Inca Empire: Did you mean...?

European explorers began to probe the Western Hemisphere in the early 1500s, and they found to their utter amazement not only a huge landmass but also a world filled with several diverse and populous indigenous cultures. Among their most...

The Inca site of Machu Picchu built by Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (1438-71 CE). Fortress, sanctuary, and once home to around 1,000 residents, the site is perched in the high Andes above the river Urubamba.

An empire is a political construct in which one state dominates over another state, or a series of states. At its heart, an empire is ruled by an emperor, even though many states in history without an emperor at their head are called "empires"...

The Columbian exchange is a term coined by Alfred Crosby Jr. in 1972 that is traditionally defined as the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World of Europe and Africa and the New World of the Americas. The exchange...

The Inca Sacsayhuaman (also Saqsawaman) fortress-temple complex of northern Cuzco, 13th-15th century CE.

Cochineal is a brilliant red dye extracted from the crushed bodies of parasitic insects which prey on cacti in the warmer parts of the Americas. The dye was an important part of trade in ancient Mesoamerica and South America and throughout...

In Part 5 of Engineering the Inka Empire: A Symposium on Sustainability and Ancient Technologies, Gary Urton presents Engineering a World with Strings Attached: The Place of the Khipu in Building the Inka Empire. The knotted-string recording...

The Inca site of Machu Picchu built by Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (1438-71 CE). Fortress, sanctuary, and once home to around 1,000 residents, the site is perched in the high Andes above the river Urubamba.

One of the terrace gateways of the Inca Sacsayhuaman fortress-temple complex at Cuzco. The structure was begun in the reign of Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (1438 - 1471 CE) and completed by his successors.

Situated in the Peruvian Andes, Cuzco developed, under the Inca ruler Pachacutec, into a complex urban centre with distinct religious and administrative functions. It was surrounded by clearly delineated areas for agricultural, artisan and...