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The Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu, [13] "the suyu of four [parts]". In Quechua, tawa is four and -ntin is a suffix naming a group, so that a tawantin is a quartet, a group of four things taken together, in this case the four suyu ("regions" or "provinces") whose corners met at the capital.
The Inca state was known as the Kingdom of Cuzco before 1438. Over the course of the Inca Empire, the Inca used conquest and peaceful assimilation to incorporate the territory of modern-day Peru, followed by a large portion of western South America, into their empire, centered on the Andean mountain range.
Inca leaders kept records of what each ayllu in the empire produced but did not tax them on their production. They instead used the mita for the support of the empire. The Inca diet consisted primarily of fish and vegetables, supplemented less frequently with the meat of cuyes (guinea pigs) and camelids. In addition, they hunted various animals ...
The Inca state had no separate judiciary or codified set of laws. While customs, expectations, and traditional local power holders did much in the way of governing behavior, the state, too, had legal force, such as through tukuy rikuq (lit. "he who sees all"), or inspectors. The highest such inspector, typically a blood relation to the Sapa ...
Reconstruction of one of the pyramids of Aspero. After the first humans — who were then arranged into hunter-gatherer tribal groups — arrived in South America via the Isthmus of Panama, they spread out across the continent, with the earliest evidence for settlement in the Andean region dating to circa 15,000 BCE, in what archaeologists call the Lithic Period.
The ability of the Inca to support their elite position was no small feat, given that less than fifty thousand Inca were able to rule over millions of non-Inca peoples. Mythology was an important way by which the Inca were able to justify both the legitimacy of the Inca state, as well as their privileged position with the state.
Machu Picchu [a] is a 15th-century Inca citadel located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru on a mountain ridge at 2,430 meters (7,970 ft). [9] Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", [10] it is the most familiar icon of the Inca Empire.
The remains of Incan fortresses here reveal evidence of this failure and suggest that Incas could subdue only those cultures based on agricultural activities. As a result of their resistance, the nomadic tribes in the eastern lowlands occupying two-thirds of Bolivia preserved their way of life to a great extent, even after the Spanish conquest. [8]