The term Inca, though used to describe an entire people, was actually the name for a line of fourteen rulers who controlled the vast Inca Empire before the arrival of the Spanish in 1533. Their native language was Quechua (KECH-oo-ah), still spoken by thousands of people in the Andean highlands of Peru, where the Inca had their origins.

 

Influenced by the ancient Chavín (shah-VEEN) culture, as well as that of the Huari (HWAH-ree), who flourished between 300 and 750, the Incas emerged as a civilization in about 1100. Around that time, they moved into a nearby valley and established a capital named Cuzco (KOOZ- koh), meaning “navel of the world.” Today Cuzco is the oldest continually inhabited city in the Americas.

 

Building an empire

 

Over the next three centuries the Incas, like the Aztecs, began to dominate and receive tribute from surrounding villages. But unlike the Aztecs, they were slow to build an empire—and when they did, it became much bigger than that of the Aztecs. Only in the mid-1400s, during the reign of Viracocha (veer-ah-KOH-kah), did they begin to expand, and then only to an area about twenty-five miles around Cuzco. Viracocha, named after the Incas’ principal deity, had a son named Pachacutec (pah-cha- KOO-tek; ruled 1438–71), who lived up to the meaning of his own name: “he who transforms the Earth.” Pachacutec and his son Topa built an empire that reached its peak during the reign of Topa’s son Huayna Capac (WY-nuh KAH-pahk; ruled 1493–1525).

 

By then the Incas controlled an area equal to the U.S. Eastern Seaboard (the coastal states from Maine to Florida), and called their realm “Land of the Four Quarters”—in other words, the four directional points of the compass. Its population became as large as 16 million, an extraordinary statistic at a time when England had only about 5 million people. Controlling it all was one of the most efficient, well-organized governments anywhere in the world during medieval times. For this, Pachacutec—considered one of the greatest rulers of all time by some historians— deserves much of the credit.

 

Roads and other structures

 

Under the reign of this extraordinary empire-builder, the Incas constructed some 2,500 miles of stone roads, many of them across high mountain passes. These included way stations placed at intervals equal to a day’s travel, so that the traveler could rest and obtain supplies. Trained runners, the Pony Express of their day, traversed the road system, keeping the emperor abreast of events throughout his empire. Like the roads built by the Romans, those of the Incas (along with many of their other structures) proved more enduring than those built by later peoples—in this case, the Spanish.

 

The stones on Inca roads and buildings were cut to fit together so precisely that mortar was not necessary. Inca cities were marvels of urban planning, with broad avenues intersected by smaller streets, all converging on an open central square. At Cuzco this center was occupied by the Temple of the Sun, and later archaeologists discovered an impressive fort near the city. Other feats of Inca engineering include the construction of aqueducts and irrigation canals, as well as rope suspension bridges. The latter, many of them more than 300 feet long, spanned cliffs high above turbulent rivers; and many are still in use.

 

Machu Picchu (MAH-choo PEEK-choo), tucked high in the Andes, shows much about the Incas’ skills as builders. Yet it raises far more questions than it answers. Accessible only by means of a dangerous climb up a 2,000-foot cliff, it had never been seen by a white man until the American explorer Hiram Bingham found it with the aid on a Peruvian guide in 1911. Given the difficulty in even reaching it, archaeologists are unsure how the Incas built Machu Picchu’s massive stone structures. Even more perplexing is the purpose behind this isolated city in the clouds.

 

A sophisticated bureaucratic state

 

A central mystery of the Incas is their administrative system, which they managed to maintain in the face of extraordinary limitations. Not only did they, like other American peoples, lack the use of the wheel and iron tools, but unlike the Maya and Aztecs, they lacked even a system of writing. It boggles the mind to imagine how they created a sophisticated bureaucratic state—a place where civil servants kept detailed records of population, food stores, supplies, and other information—under such limitations.

 

Yet they managed to do so, using the abacus for counting and the quipu, knotted strings of varying lengths and colors, for recording numerical information and keeping track of inventories. They also possessed something unknown to the peoples of Mesoamerica: a domesticated beast of burden in the form of the llama (YAH- muh), a relative of the camel that lives in the high Andes.

 

The rulers demanded a tribute of grain from each village. A portion of this they set aside in case of famine, at which time they would distribute it to the hungry. They also taxed the women for a certain amount of woven cloth, and the men for a certain amount of labor over a given period of time. This form of conscription, similar in concept to the military draft, permitted them to build roads and other structures throughout their empire.

 

The life of the Incas Using foot plows, Inca farmers cultivated land and grew a number of crops, most notably potatoes and corn. (Just as the people of the New World had never seen horses, the Europeans had never tasted these foods and many others that were destined to become staple crops in Europe, Asia, and Africa.) In addition to the llama, which was too small to support the weight of adults but could carry lighter loads, they domesticated the alpaca, another relative of the camel that is prized for its wool. Other domesticated animals included dogs, guinea pigs, and ducks.

 

To identify themselves as members of the Inca Empire, the people sported bowler hats of a type still worn by the Indians of Peru and Bolivia. They lived in extended families, as in- deed most people outside the West do today: instead of just a husband, wife, and children, households included aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, and other relatives. Nobles could have more than one wife, and beautiful and intelligent women were chosen from villages around the empire to go to Cuzco and become concubines for the nobility. Emperors might have concubines, but the empress was usually the emperor’s sister, and their firstborn son became his successor.

 

Religion and science

 

The Incas worshiped a variety of gods, though Viracocha was supreme as creator and ruler of all living things. The Incas also practiced human sacrifice, though they were not nearly so enthusiastic about it as the Aztecs, and abandoned the method of tearing out a living heart. Many things were regarded as sacred, or huaca, including mummies, temples and historical places, springs, certain stones, and mountain peaks. (Inca shrines and ceremonial sites have been found at elevations as high as 22,000 feet—more than four miles in the sky.) The priests practiced divination (DIV-i-nay-shun) to learn the will of the gods, but some of their efforts at curing peoples’ ailments verged on genuine science and medicine.

 

In addition to dispensing herbal remedies, priests actually performed a type of surgery on people who suffered chronic headaches, cutting away part of the skull to relieve pressure on the brain. Sometimes, however, the purpose was less scientific in nature—in other words, releasing evil spirits believed to be the source of the headache. Perhaps most remarkable was the work of priestly “dentists,” who replaced broken or decayed teeth with metal crowns similar to the ones used by modern dentists.

 

Fall of the empire

 

Though the Incas were much kinder rulers of subject peoples than the Aztecs, their end was much the same. Like Montezuma, the emperor Atahualpa (ah-tuh-HWAHL-puh; c. 1502–1533) believed that the conquering Spaniards were gods; and like Cortés, Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475– 1541) came not to save them, but to rob them. Pizarro imprisoned Atahualpa and allowed him to rule his empire from prison for eight months, but this was only in order to gain ransom from the Incas.

 

Atahualpa ordered his people to fill a room of almost 375 square feet with treasures, whose value has been estimated at $25 million in today’s money. Assembled by July 1533, the treasure included precious art objects, most of which were melted down and made into gold coins. Instead of keeping his word, however, Pizarro had Atahualpa killed, then marched on Cuzco and destroyed the empire.

 

As with the Maya, however, Inca culture survives today, carried on by millions of Indians in the Andean highlands. Peruvian schoolchildren are still taught to recite the names of the fourteen Inca rulers, and the memory of this great American empire remains alive.