"The Incas were simply too powerful to be resisted ... level or by commanding the labor of a large set of people through conquest, really made an individual or polity wealthy.

But Pizarro had not yet satisfied his ambition and did not hesitate to leave Panama so he could embark on a new conquest that promised such a glittering prize. Temples of the godsIn the Inca ...

The Inca Empire was a vast empire that flourished in the Andean region of South America from the early 15th century A.D. up until its conquest by the Spanish in the 1530s. Even after the conquest ...

Laurie Chamberlain/Corbis The arrival of the Spanish in South America in the late 16th century heralded the destruction of the once mighty Inca empire—and triggered a surge in air pollution ...

Steeped in death, conquest, desire, and mystery, the legend of the lost Inca gold is guarded by remote, mist-veiled mountains in central Ecuador. Somewhere deep inside the unforgiving Llanganates ...

The 500-year-old skull, found in a long-forgotten Inca cemetery outside Lima, Peru, had two round holes just across from each other. Nearby was a plug of bone, recovered intact, that carried the ...

Montero, then living in Florence, used the corpse of an Andean man as a model for the dead Atahualpa in his painting, which serves to underscore widespread historical fascination with the decline of ...

Spanish records indicate the battle, which occurred near the area known as Lati Canal, took place Aug. 14, 1536, as a small group of conquistadors tracked down a group of Incas who had fought them ...

The abandoned city of Machu Picchu is one legacy of the Spanish conquest of the Incas. Traces of air pollution in a Peruvian ice cap are another. Laurie Chamberlain/Corbis The arrival of the ...