dynasty, its peak, its decline into anarchy, and then the rise of a new imperial hegemon in the region. So that cycle would play out, I think, regardless of whether the Europeans intervened.
具体来说，关于为什么英国最终占据主导地位，简单来说，皇家海军统治了海洋。在实力投射方面，英国人能够将法国人赶出加拿大和印度，是因为他们掌控了海上航道。尽管法国在人口和军事实力方面规模更大，但如果无法投射这些力量，它们实际上对你没有什么用处。这一点非常有趣，因为这解释了为何英国能成为印度的主要势力之一。在那里，有马拉塔人，还有莫卧儿帝国的残存势力，以及许多其他派系，而英国就在这个地方建立了一个据点。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Specifically in terms of why the British took over at the end, well, in the bluntest terms, the Royal Navy rules the waves. And in terms of projecting power, the Brits were able to force the French out of Canada and out of India, because they controlled the sea lanes. And although the French had, in terms of population and military, a larger force, if you can't project that force, it's really of no value to you. So this is very interesting, because it makes sense why the British could have been one of the major powers in India, where, you know, there's the Marathas, there's the remainders of the Mughal Empire, there's many other factions, and then there's this British outpost.
他们已经摆脱了法国人，你知道的，英国人已经拿下了孟加拉。为什么他们能够实现整合，而其他人却做不到？我认为这里有一个假设，即我们经常谈论技术上的优势，但我们并不谈论治理或组织上的优势。东印度公司就像一个公司。它有一个董事会，可以任免首席执行官和高级官员等等。当然，他们当时不会被称作首席执行官。所以当时领导东印度公司的未必是最有能力的人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They've gotten rid of the French, you know, the British have got Bengal. Why is it that they were able to consolidate, where nobody else is able to consolidate? And I think one hypothesis here is that we often talk about advantages in technology, but we don't talk about advantages in sort of governance or in terms of organization. And the Eastern Eternity Company was like a company. It had a board that could fire and hire CEOs and lieutenants and whatever. It wasn't called a CEO, obviously. And so it wasn't necessarily like the most competent people who were in charge of the Eastern Eternity Company.
他们看起来是非常能干的人，罗伯特·克莱夫和他的下属们。例如，在英国人准备控制孟加拉之前，我们可以看到孟加拉的纳瓦布的例子。奥利佛·迪·汗被认为是一个相当不错的统治者，他能够抵挡住英国的进攻。但是他去世后，继位的王子却是一个非常疯狂和不可理喻的人，不听从建议等等。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They were like pretty competent people, Robert Clive and his underlings. And you would have instances in, for example, I think the Navab of Bengal, right before the British are able to gain control of Bengal, which is the initial attack space that they set up in order to further their conquest, Oliver Di Khan is considered to be a pretty good ruler who was able to hold the British at bay and stuff. And then he dies and his prince is this kind of crazy psychopathic guy who doesn't listen to advice and so forth.
在印度的各个邦国中，由于有君主制的传统，迟早会出现一个糟糕的国王。而这个国王将无法阻止英国的入侵。此外，在这些邦国周围还有许多势力在考虑：我们应该把钱借给谁？我们应该把军队借给谁？他们意识到目前的国王不太行，而英国人似乎相当能干，于是就决定与英国结盟。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So because there's this monarchical tradition across all these principalities in India, there's just going to be, sooner or later, a bad king. And that king cannot stop, will not be able to stop the British incursion. They might even, there's also all these forces around these principalities where like, who are we going to lend money to? Who are we going to like lend our troops to? And they realize there's a bad king right now. The British seem pretty competent. I'm going to make an alliance with the British instead.
