Huayna Capac

Fortunately for Pizarro and unfortunately for the Incas, smallpox had arrived overland around 1526, killing much of the Inca population, including both the emperor Huayna Capac and his designated successor.

The Peruvian geneticist Ricardo Fujita has drawn on Elward’s work to establish a DNA correlation between two groups numbering around 35 people who claim patrilineal descent from Huayna Capac, father to the executed Atahualpa.

When Pizarro and his companions disembarked in Peru, the great Inca, Huayna Capac, had but recently completed the empire by the conquest of the kingdom of Quito.

Above all, we were told much of the long line of Inca monarchs, the royal family, whose last great king, Huayna Capac, had died not a great while before the coming of the Spaniards.

The mountain road running toward Quito was much older than the Inca Huayna Capac, to whom it has sometimes been attributed.