The Inca Trail or Capac ñan, is a main Andean road built by the Inca emperor Pachacutec that served to connect Cusco, the capital of the Inca empire, with the other cities that comprised the Tahuantinsuyo and was the main axis of political and economic power of the Inca empire, with a road network of more than 23,000 kilometers long built in more than 2000 years of pre-Inca and Inca culture.
The Inca trail or Capac Ñan was built along collateral roads that proposed and evidenced the Inca expansion along the length and width of the Andes Mountains, allowing them to control the territorial space in a more adequate way in a horizontal and vertical sense, and favored the adequate management of high Andean valleys.
The Inca Trail in pre-Inca and Inca times, the groups and cultures that inhabited the southwest of South America built and constructed stretches of roads that were improved during the Inca period. Pachacutec in his reign from 1400 to 1471 began the expansion of his empire with the construction of stretches of Inca roads that came to expand to Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru that served as an axis of communication between cities being a dynamic axis of political, social and economic relations.
Upon the arrival of the Spaniards during the conquest, they destroyed all the roads and others were disappearing in the lush forests and others began to deteriorate over the years. In 1911, when Machupicchu was discovered by the archaeologist Hiram Bingham, he discovered the Inca trail and thus discovered that these roads led to other archaeological sites along its length.
In 1970 the route of the Inca trail was discovered by the Peruvian archaeologist Victor Angles who, thanks to his expedition, was able to gather more information about the contact of the Inca trails with Machupicchu.