类似地，尤其是在阿西克斯的情况下，英国使用的军队中绝大多数都是印度人，叫做“锡兵”。我认为，这体现了一个很被低估的能力，就是能够把任务分配给有能力的人，并在他们受伤、辞职或其他情况下迅速替换他们。这种做法避免了因接班问题而出现的动荡或者混乱，从而防止其他势力趁机夺取控制权。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And similarly, with the case of the Asics, maybe even more so, the overwhelming majority of the troops, forces that the British are using are Indians, right? Seapoys. So I think this is an underrated thing of just being able to delegate competent people and then being able to replace them one after another if they get killed or if they resign or something. There's not going to be some crazy succession crisis that creates this anarchy that then somebody else can swoop in and take control. Absolutely.
举个例子，在百年战争中，英国曾经占据优势，因为法国国王查理六世精神失常。他甚至认为自己是由玻璃做成的。然而，后来英格兰在百年战争中失败，因为他们的国王亨利六世也精神失常。他常常几个月无法正常处理政务。在非民主环境中，正如你所说，企业因为追求利益，因此不忠于血统或其他外在因素，而是寻求最能干的领导和灵活的人事更替机制，比那些等级森严的国家更具灵活性。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Just to give one example, the British were winning the Hundred Years' War because the King of France, Charles VI, was insane. He was convinced he was made out of glass, for example. And then the English lost the Hundred Years' War because their king, Henry VI, was insane. And he would just shut down months at a time. Mentally, he just couldn't function. In non-democratic environments, yes, the corporations, for the reasons you outlined, profit-driven and therefore not loyal to bloodlines or any other kind of extraneous circumstances, but just looking for the most competent leadership and a capacity to exchange and replace people, are much more flexible than those kind of hierarchical states.
即使在许多方面，你可以说在民主社会中，公司仍然能够占上风，因为它们不受特定忠诚度的约束。它们只是努力推动品牌意识。英国和荷兰在帝国主义的游戏中起步较晚。考虑到各种差异，你可能不会给他们太多机会，但他们释放了自由市场的力量。比如你提到的东印度公司、英荷公司的等同体、英国哈德逊湾公司，这些实际上塑造了我们今天所理解的加拿大。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Even in many ways, you could argue in democratic societies, the corporations can still outmaneuver them because they're untied to particular loyalties. And it's just that brand awareness that they're trying to push. The British and Dutch were late to the game of imperialism. And you wouldn't give them much a chance given the differentials, but they unleashed the power of the free market. As you say, the East India Company, the English and Dutch equivalents, the British Hudson's Bay Company, which is really what made Canada as we understand it today.
那些公司受这些动机驱使，在遥远的地方几乎拥有全权，能够灵活地利用当地情况，插手于那些已持续了几个世纪并累计了各种怨恨的外交安排。这里，我们是新的闯入者。很明显，我们在自己的领域拥有技能。正如你所说，有效控制了孟加拉的税收，就相当于掌控了整个政治局面。在没有税收的情况下你能做什么呢？可以重新将其导向股东，迫使当地人停止种植这些作物，即便这意味着数百万人将会饿死，以便生产鸦片从中获利。这带来了毁灭性的影响，而那些政治结构中根本没有环境来容纳这种不符合他们传统的做法。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Those corporations, driven by those motives, acting with almost plenipotentiary powers at vast distances, had the flexibility on the ground to take advantage of local circumstances to insert themselves into diplomatic arrangements which have persisted for centuries with all the accumulated grievances. Here, we're the fresh newcomers. We have obviously skills of what we do. As you say, taking control of the tax revenue of Bengal effectively took control of the entire political orbit. What can you do without taxation? Reorient that towards the shareholders, force the local people to stop producing these crops, even if it means millions starved to death, in order to produce opium to take advantage of that. It was devastating and its impact in political structures that had no real environment where that was part of their established traditions.
