Inca Empire, or Inka Empire, was the biggest empire in pre-Columbian America. The organizational, political and military center of the empire was situated in Cusco in modern-day Peru. "The Inca civilization came about from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century. From 1438 to 1533, the Incas used a variety of methods, from conquest to peaceful assimilation, to incorporate a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges, including, besides Peru, large parts of modern Ecuador, western and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, north and north-central Chile, and southern Colombia into a state comparable to the historical empires of Eurasia" (Inca Civilization, n.d.). The Incas were a powerful group in South America from the 1200s until the middle of the 1500s. Then Spanish conquistadors, who had better weapons than the Incas, arrived and defeated them. Diseases arrived, too, and killed many Incas. Incas developed fancy irrigation systems, which made their crops grow well. They also raised huge herds of alpacas, llamas and other livestock. Alpaca wool was used to make the finest clothing, tapestries and fancy clothes for ceremonies. The clothes often included designs of animals, birds, gods and shapes. Incas built forts in the Andes Mountains. Later they spread out, and you could find Incas from the equator to the coast of Chile. Their land included everything from rain forests to plains. They are famous for building great temples, many of which still stand. Exactly how they were built is still a mystery to scientists. The Incas also made beautiful jewelry. They had a lot of gold and silver, so they used it for decorating....

They were very organized and became one of the largest, richest and most advanced Native American groups (Incas of Peru, 2006).
The representative language of the empire was Quechua, even though hundreds of local languages and dialects of Quechua were spoken. The Inca called their empire Tawantinsuyu which means The Four Regions or The Four United Provinces. There were a lot of local shapes of worship, most of them regarding local sacred Huacas, but the Inca leadership encouraged the worship of Inti - the sun god - and forced its dominion above other cults. The Incas measured their King, the Sapa Inca, to be the child of the sun. As with all ancient civilizations, the exact origins of the Inca's are unknown. Their historic documentation would be recorded by way of oral tradition, stone, pottery, gold and silver jewelry, and woven in the tapestry of the people (Inca Civilization, n.d.).

The Inca of Peru have long held a magical attraction for people of the western world. Four hundred years ago the tremendous prosperity in gold and silver possessed by these people was revealed, then methodically pillaged and looted by Spanish conquistadors. The fact that a single government could manage a lot of diverse tribes, many of which were concealed in the most obscure of mountain hideaways, was simply extraordinary. "No one really knows where the Incas came from that historic record remains carved in stone for archaeologists to unravel through the centuries that followed. The Inca Empire was short-lived. It lasted just shy of 100 years, from ca.1438 AD, when the Inca ruler Pachacuti and his army began conquering lands surrounding the Inca…