Odyssey Online Ancient Americas. History for Kids: Aztecs, Maya, and Inca. Back to History.
An Overview of Inca Tech. Geography Drives Technology The Incas inherited an unforgiving geographic landscape.
Despite its overwhelming beauty, its various terrains held hazards and risks. The Four Quarters of the Inca kingdom stretched along a narrow band of Pacific Ocean frontage extending from Chile up to Columbia, 2500 miles long, and ranging inland from the dry coastal desert to a fingerhold on Amazonian jungle. Elevations went from sea level to 22,000 feet, and while the highest zones were not regularly lived in, some housed ceremonial structures, and many of the people lived quite well at altitudes of 15,000 feet. Deep ravines scour the jagged mountains and the flat plains, home to at-times torrential rivers and streams, making travel even more difficult. Yet is is known that the people of the Inca were able to traverse their land from end to end, and from shore to highest regions, on a regular basis. The Inca and Their Roads.
Now primarily a tourist attraction, Inca roads were once the arteries of a mighty Empire.
Spanning a the continent lengthwise, the Inca road network covered approximately 22,000 miles of roads and trails with about half of that paved. They built stone surfaced roads where the terrain required it, but merely marked the way and distance on dessert or flat coastal terrain. Beginner's Guide to the Inca Empire. The Lost Inca Empire. By Liesl Clark Posted 11.01.00 NOVA "Land of the Four Quarters" or Tahuantinsuyu is the name the Inca gave to their empire.
It stretched north to south some 2,500 miles along the high mountainous Andean range from Colombia to Chile and reached west to east from the dry coastal desert called Atacama to the steamy Amazonian rain forest. Inca Road System Construction and Lodging. The Inca road system (called Capaq Ñan in Quechua and Gran Ruta Inca in Spanish) was an essential part of the success of the Inca Empire.
The road system included an astounding 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) of roads, bridges, tunnels and causeways. Road construction began in the mid-fifteenth century when the Inca gained control over its neighbors and started expanding its empire; it ended abruptly 125 years later when the Spanish arrived in Peru. As a contrast, the Roman Empire built twice as many miles of road, but it took them 600 years. Four Roads from Cuzco. Inca religion. Inca Architecture at Machu Picchu. Quipu - Ancient Writing System of the Incas. The Inca writing system called quipu (also spelled khipu or quipo) is the only known precolumbian writing system in South America—well, perhaps writing system isn't quite the correct phrase.
But quipus were clearly an information transmittal system, and not just for the Inca. Instead of a clay tablet impressed with triangles like cuneiform, or a piece of paper with symbols written on it like Egyptian hieroglyphs, a quipu is essentially a collection of wool and cotton strings tied together, a knotted page of information which could be easily transported and easily translated across the wide expanses of South America. While scholars have yet to translate the quipu, we do know that information was embedded in the quipu in a number of different ways.
The strings in a quipu were dyed in many different colors, and the strings are connected in many different ways, with a wide variety and number of simple and complex knots. Aztec, Maya & Inca foods. People. Inca, also spelled Inka, South American Indians who, at the time of the Spanish conquest in 1532, ruled an empire that extended along the Pacific coast and Andean highlands from the northern border of modern Ecuador to the Maule River in central Chile.
The Inca established their capital at Cuzco (Peru) in the 12th century. They began their conquests in the early 15th century and within 100 years had gained control of an Andean population of about 12,000,000 people. See also pre-Columbian civilizations: The Inca. In common with other Andean cultures, the Inca left no written records. Their ... (100 of 999 words) <ul><li><a href="/EBchecked/media/68812/Ancient-Inca-ruins-at-the-foot-of-the-peak-of? Inca Empire Timeline and King List. Timeline and Kinglist of the Inca Empire The Inca word for ruler was 'capac', or 'capa', and the next ruler was chosen both by heredity and by marriage lines.
All of the capacs were said to be descended from the legendary Ayar siblings (four boys and four girls) who emerged from the cave of Pacaritambo. The first Inca capac, the Ayar sibling Manco Capac, married one of his sisters and founded Cusco. The ruler at the height of the empire was Inca Yupanqui, who renamed himself Pachacuti (Cataclysm) and ruled between AD 1438-1471.
Most scholarly reports list the date of the Inca empire as beginning with Pachacuti's rule. High status women were called 'coya', and how well you could succeed in life depended to a degree on the genealogical claims of both your mother and father. Calendrical dates for the reigns of the various kings were established by Spanish chroniclers based on oral histories, but they are clearly miscalculated and so are not included here. National Geographic. Steeped in death, conquest, desire, and mystery, the legend of the lost Inca gold is guarded by remote, mist-veiled mountains in central Ecuador.
Somewhere deep inside the unforgiving Llanganates mountain range between the Andes and the Amazon is said to exist a fabulous Inca hoard hidden from Spanish conquistadors. Inca mathematics. Version for printing It is often thought that mathematics can only develop after a civilisation has developed some form of writing.
Although not easy for us to understand today, many civilisations reached highly advanced states without ever developing written records. Now of course it is difficult for us to know much about such civilisations since there is no written record to be studied today. This article looks at the mathematical achievements of one such civilisation. The civilisation we discuss, which does not appear to have found a need to develop writing, is that of the Incas. The quipu was not a calculator, rather it was a storage device. The quipu consists of strings which were knotted to represent numbers. 586 on a quipu. Inca Skull Surgeons Were "Highly Skilled," Study Finds.
May 12, 2008 Inca surgeons in ancient Peru commonly and successfully removed small portions of patients' skulls to treat head injuries, according to a new study. The surgical procedure—known as trepanation—was most often performed on adult men, likely to treat injuries suffered during combat, researchers say. A similar procedure is performed today to relieve pressure caused by fluid buildup following severe head trauma. Around the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco (see Peru map), remains dating back to A.D. 1000 show that surgical techniques were standardized and perfected over time, according to the report.
Inca Facts, information, pictures. Inca (Ĭng´kə), pre-Columbian empire, W South America. The Incas. The Incas The Incas, an American Indian people, were originally a small tribe in the southern highlands of Peru. Exploring the Inca Heartland: Machu Picchu. We wandered down a long stretch of Inca road from the Sun Gate, enjoying the view of the site below us and feeling good about having hiked the Inca Trail. To us, it seemed that slogging over the passes and heights had earned us more of a right to be there than the bus loads of tourists who were driven there from Cusco. We looked about for awhile, then continued down to our campsite in the valley below. We were all blown out and rather grotty, so a trip to the natural hot baths at Aguas Calientes was in order, followed by dinner at one of the local restaurants near the train tracks.
Tomorrow, after spending most of the day at the site, we'd catch the train here for the ride back to Cusco. How lost was Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Inca? It does appear that no Spanish artifacts have been found in solid contexts at Machu Picchu either by Bingham or the recent Peruvian excavations directed by Julio Tello. Machu Picchu was (and is) not a large site.
Back to Map Share. Incas - HowStuffWorks. Incas, an Indian people of South America. The Conquest of Peru and the Inca Empire. HISTORY OF THE INCAS. History's Turning Points - The Conquest of the Incas Part 1/3. History's Turning Points - The Conquest of the Incas Part 3/3. History's Turning Points - The Conquest of the Incas Part 2/3.