MAN'S STATUS WAS SHOWN BY WHAT HE WORE.

After the establishment of the Inca rule, a great society that developed in the Andes Mountains of South America. The Inca territory stretched almost the length of the Andes Mountain Range, from North to South, more that 2,500 miles wrapping the Andes Highlands, and from the Pacific Ocean in the West to the Amazon River Basin in the East, wrapping the coastal deserts, and the jungle lands.
To manage and communicate across their vast distance and challenging ground, the Inca leaders came to rely on a system of roads. They built 2 main routes, the coastal and the inland road, which was called the Royal Road. Smaller roads connected them. It was as impressive as that of ancient Rome, but built at such unbelievable height on a very challenging ground. About 15,000 miles of road linked all corners of the empire. The roads crossed tropical jungles, high mountains, and raging rivers.
Inca leaders used the roads to travel throughout the empire. Shelters were placed every 15 to 30 miles to give travelers places to rest. The symbolic way in which they were designed represented the journey of the soul after it left the body.
The roads allowed the emperor at Cuzco to communicate with the leaders in distant places. The Incas sent messages by an elaborate relay system, using runners called 'chasquis.' A 'chasqui' was a selected type of human being, trained to carry the message in two different ways, one was using a special set of strings called 'quipu' where knots were tied at different levels strings of different colors, the other was to memorize words that helped to complete the information carried in the 'quipu.' Messenger stations were built every couple of miles along the main roads. Messengers went from one station to the next and they were able to travel more than 250 miles a day. Its effectivity was superb. Incas did not use written language.
The center of the Inca power was wrapped in the capital city of Cuzco, located in a High Valley in the Andes Southern Mountains. According to one Myth, the Inca people were descended from the Sun power known as 'Inti.' Inti commanded his son, Manco Capac, to rise out of the waters of Lake Titicaca in the Highlands of the Southern Peru. Manco Capac then founded the Inca Tribe.
The Incas continue and improved the ideas and institutions that had been pioneered by earlier cultures, especially from the Moche and the Chimu. The Moche lived along the Northern Coast from about 100 BC. They built cities, dug irrigation canals, and developed special classes of workers. The Chimu kingdom, also in Northern Peru, from about 1000 AC. Like the Moche , the Chimu built well-planned cities and used elaborate irrigation methods. They preserved the artistic traditions of the Moche and passed them on, being received by the Incas. They understood that this type of information was connected with astral forces that needed to be balanced and maintained. The chasquis were a type of messengers that new how to communicate with this astral forces.
The world of the Inca have shown a clear definition of a man's status. It was based on a strictly organized class structure. People who were from the Inca lineage by blood were originally from Cuzco.
As they grew in power, its class structure became more complex but each maintaining its special role and responsibility.
Only members of the nobility or the royal family could wear elaborated ornaments of gold and precious stones. The most socially significant of all such ornaments of rank were men's earplugs.
The reason of such differentiation was because of the origin of the soul, focusing the connection of this elemental soul with its place in the unseen world and the purpose it held in the world of the living managing the forces that existed inside and outside of it.
One of the high points of a well-born Inca's life came, after a rigorous schooling in the many arts of wrestling, boxing, fighting and long-distance marching, when a teen-age novice knelt before the emperor himself to have his ears pierced by a gold dagger. When the youth rose, having uttered no cry, he was a man of class. Gradually the hole was made bid enough to bear the weight of the nobleman's huge earplugs. Some of the pendants were enormous, and before many years the young nobleman's earlobes dropped nearly to the shoulders because of the weight of gold carried on it.
When the Europeans arrived to the continent and met the Incas, they were shocked and impressed by the custom that they couldn't understand, and simply they called them "the big ears."
The Incas regarded the earplug as a thing of great beauty because it represented the value of the soul according to its 3 levels of existence.
The art of working in precious metals was highly advanced because of its meaning and connection to the unseen world. Every metal carried its very particular soul. Since the frequency of its language, according to them, dealt with the cosmological  forces of the universe they had an extreme care in dealing with it, because they understood the consequences upon maltreating them. But for the european invaders, it was the lure of that precious metals that drew them to scale the Andes in 1532, kidnap the emperor and overturn his empire.