World History / Unit 5: Empires of Africa, Asia and the Americas
5.7 The Inca and Peoples of North America
Notes
In the Andes Mountains of South America, the Inca built the largest empire in the Americas.
- Pachacuti began expanding the empire in 1438. The capital was Cuzco, in modern Peru.
- The Inca built about 40,000 km of roads with rope bridges and relay runners. Terrace farming turned mountainsides into fields.
- They had no writing system but kept records with quipu, knotted cords.
- The mit'a system required people to work for the state for part of each year on roads, farms or the army.
- Machu Picchu is a well-preserved Inca site.
- North America: the Mississippian culture built the city of Cahokia with large earth mounds; Ancestral Puebloans built cliff dwellings; the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy united five nations under a council.
Practice
How did the Inca keep records without a writing system?
Knots of different colors and positions recorded numbers.
The Inca mit'a system required people to:
Labor built roads, terraces and buildings.
Which geographic challenge did Inca terrace farming solve?
Terraces created level fields and reduced erosion in the Andes.
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