“The animal was represented in profile, with the residential blocks of the city forming its body … the great fortress or temple complex on the hill above Cuzco representing its head, and the confluence of the Tullu and Saphi rivers representing its tail,” McEwan wrote, paraphrasing the account recorded by the Spanish chronicler Juan de Betanzos. And, he allegedly had the city completely raised so that it could be rebuilt in the shape of a puma. Pachacuti ordered that the Inca capital, Cuzco, be rebuilt and strengthened. The Incas worked hard at diplomacy, and tried to get their rivals to surrender peacefully before resorting to military conquest, said Terence D'Altroy, an anthropologist at Columbia University, in a 2007 PBS Nova interview. Subsequently, Pachacuti worked to expand the territory the Inca controlled, extending their influence beyond the Cuzco region.
The invasion had driven his father to a military outpost.
Pachacuti became emperor after he halted an invasion of Cuzco that was being carried out by a rival group called the Chancas. However, Inca oral history recorded by the Spanish, suggests that the expansion began in earnest during the reign of the emperor Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, the son of Viracocha Inca, who reigned from 1438 to 1471.
