I’m going to do a couple more posts on the Peru trip. I don’t want to beat a dead llama but there are some distinctly different topics worth talking about. This time it is Inca engineering.
The Inca were incredible engineers. While we call them Inca, technically the Inca was the ruler of the empire. One guide told us that Inca meant first, visionary, second, engineer, and third philosopher.
What is stunning, especially from an engineering perspective, are the stones pieced together without any kind of mortar. Massive, multi-ton boulders laid perfectly in place, with just the right angles and cuts, to rest in place against each other. Still standing six or so hundred years later.
Walls at Saqsayhuaman near Cusco
Walls at Saqsayhuaman near Cusco
Walls at Saqsayhuaman near Cusco
What is really amazing to me is that there is no record of a written Inca language. The primary purpose of any engineer is to produce documentation so others can generate or reproduce their thoughts. The Inca had no known form of writing to allow for that. These works had to be multi-generational efforts but there were no written instructions to carry on season to season, let alone generation to generation. There was a counting system of knots on strings but that isn’t the same as a written language. This is mind boggling to me.
Some of these stone works have what amounts to a mortise and tendon or a tongue and groove joint. It’s relative easy to carve the male portion on one of the rocks but not so the female portion. Even with the non-union manpower they had available, it’s unlikely they lifted the rock with the female portion on and off the male portion too often. There is some thinking that the Inca knew rubber. This allowed them to make a mold of the male side so they could carve the female side to match it before actually fitting the stones together.
Ollantayambo ruins
Ollantayambo ruins
The engineering wasn’t just about getting big stones to fit together. The Inca knew solar cycles. In some temples, the solstice sun would shine through a window and illuminate a trapezoidal niche that likely held offerings. In Machu Picchu there is the Intihuatana, a solid block of granite carved such that it can be used to predict solstices.
Machu Picchu temple walls.
Intihuatan, a solid rock solar clock. Shadows from the various protuberances hit markers at the solstices.
The finest stonework was reserved for the sacred places. Not every building was made of custom fitted stones, placed together without mortar. Even so, there is some stunning engineering and planning going on. The Inca village at Ollantayambo still uses the original Inca water system. The stones for the Ollantayambo ruins came from a quarry across the valley. They were moved into place without wheels.
The rocks to the right were mined and transported from a quarry on the other side of the valley, somewhere behind Stefan’s head. They were moved without wheels.
Inca village at Ollantayambo.
The original Inca water system, still in use.
Water splitter structure. Some goes downhill, some goes into the building.
Ducks enjoying the water system.
Some people still live a traditional lifestyle at Ollantayambo. Here we see pets as protein in a traditional home. They live under the bed until summoned to a higher calling.
Mountainous sites would always be terraced, allowing for gardening to support the site or ship produce back to Cusco. The Inca Trail was designed with way stations and villages at appropriate distances for a day’s travel. With terraces to support those living at the sites. The soil for the terraces at Machu Picchu and some of the nearby sites was carried in from the Sacred Valley, about 50 kilometers away.
Not sure which site.
Stefan and Jaime in ruins along the Inca Trail. These ruins are only accessible from the trail.
A way station along the trail.
A ruin one day’s walk from Machu Picchu.
Same ruin.
Machu Picchu, the sacred city. “DIscovered” by Hiram Bingham in 1911 even though he was led to the site by a small boy and two families were farming the lower terraces. Hiram also took a picture of graffiti left by another explorer but still claimed discovery. Hiram was the model for Indiana Jones. Stefan and I finished off the Inca trail hiking up Huayna Picchu, the mountain in the background.
The Inca never learned the arch. Instead they mastered the trapezoid. Their doorways and windows are always trapezoids. Whenever they put niches in the walls to hold offerings or more mundane things, they used the trapezoid.
Trapezoid windows with views of peaks.
Niches in a temple wall.
Trapezoid windows in adjoining rooms, perfectly aligned. In a temple built without mortar. Or the wheel, or a written language.
Naturally the Spanish tried to destroy all vestiges of the native culture in the name of the church and God. When it became too difficult to destroy the architecture they instead built upon it. The temple in the previous pictures was used for a convent. A number of modern buildings are built on Inca foundations from five or six hundred years ago.
The building on the right is built on an Inca wall. Not the pillar in front which is done with mortar, but the wall behind it.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 