Inca road system: Did you mean...?

On 20 April 1792, King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) stood before the Legislative Assembly and, with a faltering voice, read a declaration of war against Austria, to the ecstatic delight of the gathered deputies. This declaration sealed...

The Inca civilisation flourished in Peru and surrounding areas between 1400 and 1533 CE. Prior to the Inca being dominant in Western South America, the Chimu occupied the area until 1470 when the Inca defeated them. The Inca, which started...

Pachacamac, located on the coast of Peru and 32 km south of Lima, was an important sacred site, oracle, and place of burial, which was visited by pilgrims of many ancient Andean cultures, including the Incas. The site, active for over 2,000...

The Inca Empire (c. 13th–16th century CE) expanded from a small highland kingdom centered in Cusco into the largest pre-Columbian empire in the Americas. Emerging under leaders such as Manco Cápac and later consolidated by Pachacuti Inca...

A statue of Inca ruler Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (r. 1438-71 CE) in Plaza de Armas, Cuzco, Peru

The repartimiento system was a distribution of rights to Spanish colonialists and municipalities, which allowed them to extract forced but low-paid labour from local communities in conquered territories. Designed to replace the inefficient...

Civilization (from the Latin civis=citizen and civitas=city) is a term applied to any society which has developed a writing system, government, production of surplus food, division of labor, and urbanization. The term is difficult to define...

The standard military tunic of the Inca civilization, c. 1400 and 1533 CE. In Inca art black represented death and red represented blood and conquest. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, L.A.)

For three years, a research team from the British Museum, the University of Reading, Royal Holloway University of London and the Universidad Nacional de San Cristobal de Huamanga set out to discover how the Inca Empire used a stone platform...

A gold-sheet mask representing the sun god Inti from the La Tolita part of the Inca empire. The design is typical of masks of Inti with zig-zag rays bursting from the head and ending in human faces or figures. (National Museum, Quito, Ecuador...