即使是征服者，甚至维京人，如果我们追溯到足够远的过去，他们的行动也是商业运作。维京人会聚集起手头的武器，筹集足够的资金来支付造船费用，以便进行劫掠，从掠夺教堂和修道院中获取利润。征服者的情况也是如此。他们是在资本主义体系中运作的自由掠夺者。这些人并不是社会底层的亡命之徒，其中许多人受过一些教育。不少人是西班牙卡斯蒂利亚的“伊达尔戈”，这是属于小贵族最低层的一种身份，他们继承了头衔和态度，但除了能作为雇佣兵所获得的资产外，并没有太多财产。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And even the conquistadors, even the Vikings, if we go back far enough, these were business operations. The Vikings would be men who would assemble with what weapons they had, enough capital up front to pay for boats, to go raiding, to make this profitable by looting churches and monasteries. That's what the conquistadors were. They were freebooters operating within a capitalist system. These were not desperados of the lowest of the low. Many of them had some education. A lot of them were hidalgos, which is the lowest rung of the petty nobility in Castile, who inherited titles and attitudes, but not much assets beyond what they could put up as soldiers of fortunes.
他们称自己为“同伴”（campaneros），意思是同事或伙伴，而不是士兵。所以，你可以说，这整个行动是最原始、最不受约束的资本主义的最佳体现，通过整合资产来从非常冒险的活动中获取巨额利润。或许可以总结一下，我觉得这个故事中非常值得注意的一点是，我们讨论过这些战斗非常不均衡，这场征服进行得非常迅速。总的来说，征服者在技术上的优势并没有那么显著对吧？正如你提到的，当时的火枪还不够好，无法真正对战斗产生实质性帮助。所以，基本的优势在于战马和钢制武器。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And they call themselves campaneros, which is colleagues or companions, not soldados. So this whole operation was, if you like, the most raw, unbridled capitalism at its finest, pooling assets to derive enormous profits from very risky ventures. Maybe to close this off, the thing I find very remarkable in this story is we've talked about how lopsided these battles have been, how quickly this conquest proceeded. In the grand scheme of things, the technological advantages that the conquistadors had over these empires are not that shockingly big, right? As you mentioned, guns at this time are not good enough to actually be that helpful during battle. So it's basically horses and it's steel weapons.
实际上，我觉得，我不确定我们有没有讨论过这个，但在这些征服的后期或者中期，金属装备开始成为累赘，因为很重，而且天气炎热。所以他们甚至开始改用当地人使用的棉甲。因此，决定胜负的甚至不是盔甲，而是他们拥有更好的金属剑，而不是黑曜石刀片，以及他们拥有马匹。仅凭这些就足以让几百人征服整个帝国。这种情形让人联想到未来可能发生的事情，但我们不必深入探讨。我只是觉得很惊讶，他们凭借如此微小的优势便能如此具有压倒性。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In fact, I think, I don't know if we've talked about this, but towards the ends of these conquests or the middles of these conquests, the metal is weighing them down and it's really hot and stuff. So they're even like receding to the cotton armor that the natives are using. So it's not even the armor. It's really just that they had better, like, you know, metal swords instead of obsidian blades and that they had horses. And that's enough to let a couple hundred men take over entire empires. You know, you can draw analogies to what might happen in the future. We don't even have to go there. I just find it sort of remarkable that, yeah, how little it took for them to be so dominant.
他们能够赢得一些战斗，但如果没有那些土著盟友的支持，他们最终是不可能赢得战争的。是的，这是因为土著盟友的数量非常庞大。你说得对，他们总是戴着头盔来保护头部，但许多人放弃了金属盔甲，改用当地的装备，因为这足以抵御当地的武器。在这里，他们适应环境，得到了更多的行动自由。相较于穿金属盔甲，穿棉制服装显然要轻松得多，不那么累人。不过，他们不会把这些装备带回欧洲，因为那会让他们太过脆弱。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They could win battles. They could not have won the war, though, at the end without the support of those indigenous allies. So those overwhelming numbers. Yes, you're actually right. They would always keep the helmets to protect the head, but many of them were ditching the metal armor in favor of the local stuff because that was good enough as protection against local weapons. They would not have done that and carried it back to Europe. That would have made them too vulnerable. But here, you adapt to the circumstances. You have more freedom of mobility. It's less exhausting wearing cotton than it is to wear metal.
