In the first of this two-part series, Dr William Sullivan examines why Andean civilisation could possibly have been conquered as a result of this battle and why a clash of cultural beliefs could have caused the downfall of the largest nation state to have ever existed in the western hemisphere. In one of the strangest events in all recorded history, Spaniards after adventure, fortune and power, to their own amazement seized this seemingly infallible empire. What the Spaniards never knew, however, and what history does not record, was that the Andean people had been aware of the imminence of this event for some 100 years through a complex and systematic charting of the stars.