The Empire of the Incas

Cusco tourism

The ancestors of the Incas were hunters who came from Asia crossing the Bering Strait. More than 20.000 years ago the Bering Strait connecting Siberia and Alaska, it took several thousand years to fill in and create civilizations in the Americas.

According to research, it is known that between 13.000 and 10.000 BC they reached the Pacific coast of South America and the Andes mountains where they settled and found a new way of life. They learned to grow plants such as corn and potatoes in addition to raising llamas and alpacas. This occurred between 3000 and 2500 BC.

And around 8000 BC, pre-Inca cultures began flourishing in the Andes and on the coast; Caral and Kotosh is one of the first known cultures in this field. They were followed by Chavín, Paracas, Nazca, Moche, Tiahuanaco, Wari and Chimú. Between 1150 and 1250BC the Incas, then a small tribe, were in search of farmland found in the fertile valleys of Cusco.

They dominated and improved on the achievements of their ancestors by creating the largest pre-Columbian civilization in the Americas, the Inca civilization. The Incas their origin is explained through legends, the best known are the legend of Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo who emerged from Lake Titicaca and the legend of the Ayar brothers.

From around 1200 to 1438 the Incas were a small tribe that gradually grew into an Empire. But what caused the collapse of such an advanced civilization?

The invasion of the Spanish brought war and disease at the same time of a culture that destroyed the local one, imposing its own belief system and government. Even before the arrival of the Spaniards in Inca territory, the disease had spread from Central America to South America. It is believed that in ten years between 50% and 90% of the population was attacked by diseases such as smallpox, influenza, typhus, diphtheria, chicken pox and measles to which the Inca population had no immunity.

As the Spaniards made their way to the northern Inca territory they found a diminished and weak population. Francisco Pizarro arrived in the city of Cajamarca in 1532 with 110 armed men and a cavalry. There, they took prisoner and then killed the Inca Atahualpa on August 29, 1533.


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