The Rise, Fall and Religion of the Inca Empire

The Rise, Fall and Religion of the Inca Empire

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 within some 350,000 square miles from Colombia in the north to Chile in the south, and between the coastal deserts of the west and the Amazonian rain forest to the east. The Inca Empire was the largest nation on earth during its time and remains the largest native state to have existed in the Western Hemisphere. The growth of this empire was facilitated by three main contributing factors: the building of an intricate 14,000-mile road system that connected the different regions, the imposition of a common language known as Quechua, and a common religion.

The fall of the Inca Empire began around 1526, when the Emperor, Huayna Capac, and his appointed heir died, probably from one of the European diseases that accompanied the arrival of the Spaniards. A struggle for power between two remaining sons, Huáscar and Atahualpa, led to a draining civil war that lasted until 1532. That same year, Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro arrived on the shores of Peru with a small-armed force known as the conquist...

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... more readings on the Inca Empire, I've included some great web page links below. Materials discussed entail a spectrum of topics, ranging from language to the road systems, to the varying social structures within the Empire.

This first web site is the Britannica web site and it must be accessed through the school's subscription. If you are on a school computer it will work. But if you are not, give the other 3 pages a try.

http://members.eb.com/bol/topic?artcl=109431&seq_nbr=5&page=n&isctn=2

http://crystalinks.com/incan.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/4844/tupac_amaru.html

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6502/

Works Cited

"Pre-Columbian Civilizations." Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

<http://members.eb.com/bol/topic?artcl=109431&seq_nbr=5&page=n&isctn=2>.

"Incan Indians." <http://crystalinks.com/incan/html.