Ingapirca Ruins

During the 1400s, the Inca were expanding their kingdom when they encountered the Cañari indigenous people of southern Ecuador. The Inca attempted to conquer them by waging a war against the Cañari people, but the Cañari were fierce warriors and held a determined resistance to the Incas. The two groups eventually grew tired of fighting and decided to seek a peaceful solution through marriage and coexistence instead.

The Cañari and the Inca people lived peacefully together in this Ingapirca (“Inca wall”) archaeological site in the Cañar Province of Ecuador, which is the largest known site of Inca ruins in Ecuador. The Cañari people that lived there had originally built a site as a Temple of the Moon, and when the Inca people settled there, they built a Temple of the Sun alongside it. Here you can see how the Inca hollowed out rocks and smoothed stones to make different devices and structures.

Today, is believed that the people of the area have both Inca and indigenous ancestry.