Machu Picchu, Los Andes, Peru Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com

Originally a small group of Quechua-speaking Indians living in the Cuzco Basin of the C Andean highlands; during the 15th-c, one of the world's major civilizations, and the largest PreColumbian state in the New World, with an estimated population of 5-10 million. Inca was originally the name of their leader.

In the 11th-c, they established their capital at Cuzco, the Sacred City of the Sun, where they built huge stone temples and fortresses, and covered their buildings in sheets of gold. During the 15th-c, they brought together much of the Andean area, stretching along the entire W length of South America, from near the present Ecuador-Columbia border to SC Chile, and occupied much of the Andean regions of Bolivia as well.

The Incas succeeded in creating an organizational structure that could hold a vast area together, and were able to extract from it the resources necessary to support armies of conquest and a sizeable state apparatus. They used former rulers as regional administrators (provided they were loyal) but these were denied any independence, and Inca culture, language (Quechua), and the cult of the Sun were forcibly imposed. #inc p2

The Inca emperor was a despotic ruler of a highly stratified society, a quasi-religious figure, and a direct descendant of the Sun-god Inti. Underneath him, a noble class ran the empire. The Incas were not innovative; they merely expanded and intensified existing practices, such as in agriculture.

They had a system of more than 15 000 km of roads, and hundreds of way stations and administrative centres that provided an essential infrastructure for communication, conquest, and control. They also had impressive storage facilities, such as the food warehouses at the administrative city of Huanuco Pampa in C Peru.

In 1523, Spanish invaders under Pizarro encountered the Incas. They captured the emperor Atahualpa, whom they later murdered, and took control of the empire, and by the 1570s Indian power was totally destroyed. The present descendants of the Incas, 3 million Quechua-speaking peasants of the Andes, comprise 45% of Peru's population. Their preferred spelling of the traditional name is Inka.