Q: Who were the Inca and when did they rule?
A: The word ‘Inca means slightly different things to different people. In one sense, it refers to members of the original Inca tribe, which first emerged in the Andean highlands around the 13th century AD. This was led by a figure known as the Sapa Inca, or ‘unique Inca’, who ruled over a family of kinship groups made up of other Inca. However, the rule of the Sapa Inca grew to include other ethnic groups living around the city of Cuzco, the Inca capital, which consolidated to form the core of a vast empire covering territory in modern-day Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina and Colombia. To the Inca, it was known as Tawantinsuyu, meaning the ‘Realm of the Four Parts’, which reflected its composition of four provinces. Overall, it was a complex, multi-ethnic entity, but each of its components could be described as ‘Inca’.
Interestingly, much of the empire's expansion occurred
