The Inca Empire
The largest state in the pre-Columbian Americas, run without money, markets or writing.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 62 years
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
From 1438 the Inca expand from Cusco to control 10 million people along 4,000 kilometres of the Andes. They administer it with 40,000 kilometres of road, relay runners, state storehouses, mass resettlement of populations, and khipu — knotted cord records encoding numbers and possibly more. There is no currency and no market system; labour itself is the tax. Their masonry fits blocks of many tonnes without mortar closely enough to exclude a knife blade.