INCA powerpoint presentation

1. INCA
PRE COLUMBIAN CIVILIZATION

2. THE INCA EMPIRE
• The Inca Kingdom was a huge empire that existed in South America's Andean
area from the early 15th century A.D. to the Spanish conquest in the 1530s.
• Despite not having the wheel, strong draft animals, ironworking, money, or even
what we would consider a writing system, the Incas managed to build an empire
known as Tawantinsuyu, or the "Land of the Four Corners," during their time.
• The empire stretched from modern-day Argentina to southern Columbia, and was
divided up into four “suyu,” which intersected at the capital, Cuzco. These suyu in
turn were divided into provinces.

3. THE INCA EMPIRE
• Machu Picchu is located in modern-day Peru, tucked between the Andes
mountains and the Amazon basin, and is one of the most renowned remaining
Inca archaeological monuments.
• This magnificent old city, comprised of over 200 buildings perched on the peaks
of the mountains, retains a great deal of mystery. While archaeologists are unsure
of the function of many of the buildings, UNESCO reports that the site's
sophisticated roadways, trail networks, irrigation canals, and agricultural regions
indicate that people occupied the site for an extended period of time.

4. THE INCA EMPIRE
TAWANTINSUYU MACHU PICCHU

5. INCA ORIGINS AND EXPANSION
• The Inca Empire is thought to have originated at the city of Cuzco in what is
modern-day southern Peru.
• According to certain legends, the Inca were formed by Inti, the sun deity, who
sent his son, Manco Capac, to Earth. He first murdered his brothers and then took
his sisters into a region near Cuzco, where they settled about 1200 A.D.
• The development of the Inca Empire started with the accession of the fourth
emperor, Mayta Capac, but gained speed under the eighth emperor, Viracocha
Inca. Viracocha started the practice of leaving military garrisons in areas in order
to preserve peace.

6. INCA ORIGINS AND EXPANSION
• According to the Spanish-transcribed Inca oral history, the expansion started in
earnest during the reign of Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, the son of Viracocha Inca,
who ruled from 1438 until 1471.
• The Incas were adept in diplomacy and attempted to convince their adversaries
to submit peacefully before resorting to military conquest.

7. CUZCO
• Pachacuti ordered the reconstruction and
strengthening of the Inca capital, Cuzco.
Additionally, he purportedly lifted the city
to allow for its reconstruction in the form of
a puma.
• The animal was shown in profile, with the
city's residential blocks serving as its body,
the huge castle or temple complex on the
ridge above Cuzco serving as its head, and
the confluence of the Tullu and Saphi rivers
serving as its tail. The two principal plazas
of Cuzco were placed between the fore and
hind legs of the puma, where the roadways
to the empire's four imperial regions, called
suyus, intersected.

8. CUZCO
• One of the most important religious
sanctuaries in Cuzco was the "Coricancha"
sun temple. Coricancha, which means
'house of gold,' was the name given to this
temple due to the amazing abundance of
gold embedded in its chapels and walls,
ceilings and altars.
• The Spanish would subsequently pillage
this treasure and replace Cuzco with a new
city. While the Inca did not establish what
we would consider a formal system of
writing, they did utilize recording devices
such as the quipu, a rope held by knotted
threads.
CORICANCHA QUIPU

9. INCA RELIGION & SACRIFICE
• The Inca pantheon was populated by a variety of gods, including the creator deity
Viracocha, the sun god Inti, the thunder god Illapa, and the earth-mother
goddess Pachamama. Additionally, the Inca conquered people worshiped
regional deities.
• The Inca gods were revered in a variety of ways, including prayer, fasting, and
animal sacrifice, but the most effective manner of honoring them was by human
sacrifice, generally of youngsters and teens.

10. INCA RELIGION & SACRIFICE
• Archaeologists uncovered the mummies of
three children placed as sacrifices at a temple
at the peak of an Argentine volcano in 1999. A
teenage girl, dubbed "the maiden," seems to
have been the primary sacrifice, accompanied
with a boy and girl believed to be her
attendants. The three were fed a special diet of
corn and dried llama meat and were given
coca leaves and wine a year before their
sacrifice.

