Posted by jppope 2 days ago
Inca stonework was something special. You can tell it’s hand carved and yet smoothed and rounded in a way that softens the look and makes it more appealing. Truly amazing stuff. Mayans had some remarkable temples out of stone but I think because the Inca were up in the mountains, they got better at stone work as a result. I’m not qualified to even assume but that’s just my gut.
What’s the most impressive about the Inca were just how many men they were able to assemble in order for these civil projects to be built.
Similarly astonishing to me is that Michelanglo's David was carved from a single piece of marble with a hammer and chisel. I mean, just look at it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(Michelangelo)
What the masons in the video do is certainly impressive. Cutting organic shapes that fit perfectly together, as if they once were elastic, is another level.
Perhaps the did something similar to what dentists do when building on teeth so that the added material is not the only contract point when jaws are closed. That is, a contact sheet that leaves contact marks.
I know. I mainly just wanted to link that video because it is awesome.
The article does explain how the Inca did it - only the front edges are tight fitting. The gaps between the inside surfaces are filled with mortar. They sat the stone where it was to be placed, but with the front edge raised up by resting on some spacers, then just incrementally improved the fit of the edge and re-tried the fit. I'd have still thought that was impossible without seeing something like the video I linked - my intuition of what can be achieved with hammer and chisel was wrong.
Where are you getting this from? The Spanish chroniclers report Inca tradition that the 15th century leader Pachacuti initiated the building. The wiki article has a few long excerpts from Pedro Cieza de Leon's Cronicas del Peru, including details of how many labourers were involved and some of the methods for quarrying, transporting stone, and construction:
I asked a friend who is knowledgeable about this stuff, but he hasn't provided a source, perhaps he is (and by implication I am) mistaken.
And the Inca inherited pre-existing structures.
The Inca did do stonework of their own, but not close to the standard exhibited in this article.
The older construction is made of very big stones of hard granite, that fit perfectly together. Assuming they had some concrete, it is easy how they were able to make them fit so perfectly. If you have a source of materials, concrete is not difficult to make. See https://www.geopolymer.org/
People were not stupid, and technologies were invented and forgotten. And just like Roman technologies were lost in the middle ages, this building technology was lost to the Incas.
The Incas build their houses and temples on top of the existing ones. They used smaller stones that did not fit well together. Still a great culture, but with different technologies.
South America has a lot of cultures that disappeared. They had no written history and a lot of stuff was destroyed by later cultures (including the Spanish). So it is impossible for historians to get it right.
For example there were also people with elongated skulls and red hair in Peru. Could be a result of inbreeding as they also had some other physiological differences. Maybe exterminated by another tribe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dfpLN3FbQs
History is often full with conflicts, but presented as if it is all known. There are often conflicts with engineers who point out different technologies used for buildings and such. These technologies do not fit in the simplified timeline of mainstream history.
This difference in technology is obvious regarding the extremely accurate Egyptian granite vases https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BlmFKSGBzI and granite boxes.