Outline the development of the Inka Empire. Describe the challenges they faced in the Andean region and how they overcame those challenges

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

ANSWER:
In little more than a hundred years, the Inka developed a vast imperial state, which they called “Land of Four Corners.” By 1525 the empire had a population of more than 6 million and stretched from the Maule River in Chile to northern Ecuador, conquered between 1500 and 1525, and from the Pacific coast across the Andes to the upper Amazon and, in the south, into Argentina. In the early fifteenth century the Inka were one of many competing military powers in the southern highlands, an area of limited political significance after the collapse of Wari. Centered in the valley of Cuzco, the Inka were initially organized as a chiefdom based on reciprocal gift giving and the redistribution of food and textiles. Strong and resourceful leaders consolidated political authority in the 1430s and undertook an ambitious campaign of military expansion. The Inka state, like earlier highland powers, utilized traditional Andean social customs and economic practices. Tiwanaku had relied in part on the use of colonists to provide supplies of resources from distant, ecologically distinct zones. The Inka built on this legacy by conquering additional distant territories and increasing the scale of forced exchanges. Crucial to this process was the development of a large military. Unlike the peoples of Mesoamerica, who distributed specialized goods through markets and tribute relationships, Andean peoples used state power to broaden and expand the vertical exchange system that had permitted self-governing extended family groups called ayllus to exploit a range of ecological niches. Like earlier highland civilizations, the Inka were pastoralists, and their prosperity and military strength depended on vast herds of llamas and alpacas, which provided food and clothing as well as transport for goods. They gained access to corn, cotton, and other goods from the coastal region via forced exchange.