Puzzle for November 17, 2008

This is National Geography Awareness Week

Sunday in 1532, Spanish explorer and conquistador, Francisco Pizarro captured the Incan emperor with only 200 soldiers compared to Atahualpa's several thousand, effectively ending the empire.

At the time, the Incan empire stretched for about 2,400 miles from north to south. That would take us from the area just at the border of Ecuador and Colombia down to about 50 miles south of modern Santiago, Chile. If the empire covered about 300,000 square miles, how wide was it on average?

With about 10 million people, what was the Incan population density? (the amount of people per square mile)

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