11. FOOD, FEASTING AND LACK OF MONEY
• Maize and meat were believed to be the Incas' elite foods and were consumed by the
"maiden" and her attendants throughout the year before their sacrifice. Along with
these exclusive foods, the Inca diet contained sweet potatoes, quinoa, beans, and chili
peppers.
• The Inca administration was required to offer feasts for the people at particular
periods of the year in return for work. In a culture devoid of money, the feasts served
as payment.
• The most peculiar feature of the Inca economy was its absence of a market system
and currency. There were no merchants in the Inca Empire, with a few notable
exceptions. Each citizen of the empire received the bare needs of existence from state
storehouses, including food, tools, raw materials, and clothes, and required no
purchase.
• There were no stores or marketplaces, and so no need for a standardized currency or
money, and no place to spend money or acquire or exchange essentials.

12. ART AND ARCHITECTURE
• The Inca crafted magnificent objects from gold and silver, but perhaps their most
striking examples of art were in the form of textiles.
• Cloth, above all else, was especially prized by the Incas and represents their
greatest artistic achievement.
• The Inca grew cotton, sheared wool, and woven their intricate fabrics on looms.
Cumpi, the best type of fabric, was designated for the emperor and nobles.
• Additionally, the Inca's stoneworking talents were powerful. Their craftsmen
expertly fitted building stone together without the use of cement, to the point
that an instrument as thin as a razor blade could not be placed between the
stones.

13. ART AND ARCHITECTURE
• Impressive stonework remains at the
ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu, Peru.

14. INCA FALLS TO THE SPANISH
• The empire reached its peak after the conquests of Emperor Huayna Capac, who
reigned from 1493 until around 1527.
• At its peak, the empire numbered up to 12 million people and stretched from
Ecuador's and Colombia's borders to about 50 miles south of current Santiago,
Chile. To maintain this empire, a network of highways spanned about 25,000
miles, or three times the diameter of the Earth.
• The Spanish were amazed by what they witnessed during their conquest of the
Inca Empire. The Inca towns were comparable in size to those of Europe, but were
more organized and, by all accounts, far cleaner and more pleasant to live in.

15. INCA FALLS TO THE SPANISH
• The Spanish transported one of their most powerful and undetectable weapons
over the oceans – illnesses to which the Inca inhabitants had never been exposed.
Smallpox killed out a large portion of the Inca population, including Capac and
his chosen successor.
• Following Capac's death, his clan fought for control, with his son Atahualpa finally
succeeding. However, the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro succeeded in
luring and capturing Atahualpa, finally executing him and quickly seizing control
of Cusco with their more modern weaponry.
• To maintain peace with the indigenous people, the Spanish appointed a "puppet
king," Manco Inca Yupanqui. However, he and his troops were subsequently
forced to retire to a forest settlement named Vilcabamba, the final vestige of the
Inca empire until it vanished in 1572.

16. AN ENDURING LEGACY
• Many of the Inca's customs are still being practiced today. Textile production
continues to be popular, the meals they ate are enjoyed worldwide, and historic
sites like Machu Picchu are popular tourist destinations. Even their pre-Columbian
language, Quechua, is widely spoken today.
• Today, Quechua, or runa simi (people’s speech), is the most widely spoken of the
indigenous tongues surviving in the Americas
• Six to ten million people in the Andean area from southern Columbia through
Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, to northwestern Argentina and northern Chile use
Quechua as their everyday tongue.

17. 10 MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT OF THE
ANCIENT INCA CIVILIZATION
1. The Inca empire was the largest empire in Pre-Columbian America.
2. Their architecture includes some of the best stonework from any ancient civilization.
3. They achieved marvelous feats in civil and hydraulic engineering.
4. They built a monumental road system in one of the most difficult terrains.
5. Their relay system could transfer messages at the speed of 240 kilometers per day.
6. They invented the rope suspension bridge independently from outside influence.
7. The Inca built Machu Picchu, one of the wonders of the world.
8. The Inca mastered terrace farming and used it as part of their drainage system.
9. The Inca invented the technique of freeze-drying to make food durable.
10. They successfully managed a vast empire without money and internal market economy.

18. THANKYOU!
Leader: AMER KEITH FAGARANG
Members: FERNANDO BEJER
JEFFERSON LUMBRE