Inca Empire Trivia
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51 free Inca Empire trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Inca Empire trivia quiz covers the largest state in pre-Columbian America, an empire that ran from Ecuador to Chile without money, wheels, iron or writing. The easy questions cover the capital, the mountain citadel found by Hiram Bingham, the language, the sun god and the conquistador who toppled it. From there the quiz moves through the story: the origin legends of Manco Capac, Pachacuti's turn of the world, the four suyus, Tupac Yupanqui's conquest of Chimor, the smallpox that killed Huayna Capac, the civil war between Huascar and Atahualpa, Cajamarca and the ransom room, and the Neo-Inca state that held out in Vilcabamba until 1572. The hard end covers quipu, the chasqui runners and their coca, mit'a labour, the decimal administration, the three moral precepts, trepanation survival rates, mortarless stonework, chuno and freeze-dried potatoes, capacocha sacrifice, the Council of the Realm, high-altitude physiology and the Portuguese castaway who reached the empire before Pizarro. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the Inca Empire, Machu Picchu and the Inca road system before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Aztec, Maya and ancient civilizations quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 51 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which disease is thought to have swept through the Inca Empire even before the Spanish conquerors arrived?
Smallpox
Smallpox likely spread down from Central America ahead of the invaders, killing huge numbers of people and probably the emperor Huayna Capac and his chosen heir.
Q 02Which language did the Incas promote as the official tongue of their empire?
Quechua
Quechua was carried by the Incas into areas such as Ecuador, where it is still widely spoken, and millions of people across the Andes speak it today.
Q 03What is the name of the knotted-string device the Incas used for record keeping?
Quipu
Quipu cords kept census counts in their knots, but after the Spanish conquest many were sought out and destroyed as suspect records.
Q 04Which name did José Gabriel Condorcanqui take when he led a 1780 uprising against Spanish rule in Peru?
Túpac Amaru II
Túpac Amaru II was executed after the uprising failed, and two centuries later the rapper Tupac Shakur was named after him.
Q 05Which sun god did the Inca emperors claim as their divine ancestor?
Inti
Inti's worship was required of conquered peoples to back the Incas' claim to divine rule, though local gods were still tolerated.
Q 06Which conquistador helped capture the Inca emperor, then later led a Spanish expedition across the southeastern United States?
Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto's share of the plunder made him one of the richest returning conquistadors, and he later died beside the Mississippi River.
Q 07In one legend, the founding couple Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo emerged from which body of water?
Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca was their starting point in that telling, and they settled where their golden staff sank easily into the ground.
Q 08What did the Spanish do with many stones from the Inca fortress Sacsayhuamán?
Reused them in colonial buildings
The Spanish reused them in colonial buildings, dismantling much of the fortress within years of holding it against a large Inca siege.
Q 09What did the Incas usually do first when they wanted to absorb a neighbouring people?
Sent them lavish gifts
The Incas sent them lavish gifts, and those who refused to submit faced military conquest.
Q 10What did the Incas do with the mummies of their dead emperors?
Offered them food and consulted them
The Incas offered them food and consulted them on state affairs, bringing the mummies out in fine regalia for major ceremonies.
Q 11Which people traditionally halted the Inca advance south at the Maule River?
The Mapuche
The Mapuche later beat back Spanish conquistadors in Chile as well, just as they had resisted the Inca armies.
Q 12Why was the captured Inca emperor strangled rather than burned at the stake?
He agreed to be baptised
He agreed to be baptised when friar Vicente de Valverde offered the gentler garrote in exchange for converting to Christianity.
Q 13Which two sons of Huayna Capac fought the civil war that weakened the empire before the Spanish arrived?
Huascar and Atahualpa
Q 21What did Inca road builders use to cross deep mountain gorges?
Rope suspension bridges
Rope suspension bridges woven from grass spanned the gorges, and villagers still reweave the Q'eswachaka bridge by hand every year.
Q 22What were the relay runners who carried messages along the Inca roads called?
Chasquis
Chasquis ran short stages and handed off to fresh runners at each post, so messages could travel about 240 km in a day.
Q 23What were the state-run way-stations along Inca roads called?
Tambos
Tambos stocked food and supplies and lodged officials and marching armies as they moved along the roads.
Huascar and Atahualpa fought until Atahualpa captured his half-brother and had his kin killed, shortly before the Spanish arrived.
Q 14What did the imprisoned Inca emperor promise his Spanish captors?
A room of gold plus twice that in silver
A room of gold plus twice that in silver was duly delivered, but his captors executed him anyway.
Q 15Which conquistador was Francisco Pizarro's partner in the conquest of Peru, before their rivalry turned deadly?
Diego de Almagro
Diego de Almagro was executed on the orders of Pizarro's brother, and Almagro's supporters later broke into Pizarro's palace and killed him.
Q 16To which remote refuge did Manco Inca retreat to found the Neo-Inca State?
Vilcabamba
Vilcabamba became his base after he rebelled against the Spanish, who had first installed him as their puppet ruler.
Q 17Why did each new Inca emperor need to conquer fresh territory?
The dead ruler kept his lands
The dead ruler kept his lands for his own descendants, so a new king had to win territory and build his own palace.
Q 18Which American explorer brought Machu Picchu to international attention in 1911?
Hiram Bingham
Hiram Bingham took thousands of its artifacts to Yale, starting a custody fight with Peru that lasted nearly a century.
Q 19What happened to Machu Picchu when Spain conquered the Incas?
The invaders never found it
The invaders never found it, though it lay only about 80 km from the Inca capital they seized.
Q 20What is the indigenous name of the Inca road network, meaning 'royal road'?
Qhapaq Nan
The Qhapaq Nan was built mainly to move soldiers, officials and llama caravans across the empire.
Q 24What did the Incas consider silver to be?
The tears of the moon
The tears of the moon lined the moon goddess's shrine with silver, just as gold lined the sun god's temple.
Q 25What is chuño, the long-keeping food eaten in the Andes since Inca times?
Freeze-dried potato
Freeze-dried potato could be stored for years, and by 1590 it was traded in bulk to feed the silver miners of Potosí.
Q 26What was the name of the circular terraced site thought to be an Inca agricultural experiment station?
Moray
Moray's sunken rings of terraces grow warmer or cooler level by level, creating microclimates that may have been used to test crops.
Q 27Which art form did the Incas themselves prize most highly?
Woven textiles
Woven textiles outranked even gold and silver, and fine cloth was handed out as payment and rewards and offered to the gods.
Q 28What did the conquistadors do with almost all the Inca gold and silver artworks they seized?
Melted them down
They melted them down and shipped the metal to Spain, so only a tiny fraction of Inca goldwork survives today.
Q 29What were the three moral precepts of Inca society?
Do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy
Ama sua, ama llulla, ama quella were taught in the assemblies of the ayllu.
Q 30Which surgery did Inca healers perform with most patients surviving?
Cutting holes in the skull
Cutting holes in the skull was survived by about 75 to 90 percent of Inca-era patients, depending on the study, against under half in the earliest Andean surgeries.