# The Aztec and Inca Empires > The Mexica found Tenochtitlan in Lake Texcoco and build the Triple Alliance's tribute empire; Pachacuti turns the small kingdom of Cusco into Tawantinsuyu, linked by the Qhapaq Ñan road system and recorded on quipus; then Cortés and his Tlaxcalan allies take Tenochtitlan, smallpox and civil war weaken the Incas before Pizarro captures Atahualpa at Cajamarca, and the Great Dying reshapes the Americas. Episode 11 of the World Empires series. Interactive film: https://www.planetpast.com/stories/empires-aztec-inca/ Publisher: PlanetPast (https://www.planetpast.com/) · Published 2026-10-13 · History ## Prologue ### The Aztec and Inca Empires *World Empires · Episode 11* Two empires of the Americas. For thousands of years, the peoples of the Americas built cities and states with no contact with Europe, Africa or Asia. Before the Aztecs and Incas came the Olmecs, the Maya, the great city of Teotihuacan, and, in the Andes, Tiwanaku, Wari and the Chimú. The two last empires inherited their roads, gods and ideas. Prologue · Episode 11 of the World Empires series #### A separate world Maize, potatoes, beans and squash fed these civilisations. There were no horses, iron tools or wheeled carts; in the Andes, llamas carried goods. Grey outlines show other powers of the time; in 1300 none of them knew the Americas existed. Outlines are approximate. Sources: [Wikipedia: Aztec Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire); [Wikipedia: Inca Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Empire) ## Chapter I · Aztecs ### A city in a lake *Chapter I · 1325* The Mexica find their sign. The Mexica, who later came to be called Aztecs, were latecomers to the Valley of Mexico. Their legend says their god told them to settle where they saw an eagle on a cactus. Traditionally in 1325, they founded Tenochtitlan on a swampy island in Lake Texcoco. They built causeways, aqueducts, and chinampas: gardens on rich mud between canals, which could give several harvests a year. Chapter I · Step 1 #### A city in a lake - **Tenochtitlan founded**: 1325 traditional date - **Population by 1519**: ~200,000 estimates vary The eagle on a cactus is on Mexico’s flag today. Sources: [Wikipedia: Aztec Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire) ### The Triple Alliance *Chapter I · 1428–1502* An empire of tribute. In 1428 Tenochtitlan allied with two other cities, Texcoco and Tlacopan, and overthrew their overlords. Historians call their empire the Triple Alliance or the Aztec Empire. Their armies conquered city-states from the Gulf coast to the Pacific. Conquered cities kept their own rulers, but sent regular tribute: cotton cloth, cacao, feathers, gold, maize. Some neighbours were never conquered, such as Tlaxcala and the Purépecha state to the west. They stayed bitter enemies. Chapter I · Step 2 #### The Triple Alliance - **Triple Alliance**: 1428 - **Area**: ~0.2M km² estimate - **Tribute provinces**: ~38 listed in the Codex Mendoza Sources: [Wikipedia: Aztec Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire) ### Markets and temples *Chapter I · 1502–1519* Life under Moctezuma II. Moctezuma II ruled from 1502. Spanish visitors later said the market at Tlatelolco, beside Tenochtitlan, drew tens of thousands of people a day, with cacao beans used as small change. At the centre of the city stood the Templo Mayor, a double pyramid for the rain god Tlaloc and the war god Huitzilopochtli. Aztec religion held that the gods needed human blood to keep the sun moving. Prisoners of war were sacrificed there; how many is debated, but archaeology confirms the practice. Chapter I · Step 3 #### Markets and temples - 1502 Moctezuma II becomes ruler - Templo Mayor Excavated in Mexico City from 1978 - Money Cacao beans and cotton cloths Sources: [Wikipedia: Aztec Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire) ## Chapter II · Incas ### Pachacuti *Chapter II · 1438–1471* “The one who turns the world around.” The Inca were a small kingdom around Cusco, in the Peruvian Andes. Around 1438, their ruler Pachacuti defeated the rival Chanka people and began a rapid expansion. He rebuilt Cusco as a grand capital, and probably built Machu Picchu as a royal estate. The Incas called their empire Tawantinsuyu, “the four parts together”. Chapter II · Step 4 #### Pachacuti - **Pachacuti**: c. 1438–1471 - **Machu Picchu**: c. 1450 UNESCO site, 1983 Sources: [Wikipedia: Inca Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Empire); [UNESCO: Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/274/) ### Four thousand kilometres of Andes *Chapter II · 1471–1527* The largest empire in the Americas. Pachacuti’s son Topa Inca and grandson Huayna Capac pushed the empire north into Ecuador and south into Chile and Argentina. A road system, the Qhapaq Ñan, ran more than 30,000 kilometres, with suspension bridges of woven grass and relay runners, chaskis, who could carry messages hundreds of kilometres a day. At its height the empire ruled perhaps ten million people, over an area of about two million square kilometres. Chapter II · Step 5 #### Four thousand kilometres of Andes - **Peak area**: ~2M km² c. 1527 - **Population**: ~10M estimates 6–14M - **Qhapaq Ñan**: 30,000+ km UNESCO World Heritage, 2014 Sources: [UNESCO: Qhapaq Ñan, Andean Road System](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1459/); [Wikipedia: Inca Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Empire); [Wikipedia: List of largest