Inca Expansion Map

As shown in Figure 5.21, the Inca Empire extended along the Andes Mountains from the present-day countries of Colombia in the north, through Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, to Chile and Argentina in the south. It was the largest pre-Colombian empire in the Americas.

There are several familiar placenames in Figure 5.21:

• Cuzco, or Cusco, is a city in Peru that was once the capital of the Inca Empire. The Kingdom of Cusco, which the Incas founded in the early 1400s, is the red area on the map. It was succeeded by the Inca Empire as expansion began in 1438 and comprised the original extent of the Inca Empire.
  
  
• Nazca, or Nasca, another city in Peru, was once part of the Inca Empire. It is named after the Nazca culture, which predated the Incan Empire for about 600 years. The Nazca tectonic plate takes its name from the Nazca region.
  
  
• Lake Titicaca in the Altiplano Region of the Central Andes Mountains is the largest lake in South America. Its surface elevation is 3,812 m. For comparison, the surface elevation of Lake Baikal in Russia is 456 m.