Inca ruins at Chinchero. The top of the wall has been recreated. The Inca people did not have the wheel and their stone-working tools were often rudimentary lumps of hematite rock. So how on earth did they create the beautiful examples of stone masonry we can still see today? In important buildings, such as religious temples or the homes of royalty, corners are sharp 90 degree wonders and the faces of the stones reflect the thousands of tiny chips it took to smooth them. In less-important stone work, such as places for food storage, or the homes of workers, the stones still fit together beautifully but the corners and faces aren’t so perfect. In the terraces where crops were grown the rocks are carefully laid out in rows. It's impossible not to respect the skill and artistry of Inca stone masons.
The individual blocks in the walls are never square - some of them feature many angles to make them fit the irregular shapes of the adjoining stones. One twelve-angled stone on Huton Rumiyac Street in Cusco is famous but there’s another at Macchu Picchu with even more angles. Windows and doors are trapezoidal in shape. The doorway below is in the ruins at Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley. The quality of the work indicates that ordinary people could not pass through this doorway. To get the massive stones (such as the one in the lintel) up to the site, the Inca used earthen ramps and rollers.
The individual blocks in the walls are never square - some of them feature many angles to make them fit the irregular shapes of the adjoining stones. One twelve-angled stone on Huton Rumiyac Street in Cusco is famous but there’s another at Macchu Picchu with even more angles. Windows and doors are trapezoidal in shape. The doorway below is in the ruins at Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley. The quality of the work indicates that ordinary people could not pass through this doorway. To get the massive stones (such as the one in the lintel) up to the site, the Inca used earthen ramps and rollers.
At Sacsayhuaman near Cusco enormous rocks form the three-tiered walls of a fortress. Some are almost 30 feet high. Whenever I look at these photos I am still completely amazed at the effort and skill it must have taken to fit these massive lumps of granite together.
Massive stones at Sacsayhuaman. The Inca did not use mortar and their walls have held strong for hundreds of years, often surviving earthquakes when European-created walls collapsed. That's evident in Cusco where the Spanish built a church and Dominican priory on the site of an Incan Temple, Coricancha. In 1950 an earthquake destroyed much of the church but not the remains of the temple that the Spaniards had incorporated into their buildings.
At Machu Picchu there are some clues as to how the walls were created. In a quarry there you can see blocks of granite in the process of being shaped. Some have holes where wooden wedges were driven in to widen the cracks until the rock split. In one wall you can see a rock in the act of being shaped. Beneath it is a stone roller used to roll the rock into place when the shaping was finished. I was so awed by the stone masonry I took many, many photos. Click through the slide show below to see some more great examples.
At Machu Picchu there are some clues as to how the walls were created. In a quarry there you can see blocks of granite in the process of being shaped. Some have holes where wooden wedges were driven in to widen the cracks until the rock split. In one wall you can see a rock in the act of being shaped. Beneath it is a stone roller used to roll the rock into place when the shaping was finished. I was so awed by the stone masonry I took many, many photos. Click through the slide show below to see some more great examples.
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