ARCHITECTURE INCA

Prior to construction of any building, palace, temple, village or city; Quechuas had a process of physical planning tending to ensure later success. Undeniably. knowledge used was not only a product of creative capacity of these Andean villagers, but a many centuries accumulation of continuous cultural development. As it was indicated before, Peruvian culture has an age from 18 to 20 thousand years B.C. Peruvian scholar Victor Angles states: " Inka stage is the shortest in the development of pre-Hispanic people, it is the last political time characterized by a quick and powerful military expansion that crowns long earlier stages of gradual formation of nations".

Prior to executing any construction Inka made some sketches and designs, and models or maquettes in scales which measurement systems mainly based in anthropometry (measures with relationship to the human body: arms, elbows, feet, steps, spans, etc.) are lost. A demonstration of this in-advance planning are the large amount of maquettes found in almost all the archaeological museums in the country; they are carved in stone or made in pottery.

Around the world, no other ancient or modern civilization could ever reach the technique, skills and ease to carve lithic material as Quechuas did in this corner of the earth. Inkas are recognized among some other aspects, for their balanced social organization, their mastered and peculiar way to work stones, their advanced knowledge in planning and engineering, and because of their epoch and without intervention or influence from other intercontinental cultures they developed one of the most advanced civilizations of the planet.

There are still some doubts about the way how stones were fitted so precisely. Those doubts are based on the lack of chronicles or detailed ancient records about those techniques. There are some hypothesis that are framed inside logical possibilities: the most feasible indicates that work was very slow but effective and as it is normal walls were started by the lower part taking care of just the lateral fits, the following upper row was more complex because stones had to fit laterally as well as in the lower joints. In this case it is proved practically everywhere in Qosqo that upper faces of lower stones were carved slowly bumping them with stone hammers according to the shape of the inferior surface of upper stones. The work was relatively simple when manipulating small or medium stones, because they could be placed or tried many times; but problems arose when working with megalithic boulders of dozens and even hundreds of tons. Reality suggests that Quechuas could use natural size models or maquettes made on light materials and perhaps clay. Those models were supposed to be reproduced exactly on huge boulders; surely, use of this method helped enormously making works easier. Another respected opinion states that they could use in a certain way a present day technique that consists in copying with some wires or metal tapes the shape of the desired stones (in Qosqo's archaeological museum there is a very long silver tape), thus they made possible a really complex work.

Many medium and large stones that are part of Inka walls have almost always 2 high relief carvings or moldings in the lower part of their faces. In some cases like in Saqsaywaman those carvings are in low relief and served for facilitating transportation, lifting, and manipulation of stones during the building process,. Many of those moldings were removed once the wall was finished, but because of some unknown reason certain stones still keep them. There are some exceptional cases like in Qosqo's Qorikancha where the inside face of the semi-round wall known as "solar drum" shows unusual moldings surrounding the trapezoidal niche; it is evident that they were not used for manipulating the blocks but they had some religious duty or ideo-graphic meaning that is lost.

Among the materials used in Inka walls is the adobe or sun dried mud brick. Many buildings and even whole cities in the Tawantinsuyo were made with this material; that is the case of Pachacamaq which stands south of Lima. In order to make "adobes" some good quality earth was chosen preferably clayish that was mixed with ichu the native wild bunch grass, and in certain cases with llama or alpaca wool too. All these materials were blended with water, placed in rectangular molds and then dried to the sun. Adobe buildings were and are still preferred in the Andes because they are easy to get and have thermal properties; they last forever when covered with thatched or tile roofs.

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