The Inca Empire or Inka Empire was an empire centered in what is now Peru from 1438 to 1533. Over that period, the Inca used conquest and peaceful assimilation to incorporate a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges. In 1533, Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, called a Sapa Inca, was killed on the orders of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, marking the beginning of Spanish rule. The Quechua name was Tawantin Suyu1 which can be translated The Four Regions or The Four United Regions. Before the Quechua spelling reform it was written in Spanish as Tahuantinsuyo. Tawantin is a group of four things (tawa "four" with the suffix -ntin which names a group); suyu means "region" or "province". The empire was divided into four suyus, whose corners met at the capital, Cuzco (Qosqo), in modern-day Peru. The Incas created the vast and powerful empire of the Pre-Columbian America. Their administrative, political and military center was located in Cuzco. The empire reached its greatest extension at the beginning of 16th century. It dominated a territory that included from north to south, the actual territory of Ecuador and part of Colombia to the center of Chile and the north-west of Argentina, and from west to east, from Bolivia to the Amazonian forests. The empire was organized in “señoríos” (dominions) with a stratified society, in which the ruler was the Inca. It was also supported by an economy based on the collective ownership of the land. In fact, the Inca Empire was conceived as an ambitious civilizing project, based on a mythical idea, in which the harmony of the relationships between human beings, nature Gods was truly essential. Source Wikipedia