Which Andean civilization built a vast road network across the mountains and used quipu for record-keeping?

Which Andean civilization built a vast road network across the mountains and used quipu for record-keeping?

• A. Aztec Empire
• B. Maya Civilization
• C. Inca Empire
• D. Chavin Civilization

Answer: (C)

This question focuses on how an empire managed control over a vast, difficult terrain using infrastructure and data recording. The Inca Empire built a monumental road network across the Andes, the long Qhapaq Ñan, connecting provincial centers, resource regions, and military posts. This allowed messengers, troops, and goods to move quickly through rugged mountains, helping the state administer distant provinces and enforce tribute and labor obligations. For record-keeping, the Incas used quipu—colored and knotted cords—to store census data, inventory, taxes, and other administrative information. They relied on this system rather than a writing system, making quipu a distinctive tool of Inca administration. The other options don’t fit both features together. The Aztecs in central Mexico built impressive ceremonial and urban networks with causeways and canals but not a mountain-spanning road system, and they used pictorial codices rather than quipu. The Maya developed a complex written language with hieroglyphs and extensive calendrics, not quipu. The Chavin civilization predates the Inca and did not establish a mountain road network or quipu-based administration on the scale seen in the Inca. So the combination of a vast mountain road network and quipu use points to the Inca Empire.

This question focuses on how an empire managed control over a vast, difficult terrain using infrastructure and data recording. The Inca Empire built a monumental road network across the Andes, the long Qhapaq Ñan, connecting provincial centers, resource regions, and military posts. This allowed messengers, troops, and goods to move quickly through rugged mountains, helping the state administer distant provinces and enforce tribute and labor obligations. For record-keeping, the Incas used quipu—colored and knotted cords—to store census data, inventory, taxes, and other administrative information. They relied on this system rather than a writing system, making quipu a distinctive tool of Inca administration.

The other options don’t fit both features together. The Aztecs in central Mexico built impressive ceremonial and urban networks with causeways and canals but not a mountain-spanning road system, and they used pictorial codices rather than quipu. The Maya developed a complex written language with hieroglyphs and extensive calendrics, not quipu. The Chavin civilization predates the Inca and did not establish a mountain road network or quipu-based administration on the scale seen in the Inca. So the combination of a vast mountain road network and quipu use points to the Inca Empire.