Thank you for downloading this episode of a History of the World in 100 Objects from BBC Radio 4.
Some of you listening might just have recognized those plaintive moans as the humming of a llama.
It's the sound that around 500 years ago accompanied the building of an empire.
The empire of the Inca, bigger than Ottoman Turkey, bigger than Ming China, in fact, the largest in the world.
Around 1500, the Inca Empire ran for over 3,000 miles down the Andes
and ruled over 12 million people from the Pacific coast to the Amazonian jungle.
In 1532, the Spanish would come and everything would collapse.
But until then, the Inca Empire flourished.
It didn't have writing, but it was an efficient military society,
an ordered, productive and wealthy civilization centered on Cusco in Peru.
Its economy was driven by manpower and, just as important, llama power.
It's the biggest empire of the week, but it's represented by the smallest object,
a llama that sits in my hand, a tiny gold messenger from a mountain-top world.
I've seen llamas carrying packs in the Andes at elevations of up to 16,000 feet.
The other domestic animal of the Andes, the guinea pig, weighs about 2 pounds
and so you can't go very far with a guinea pig carrying your suitcase.
A history of the world in 100 objects.
Inca gold llama, a small statue from Peru made between 1400 and 1550.
This week's objects take us to empires all over the globe around 500 or 600 years ago.
As the Ming Dynasty was reordering China and the Ottomans conquering eastern Europe,