New research suggests the Band of Holes in southern Peru may have been first a market and later an Inca accounting device.

Researchers used drones to get another look at the "Band of Holes" along Monte Sierpe, and their work suggests that the Inca ...

This story appears in the April 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine. On the remote Peruvian island of Taquile, in the middle of the great Lake Titicaca, hundreds of people stand in silence on ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Terence D'Altroy: It was about 2,400 miles from north to ...

Inca bureaucrats recorded all the goings-on in their bustling empire using knotted cords called khipu, where the position and order of the knots represented numbers. They relied on the khipu system to ...

The city of Cusco seems to hum in anticipation. Villagers dressed in colorful shawls, or chompas, mingle with city-folk and tourists. Processions parade down the cobble stone streets. Horns blare over ...

Ancient mummified bodies stand guard over windswept deserts near the Nazca and Ica mountain summits. © Charles Rennie/Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis In 1533 the ...

The growth of the Inca Empire can only be described as meteoric. Though precise dates for its beginnings remain elusive, the realm known to the Inca as Tahuantinsuyu, or "The Four Parts Together," ...