empires](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires) ### An empire without money *Chapter II · c. 1500* Labour, storehouses and knotted cords. The Inca state had no money and no markets on the Aztec scale. Instead, families owed labour, mit’a: farming state land, building roads, or serving in the army. The state stored food, cloth and weapons in thousands of storehouses, and fed its workers and soldiers from them. Records were kept on quipus, cords with knots that recorded numbers and perhaps more. Scholars still cannot fully read them. Chapter II · Step 6 #### An empire without money - mit’a Labour service owed to the state - qollqa Storehouses for food, cloth and weapons - quipu Knotted cords for numbers and records Sources: [Wikipedia: Quipu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu); [Wikipedia: Inca Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Empire) ## Chapter III · Conquest ### The fall of Tenochtitlan *Chapter III · 1519–1521* A Spanish captain and his Indigenous allies. In 1519 Hernán Cortés landed on the Gulf coast with about 500 Spanish soldiers. Many peoples who resented Aztec rule, above all the Tlaxcalans, joined him. Moctezuma received the Spaniards in Tenochtitlan, then became their prisoner and died in 1520. In the same year, smallpox swept through the city. In 1521, after a siege of about three months by Spanish ships and tens of thousands of Indigenous allies, Tenochtitlan fell on 13 August. Chapter III · Step 7 #### The fall of Tenochtitlan - 1519 Cortés lands; alliance with Tlaxcala - 1520 Death of Moctezuma; smallpox epidemic - 13 Aug 1521 Tenochtitlan falls Historians now stress that this was in large part a war of Indigenous peoples against the Aztecs, with Spanish leadership. Sources: [Wikipedia: Fall of Tenochtitlan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Tenochtitlan) ### Disease before the conquerors *Chapter III · 1525–1532* An epidemic and a civil war. European diseases spread south faster than the Spaniards themselves. Around 1527 an epidemic, probably smallpox, killed Huayna Capac and his chosen heir. Two of his sons, Huáscar in Cusco and Atahualpa in Quito, fought a bitter civil war for the throne. Atahualpa won in 1532. He was travelling south to take power when news came of strangers on the coast. Chapter III · Step 8 #### Disease before the conquerors - c. 1527 Huayna Capac dies in an epidemic - 1529–1532 Civil war: Huáscar vs Atahualpa Sources: [Wikipedia: Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_Empire) ### Cajamarca *Chapter III · 1532–1572* 168 men and an emperor. In November 1532 Francisco Pizarro, with 168 men, met Atahualpa at Cajamarca. In a surprise attack, the Spaniards killed many of his unarmed attendants and took him prisoner. Atahualpa paid a ransom of a room filled with gold and silver. The Spaniards executed him anyway in 1533 and marched into Cusco. Inca rulers held out in the jungle at Vilcabamba until 1572, when the last of them, Túpac Amaru, was captured and executed. Chapter III · Step 9 #### Cajamarca - 16 Nov 1532 Atahualpa captured at Cajamarca - 1533 Atahualpa executed; Cusco taken - 1572 Fall of Vilcabamba; Túpac Amaru executed Sources: [Wikipedia: Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_Empire) ### The Great Dying *Chapter III · 1520–1600* A catastrophe without parallel. With no immunity to smallpox, measles, typhus and other diseases from Europe and Africa, Indigenous populations collapsed. Combined with war, forced labour and famine, estimates suggest that the population of the Americas fell by 50 to 90 percent within a century. Silver from Potosí and Mexico flowed to Spain and on to China. Spain built a new colonial empire on the ruins of the old ones, the subject of the next episode. Chapter III · Step 10 #### The Great Dying - **Population decline**: 50–90% within about a century; estimates vary - **Potosí silver**: from 1545 Sources: [Wikipedia: Population history of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas) ## Epilogue ### Still here *Epilogue* Empires fell; peoples and languages remain. Mexico City stands on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. Cusco’s colonial churches stand on Inca walls. Millions still speak Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and Quechua, the language of the Inca state, which is an official language in Peru and Bolivia. Next: the age of sea empires, when European ships linked every continent, and Siam had to survive between them. Epilogue #### Still here - Nahuatl ~1.7 million speakers in Mexico - Quechua ~8–10 million speakers in the Andes - Words chocolate, tomato, avocado (Nahuatl); llama, puma (Quechua) #### The series - **00**The Rise and Fall of Empires (overview) - **01**The First Empires: Mesopotamia - **02**Egypt of the Pharaohs - **03**Persia and Alexander - **04**The Maurya Empire of India - **05**China Unified: Qin and Han - **06**Rome - **07**The Islamic Caliphates - **08**The Khmer Empire of Angkor - **09**The Mongol Empire - **10**The Ottoman Empire - **11** The Aztec and Inca Empires (this film) - **12**The Age of Sea Empires - **13**The End of Empires The still images on the chapter cards are AI-generated illustrations. Outlines are approximate. Sources: [Wikipedia: Aztec Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire); [Wikipedia: Inca Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Empire); [Wikipedia: Population history of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas)