Inca Dynasty Founded

The Inca began as one of many small ethnic groups in the valley of Cusco in the southern Andes. According to traditional accounts, the imperial dynasty was effectively founded around 1438, when the ruler Pachacuti (Pachacutec) repelled an invasion by the rival Chanca people and then transformed the modest Inca chiefdom into an expansionist state, reorganizing Cusco and its institutions.

Pachacuti and his successors, including Topa Inca Yupanqui and Huayna Capac, rapidly extended Inca rule along the Andes through conquest and alliance. At its height the empire, known as Tawantinsuyu, stretched from present-day Colombia to central Chile and Argentina, bound together by an extensive road network, terraced agriculture, and a system of labor obligations administered from Cusco.

The empire was weakened by a devastating civil war between the half-brothers Huascar and Atahualpa, just as Francisco Pizarro's Spanish expedition arrived. Pizarro captured and executed Atahualpa in 1533, and the Spanish seized Cusco, bringing the central Inca state to an end. A reduced Neo-Inca state survived at Vilcabamba until its conquest in 1572.