The Inca Empire: Pachacútec and the Tahuantinsuyo

The Inca Empire, called Tahuantinsuyo by its own people, grew from the Andean city of Cuzco, whose founding Inca oral tradition attributed to Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo, children of the sun god Inti said to have emerged from Lake Titicaca — a myth that symbolically linked the Incas to Tiwanaku, an earlier and prestigious Andean civilization. Archaeology places Cuzco's actual founding around the twelfth or thirteenth century CE, though for generations it remained just one lordship among rivals such as the Chancas and the Collas, in a region that had already seen earlier state traditions at Wari and Tiwanaku. Everything changed under Pachacútec Inca Yupanqui, who rose to power after leading Cuzco's successful defense against a Chanca invasion around 1438, displacing his own father Viracocha Inca in the process; historians regard this victory as the turning point that transformed a regional kingdom into the core of an expanding empire.