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adobe city in the Americas. Chan Chan is a sprawling, 36-sq-km complex, which once
housed an estimated 60,000 people. Within the society, there was an accomplished artisan
class, which produced, among other things, some outrageous-looking textiles, some of
which were covered top-to-bottom in tassels.
To the interior in the northern highlands is the abandoned cloud-forest citadel of
Kuélap, built by the Chachapoyas culture in the remote Utcubamba Valley beginning
around AD 800. It is an incredible series of structures, composed of more than 400 circu-
lar dwellings, in addition to some unusual, gravity-defying pieces, such as an inverted
cone building known as El Tintero (The Inkpot). Unfortunately, little is known about the
people who built it, who are largely remembered for having fiercely resisted the Inca con-
quest.
Incas versus Romans
It's not just the classical European civilizations that were expansive. At its acme, the Inca empire was larger than
imperial Rome and boasted more than 40,000km of roadways. For a page-turning read about this incredible society,
pick up Kim MacQuarrie's gripping 2007 book, The Last Days of the Incas .
The Incas
Peru's greatest engineers were also its greatest empire builders. Because the Incas made
direct contact with the Spanish, they also happen to be the pre-Columbian Andean culture
that is best documented - not only through Spanish chronicle, but also through narratives
produced by some of the descendants of the Incas themselves. (The most famous of these
chroniclers is El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, who lived from 1539 to 1616.)
The Incas were a Quechua-speaking ethnicity which, from AD 1100 until the arrival of
the Spanish in 1532, steadfastly grew a small territory around Cuzco into a highly organ-
ized empire that extended over more than 37° latitude from Colombia to Chile. It was an
absolutist state with a strong army, where ultimate power resided with the inca (king). Its
history is ridden with a succession of colorful royals who would make for an excellent TV
movie - complete with fratricide, great battles and plenty of beautiful maidens.
The society was bound by a rigid caste system: there were nobles, an artisan and mer-
chant class, and peasants. The latter supplied the manual labor for the Incas' many public-
works projects. Citizens were expected to pay tribute to the crown in the form of labor -
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