The Incas began conquering nearby kingdoms in the mid-1400s, and in less than a century they had subdued a population of 12 million.The nearly 25,000 miles of roads they built, many through ...

The Incas built a vast empire without the wheel, powerful draft animals, iron working, currency or a writing system. Skip to main content. Open menu Close menu. Live Science.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Inca Empire was the largest South America had ever known. Rich in foodstuffs, textiles, gold, and coca, the Inca were masters of city building but ...

The last map of the Inca Road, considered the base map until now, was completed more than three decades ago, in 1984. It shows the road run­ning for 14,378 miles.

On the southern shores of Lake Titicaca in present-day Bolivia, more than a thousand years ago, one of the most powerful and enigmatic civilizations of the Andes developed: the Tiwanaku. Considered by ...

Antisuyu was what the Inca called the northeastern section of the empire. It included part of the Amazon Basin, a land they considered hot, dangerous and eerily flat.

But ironically, it was the Inca Road that hastened the demise of its creators. When the Spanish reached the Pacific coast in 1532 the empire was weakened by internal fighting and smallpox.

It produced grand achievements, such as the mountaintop city of Machu Picchu, and vastly improved the continental Inca Road system. But the Inca Empire wasn’t around for that long compared to some of ...

The Incas have the double distinction of presiding over the largest empire of the ancient Americas and one of the shortest-lived. Sprawling along the Pacific Coast and across the Andes Mountains ...

For hundreds of years, Andean people recorded information by tying knots into long cords. Will we ever be able to read them?