所以他们会进行这种调整。有时候，甚至对于非常珍贵的盟友，为了将他们整合进西班牙的同盟中，他们会提供西班牙武器给这些地方酋长和军阀，以此来强调你对我有多么重要。这种做法在把他们团结在一起方面非常有效。他们非常聪明，能够识别那些在阿兹特克权力层之下的地方小酋长，这些人对这样的想法比较有接受度：为什么你要听他们的命令，而不是从我们这儿获得更好的利益？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So they would make that adaptation. They would, even sometimes for very prized allies, again, as a way of integrating them into the Spanish coalition, is provide them like local chiefs and warlords with Spanish weapons, just to emphasize that you're so special to me. And this was effective in binding them together. And they were very, very clever in identifying the local sub chiefs beneath the Aztec layer of authority who would be receptive to the idea of why are you taking orders from them when you get a better deal from us?
他们知道，例如，阿兹特克帝国被称为三方联盟，是因为1428年第一位 Shuei Latwani 建立了由三个城邦—特诺奇提特兰、特斯科科和特库巴组成的联盟。在1516年，大约在科尔特斯到达中美洲的两三年前，特斯科科的首领或国王去世。他的两个儿子为继承权展开了内战。蒙特苏马介入并将头衔授予其中一个儿子。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They knew, for example, the Aztec Empire was called the Triple Alliance because it was set up in 1428 by the first Shuei Latwani as a coalition between the three city-states, Tenochtitlan, Tishcoco, and Tecuba. In 1516, so like two years, three years before Cortes arrived in Mesoamerica, the chief or king of Tishcoco died. And his two sons fought a civil war for who would succeed him. Moctezuma stepped in and gave the title to one of those brothers.
当西班牙人到来时，另一个兄弟干了什么呢？他立刻站到西班牙人那边，以此来对付自己的家人。实际上，他的家人站在这场战争的两边。他选择的道路就是通过这种方式来得到他认为自己应得的，成为特斯科科的国王。从更广泛的角度来看，如果我是臣服于西班牙人而不是阿兹特克人，也许这些新来者会给我一个更好的待遇。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So what does the other brother do when the Spanish show up? He immediately sides with them to get within his own family. His own family was on both sides of this war. This is his path to getting what he feels is his due, being the king of Tishcoco. And in the broader sense, if I'm under the Spanish versus under the Aztecs, maybe these newcomers will give me a better deal.
在精英层面上存在一种诱人的特质。然而，他们没有意识到的是，他们中的许多人以为自己可以利用西班牙人来获取好处。他们没有预料到西班牙人以及后来其他欧洲人会以如此庞大的数量来到。他们封闭的世界观让他们无法想象来自如此遥远地方的人会以这样的大规模来临。最终，正如在澳大利亚和新西兰所发生的那样，我们会在自己的国家里成为少数群体。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So there was that seductive quality at the elite level. Now, what they didn't understand was so many of them thinking they were using the Spanish to their advantage. They didn't appreciate the numbers in which the Spanish and later Europeans would arrive, right? Their closed worlds didn't allow them to think about people from such vast distances could come in such huge numbers. And in the end, as happened in, for example, Australia and New Zealand, that we'll become the minority in our own country.
他们没有意识到在人口趋势上，长期来看，形势会从根本上对他们不利。嗯，好吧，将这个情况类比于人工智能，这样的相似之处太明显了，不需要再多说。不过，我觉得这确实是一个很好的总结。这段人类历史是如此离奇、震惊且引人入胜。我很感谢你能来和我们分享这一切。非常高兴能与你交流，谢谢邀请我。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The demographic tide they didn't appreciate in the long term would work fundamentally against them. Yeah. Okay. So the analogy to AI there is so obvious it's not worth spelling out. But I think that's actually an excellent place to close. This is such a bizarre, shocking and interesting part of human history. And I appreciate you coming on and telling us all about it. Real pleasure. Thank you for having me.