Places

Inca Empire

in Places
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Tikal

The Inca ruled a large, wealthy empire in South America. They accomplished amazing feats of engineering and built a complex civilization.

The Inca had no written language, but they still recorded many details about their life. They kept track of gold, land, crops, and other things by using knotted strings. The length and color of the strings, and the spacing of the knots, all had meaning. Specially trained people could “read” the strings.

WHAT WAS THE INCA EMPIRE?

The Inca Empire was a vast kingdom in the Andes Mountains of South America. Inca emperors controlled a huge area and ruled millions of people. It was the largest civilization in South America before the arrival of Europeans.

India

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Tajmahal

More than 1 billion people live in India, a country in southern Asia. Only China has more people. The people of India speak more than 100 different languages.

CITIES AND VILLAGES

Kolkata (also spelled Calcutta) is India’s largest city. Mumbai (also called Bombay) is the country’s most populated urban area. They rank among the world’s largest cities, too. New Delhi is the capital of India.

Israel

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ImageIsrael is a country that is both very old and very new. The kingdom of Israel was founded about 3,000 years ago by an ancient tribe called the Hebrews or Israelites. It later split apart and was conquered. Many other countries ruled this land until 1948. That year, Israel once again became an independent country. It was reborn as a homeland for the Jewish people.

The ancient Israelites are the ancestors of the Jewish people. Over the last 2,500 years, the Jews scattered to different parts of the world. Yet they held on to their traditions and religion.

Iraq

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Bagh dad

In 2003, the world’s attention became focused on Iraq. That’s when the United States invaded the country to overthrow Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein. American leaders said Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” and was a threat to the rest of the world. No such weapons were found. But Hussein’s rule ended, and he was captured by U.S. troops.

OIL AND SAND

Iraq is a country in the Middle East. Much of Iraq is desert. Enormous deposits of oil lie beneath the desert. Oil forms the basis of Iraq’s economy. But wars since 1980 have destroyed much of the country’s oil production.

Italy

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ImageItaly looks like a boot kicking a football. Its main part is a long peninsula that sticks into the Mediterranean Sea. The island of Sicily—the football—lies just next to the toe of the boot. Sardinia and other smaller islands in the Mediterranean also belong to Italy.

BEAUTIFUL COUNTRYSIDE

A mountain range runs the length of the Italian peninsula. These mountains, the Apennines, extend south from the valley of the Po River in northern Italy. The Po Valley is the most fertile farmland in Italy.