Inca Empire

The capital of the Inca Empire was Cusco, located in modern-day Peru. The city was designed in the shape of a puma and served as the political, religious, and administrative center of the massive empire, which the Incas called Tawantinsuyu.

The Incas did not use a written alphabetic system like the Europeans, but they utilized a complex system of knotted strings called quipu. These knotted cords were used by specialized record keepers to track census data, agricultural stores, and calendrical information across the empire.

The Incas used a technique called ashlar masonry, where massive stones were precisely shaped by hammering them with harder stones to fit perfectly together without mortar. This technique, visible at sites like Sacsayhuaman and Machu Picchu, made their buildings highly resistant to earthquakes.

The empire fell rapidly in the 1530s due to the Spanish conquest led by conquistador Francisco Pizarro. The Incas were severely weakened at the time by a devastating civil war between two brothers, Huascar and Atahualpa, and lacked immunity to European diseases like smallpox.