Incas questions

Cusco, often spelled Cuzco, is a city in southeastern Peru, near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cusco Region and of the Cusco Province. In 2017, the city had a population of 428,450. Located on the eastern end of the Knot of Cuzco, its elevation is around 3,400 m.

A quipu usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings. The Inca people used them for collecting data and keeping records, monitoring tax obligations, properly collecting census records, calendrical information, and for military organization.

Objects that can be identified unambiguously as quipus first appear in the archaeological record in the first millennium AD. They subsequently played a key part in the administration of the Kingdom of Cusco and later Tawantinsuyu, the empire controlled by the Inca ethnic group, flourishing across the Andes from c. 1100 to 1532 AD. As the region was subsumed under the invading Spanish Empire, the use of the quipu faded from use, to be replaced by European writing and numeral systems.

Machu Picchu is the best preserved city of the Inca Empire. It is situated on a mountain ridge 2,430 metres above sea level in the Cusco Region, Urubamba Province, above the Sacred Valley, which is 80 kilometres northwest of Cuzco.

The city is located at the elevation of 3,400 m (11,200 ft). In 2007, it had a population of 358,935. The Spanish conquistadors adopted the local name, transliterating it into Spanish as Cuzco. In 1976, it was changed to Cusco, and in 1990, to Qosqo. However, older spelling (with the most common Cuzco) is also accepted.