South America was the home of one of the great civilizations of the Western Hemisphere : the Inca Empire. At its height at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the empire was a rich, mighty domain that stretched some two thousand miles from what is now southern Colombia to central Chile. Its western border was the Pacific Ocean; much of its eastern boundary was the Amazon rain forest. In between, the empire included Pacific coastal lands and the slopes and highlands of the Andes mountains.

The Inca Empire was so large that out of its vast territory would come the modern nations of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, as well as parts of Colombia, Chile, and Argentina. Commenting on the incredible size of the Incan state, archaeologist Michael E. Moseley writes,

On the eve of [European explorer Christopher] Columbus '... landfall [in the Americas in 1493] it...