the Inca Empire: An Enthralling Overview of Incas, Their Civilization Ancient Peru, and Spanish Conquest

For the Incas, death didn't exist; it simply took the dead to a different plane of life. So, the mummies of their emperors were treated as people; they were given food and drink and even visited each other ceremoniously. They also owned country estates, which generated enough profits to keep them in the style to which they were accustomed. This might sound like a curiosity, but this form of ancestor worship was central to the Inca culture and to the history of the Inca Empire, which stretched from Ecuador and Colombia in the north to Chile in the south. Everyone has seen pictures of one of the Incas' greatest achievements: the mountain-top wonder of Machu Picchu. But Inca history has always been told by the Spanish colonizers who conquered them since the Inca had no formal writing. Now, archaeology is giving us more information on how the Inca really lived, helping us differentiate real history from myth and propaganda. In this book, you will discover how the Inca created an expansive empire in just a century and why that civilization crumbled so fast once the Spanish arrived.