The Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1532, lead by Francisco Pizarro - 182 men, mainly independent freebooters and mercenaries, motivated by the greed for gold and carrying out their invasion in the name of God and the Crown.

They set about ripping out the golden heart of the Inca monuments described in part by conquistador and historian Ciezo de Leon: "In of the one of the houses, which was the richest, there was the figure of the sun, very large and made of Gold, very expensively worked and enriched with many precious stones. They also had a garden, the clods of which were made of pieces of fine gold, and it was artificially sown with golden maize, the stalks as well as the leaves and cobs, being of that metal"

The Spanish famously kidnapped the Inca Atuhualpa and ransomed him, not surprisingly for gold - the Inca brought gold from across the empire, including Prince Choqe Auki. En route, he heard that Pizarro hadn't kept to his end of the bargain and had strangled Atuhualpa. Legend has it he hot-footed it through Calca, Lores, Choque, and Kancho Lago with 200,000 llamas with gold and Inca treasures. The Spanish went after him but never found him, nor his gold. Whether this is true or based on legend, we don't know. What we do know is that the Spanish stole so much gold that it altered the whole European economic system.