The Inca Empire

The Inca were South American Indian people who ruled one of the largest and richest empires in the America's. The Inca Empire began to expand about 1438 and occupied a vast region that centered on the capital, Cusco, in southern Peru. The Empire extended more than 2,500 miles (4,020 kilometers) along the western coast of South America. It included parts of Present - Day Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. The Inca Empire was conquered by Spanish Forces soon after their arrival in 1532.

The Aztec and Inca Empires arose 1000 to 1500 century C.E. in Mesoamerica and South America. The Aztecs arrived in central Mexico approximately the fifteenth century. The Incas settled in the region around Lake Titicaca about mid-thirteenth century and by the late fifteenth century, the Incas had built an enormous empire stretching more the 4,000 kilometers. Both empires were enormous, the Incan Empire ended up being the largest state in South America. Neither empire had developed a written language, but they did come up with a way to remember things and keep records.

lands and sometimes on building projects or in mining.” (World of the Inca). Thus the Inca expected

Perhaps more than 12 million people contributed to the creation of sprawling cities, terraced farmlands, extended roadways, and golden palaces. The Inca empire covered nearly 2,500 miles and included regions of present-day Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and Argentina. Although, like other native peoples throughout the Americas, they did not have their own written language or the use of the wheel, the Incas were extremely intelligent engineers. They built huge stone structures without mortar and designed suspension bridges that crossed deep mountain

During the 15th century, there were two leading empires of Mesoamerica. The Inca Empire, which was located in what is now Peru and the Aztecs, whose area was located in what is now Mexico. Both the Aztec and Inca empires were advanced civilizations with a good economy, agricultural developments, and religious practices that spread across the region of Mesoamerica.

The Incas Empire began around 1200 and lasted until the Spanish arrival in 1532. They were the largest civilization in pre-Columbia with a territory of 380,000 square miles and a population of about 7 million. Around 1400 the empire began its expansion stretching along the western coast of

The economic characteristics of the government differed from how they collected revenue. So, the Inca government had a totalitarian complex government whether as Aztecs had a decentralized government that focused on expansion. In document 4, it explains how the Aztecs required conquered lands to pay a tribute. Aztecs would pay in goods and services rather than currency. From the source document 5 Pedro de Cieza de Léon describes the Inca rule, that there was a king or emperor, as well as representatives for each province. As for the aztecs as mentioning that they formed a triple alliance, they did not end up

The Incan Indians started as a small tribe in South America in pre- Columbian times. According to Lin Donn, author on the website, Inca Empire for Kids Quick History, “The Inca empire started as a small tribe who lived in the village of Cuzco, high in the Andes Mountains of South America. One day, another tribe tried to conquer them. Thanks to

The most significant physical geographical factor that contributed to the development of the ancient South American society of the Incas was the Andes Mountains. The Inca Empire had villages and cities throughout the Andes Mountains. Some of these settlements were as low as sea level and their capital, Cusco, was at an altitude of 11,200 feet. The Andes are considered some of the longest and highest mountain ranges. In fact it’s tallest peak, Mount Aconcaqua, in Argentina, tops out at 22,841 feet (Zimmermann, 2013). Despite the fact that people were traversing mountains the people flourished creating trails, aqueducts and agricultural practices that still exist today.

1. Before Francisco Pizarro began the Spanish conquest in 1532, the Incan empire dominated the Andes Mountain region. An emperor who demanded strict obedience ruled the land. All business was run by the state, which could draft citizens for its projects. The Inca, terracing the landscape and irrigating the crops, farmed the mountainsides. The Inca were brilliant engineers, whose roadways included bridges. The city of Machu Picchu is an example of their skill with tools like the plumb bob and wooden roller, which they used for in heavy construction. Hundreds of years after their civilization was subdued by the Spanish, the descendants of the once-dominate Incas make up about 50 percent of Peru’s population.

“Guns, germs, and steel” refers to the geographical advantages and disadvantages that were present in early civilizations. Although Europeans some may see them as a genetically superior race, their large amounts of success is due to geographical advantages (Source 1)( Diamond, year). It is shown throughout Diamond’s discoveries that because these three continents lay of the same vertical latitude, they are able to keep up with each other when it comes to livestock (Source 1). Geography has played a major key in shaping the current day cultures of Eurasia, South America, and Africa. Jared Diamond stated in episode one of Guns, Germs, and Steel that Europeans were put on this pedestal over the other continents spoken about in the video.

The Incan society believed in ranks, topmost, including the royal family, the descendant kin of past rulers, the non-royal ethnic Incas, and the Incas by Privilege. Despite the elites prominence, peasant families who lived in towns and villages: farmers, herders, fishers and artisans, made up about 95-98 percent of the population. The Incas called their empire Tawatinsuyu, the “Land of the Four corners”, and its official language was Quechua”. By the time of the Spanish conquest, much of the Inca Empire was made up of numerous non-Inca groups.

The Incan Empire was the largest indigenous empire in the world before the conquest of South America by the Spaniards. "At its height, the Inca Empire controlled all of the western part of the South American continent between Ecuador and Chile. The Inca capital was at Cusco, Peru, and the Inca legends claimed they were descended from the great Tiwanaku civilization at Lake Titicaca" (Hirst 2012). The Incan rulers, at their Empire's height, were able to exercise control over such a massive territory in part because of their extensive system of roads. Incan roads spanned all over the empire, enabling a great deal of centralized control by the leadership hierarchy despite the territorial sprawl (Hirst 2012). "The Inca state's domain was unprecedented, its rule resulting in a universal language a form of Quechua, a religion worshipping the sun, and a 14,000 mile-long road system crisscrossing high Andean mountain passes and linking the rulers with the ruled" (Clark 2012). The roads were constructed so they could be traversed in all weathers.

One way the Inca emperors did this was through effectively gaining and organizing a state labor force. The Roman and Inca empire had many similarities. Additionally to their comparable road systems, the empires also shared an alike system of acquiring labor and handling their people. Similar to the Roman bread and circuses, Inca rulers provided their people with “gifts of luxury goods and elaborate entertainment. The people returned the favors by furnishing their leaders with labor” (Morris). This helped the leaders gain and maintain legitimacy because it not only earned them respect for their moral handling, but also gained them state labor. Possibly the greatest achievement of the Incas were their ability to organise this labor, through the use of curacas. Curacas were often rulers of conquered ethnic groups whose “chief responsibility was to make sure the proper number of people showed up to work for the Incas and to distribute the workload among the households for which each was responsible” (Malpass). This effective distribution of workloads made the empire stronger and more powerful. For example, Pachacuti’s use “of the mitmae (labor tax) allowed for one of the most rapid developments of an empire infrastructure in world history” ("Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui”). The procuring and organisation of state labor helped emperors gain legitimacy because they were effectively strengthening their

The title "Inca Empire" was given by the Spanish to a Quechuan-speaking Native American population that established a vast empire in the Andes Mountains of South America shortly before its conquest by Europeans. The ancestral roots of this empire began in the Cuzco valley of highland Peru around 1100 AD. The empire was relatively small until the imperialistic rule of emperor Pachacuti around 1438. Pachacuti began a systematic conquest of the surrounding cultures, eventually engulfing over a hundred different Indian nations within a 30-year period. This conquest gave rise to an empire that, at its zenith in the early 16th century; consisted of an estimated 10 million subjects living