The legacy of the Inca Empire may exist, despite the disappearance of the political entity.
The Inca Empire was a marvel of its time. The rulers managed to conquer territory from Colombia to Argentina and Chile, spanning the mountain ranges, coastlines, jungles and plains of six modern day countries.
But do the Inca still exist today? The question isn’t as simple as it sounds, and it depends on how you define the Inca.Part of the colonial invasion of the Americas led to decoupling the achievements of classic-era Maya, Aztec or Inca with modern Indigenous people that directly descended from them. He says that this identity sometimes results in feeling pride for the Inca, while discriminating against modern Quechua-speakers. They view what happened in the Spanish invasion as a sort of “reboot,” even though the Europeans incorporated many elements of the Inca Empire into their own governance of the area.
The reason is, the Inca were more of a political entity than an ethnicity, Marcone Flores says. The Inca was an amalgamation of several different cultures that joined together through treaty or conquest like the Chimú and Chachapoya. Even in the times of the empire, people that lived in the highlands of Piura, roughly 1,000,000 meters from the capital at Cusco, never would have called themselves Inca. Instead, they would call themselves their own indigenous ethnicity, he adds.
But even Quechua has several different dialects, including the Quichua spoken in the Quito area today. Since the Inca Empire spoke other languages, including today the Aymara, Chachapoya and Mochica, it’s clear that the Inca were never just one heterogenous culture.