The Inca Empire
Discover the Inca Empire — the largest pre-Columbian state in the Americas, which governed millions across the Andes without writing, money, or the wheel.
The Inca Empire — Tawantinsuyu, "The Four Regions Together" — was the largest state in pre-Columbian America and one of the most remarkable administrative achievements in world history. In less than a century, the Inca expanded from a small kingdom around Cusco to control an empire stretching 4,000 kilometers along the Andes, from modern Colombia to Chile, governing perhaps 12 million people.
What makes the Inca especially fascinating is what they accomplished without. They had no writing system (using quipu — knotted strings — for record-keeping), no wheeled transport, no iron tools, and no currency. Yet they built 40,000 kilometers of roads through some of the world's most challenging terrain, constructed earthquake-resistant stone architecture without mortar, and administered a complex redistributive economy that provided food, clothing, and shelter to every subject.
The Inca state was essentially a command economy on a continental scale. The mit'a labor tax system required every household to contribute work — farming, construction, military service — in exchange for state-provided necessities. This system built Machu Picchu, the road network, and the vast warehouses that stored surplus food against famine. The empire's rapid collapse after Francisco Pizarro's arrival in 1532 was, like the Aztecs', the result of epidemic disease, civil war, and European military technology.