ABSTRACT
When Christopher Columbus first landed in the Caribbean islands, Tawantinsuyu, or the Inca Empire, was the largest indigenous state in the Americas which, by the late 1400s, had achieved its maximum territorial expansion in the Andean world. A quick glance at the achievements of the Inca shows a pre-industrial state that controlled approximately 1,700,000 km2 and built more than 1,500 state edifices and tambos and between 20,000 and 25,000 km of state roads (Capacñam; see Fig. 9.1).
