State · c. 1438 CE
Pachacuti builds the Inca Empire
Cusco (Peru)
In the standard chronology, the Inca ruler Pachacuti came to power in 1438 after the Chanka attack on Cusco and began turning his small kingdom into an empire, Tawantinsuyu. He rebuilt Cusco as an imperial capital and probably built Machu Picchu as a royal estate, and his son Topa Inca pushed conquests north into Ecuador.
By the early 1500s the empire stretched along the Andes from Colombia to Chile, tied together by the Qhapaq Ñan road network and run with quipu knotted-cord records.
Why it mattered
It became the largest empire of the pre-Columbian Americas, governing perhaps 6–14 million people, before the Spanish conquest that began in 1532.
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