THE INKAS, A REMARKABLE EMPIRE.

Not other empire in history had to conquer some of the world's most forbidding terrain : the towering mountains and desert coast of ANDEAN PERU.
THE EMPIRE OF THE INKA, RULED FROM A CAPITAL at 11, 203 feet (3, 395 meters),  above the sea level,  IN THE CLOUDS. It expanded from a small kingdom BASED ON THE CITY OF CUSCO to a HUGE EMPIRE including much of present-day ECUADOR and stretching southwards
through PERU to central CHILE.
It was a remarkable WELL - ORGANIZED SOCIETY, RULED BY AN EMPEROR, the INKA, who was regarded as a god, and ADMINISTERED BY A STATE CIVIL SERVICE.
A single king ruled, and the same gods were worshipped throughout AN EMPIRE OF EXTRAORDINARY DIVERSITY IN CLIMATE AND LANDSCAPE - ranging from the rainless,
hot desert of northern CHILE to the tropical wet lowlands of coastal ECUADOR, from the fertile
basins of PERU to the barren highlands of BOLIVIA.

The INKA capacity for social and economic planning was matched by engineering skill. No matter how forbidding the landscape, the INKAS overcame it.
Across the DESERT COAST IN THE WEST and BETWEEN the snow-swept heights of THE ANDES IN THE EAST ran the roads which knit the empire together, spanning DEEP GORGES and RAVINES ON SUSPENSION BRIDGES, and CROSSING BROAD RIVERS ON PONTOONS made of rafts lashed together.
Strongly built FORTS of well-cut stone PERCHED ON HIGHLAND RIDGES; and everywhere in the HIGH ANDES,  land FARMING WAS EXTENDED BY TERRACES constructed at dizzy angles.
It was the INKA achievement to create a POLITICAL UNITY in defiance of geography, and even in
defiance of history, for the tribes they nations they conquered were forced into the INKA pattern.
But earlier peoples living in the ANDES area before the INKAS prepared the ground for them.