Name: "Inca" Stoneworking Theories - NOVA Secrets of Lost Empires Inca - Jean Pierre Protzen
Uploaded: 2013-12-29T13:44:25.000Z
Duration: 26 min 32 s
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Basic passive voice

But their most impressive and mysterious stonework is found in the walls of their citadels.

Adverbs of degree

Giant blocks, some weighing a hundred tons, sit next to each other so precisely that not even a razor blade can fit between them.

Without iron tools, draft animals, or the wheel,

how did the Inca builders move and set such large blocks?

NOVA invited several experts with widely different backgrounds to come to Peru.

We're pretty good at finding the evidence today,

Professor of architecture Jean-Pierre Protzen  studies the Incas' use of stone.

He has written a book about Inca architecture and has some definite ideas about their construction methods.

Ed Franquemont is both an anthropologist and a building contractor

who lived in a Peruvian village for several years.

His particular interest is how the Inca builders organized their labor force.

Vince Lee is an architect and explorer who has travelled extensively in the Andes looking for lost Inca sites.

He has a theory about how the Inca stonemasons made such precise joints with such giant stones.

A good place to start looking for clues is the citadel overlooking the town of Ollantaytambo.

About five hundred years ago, a sun temple was under construction inside the fortress.

ED FRANQUEMONT: So with all these blocks of stones here, this is clearly a construction site that was abandoned in progress.

ED FRANQUEMONT: The question is, where do these stones come from, and how did they get here?

JEAN-PIERRE PROTZEN: Well, they came from the quarries

on the other side of the river at the base of this mountain here.

The team decides to follow the route to the quarry taken by the ancient stone haulers.

The hike will take them down a sloping ramp to the valley floor.

Along the way, they find massive blocks abandoned by the Inca workers.

The villagers called these rocks "piedras cansadas"-weary stones.

One legend tells of stones that grew tired, wept blood and refused to move.

so this is where the quarry is, the lower quarry at the bottom of this rockfall.

You can see some ramps. The other quarry is way up there at the foot of the cliffs.

Jean-Pierre-JP to his friends-leads the team along the remains of a roadway that leads to the quarry

actually a rockfall created by rocks eroding from the cliffs above.

Here, they find a 70-ton stone that Inca quarry workers had turned into a rectangular block.

JP believes that all the boulders were first squared off in the quarry.

But how did the Incas transport these heavy blocks down the mountain

and up to the sun temple on the other side of the valley?

Spanish chronicles tell us that the Incas did not possess the wheel or strong draft animals like oxen.

David Canal, a community leader and Inca descendent, believes they hauled the blocks by hand.

He has organized a team of pullers to transport a one-ton rock along

the same route taken by the Incas between the quarry and the citadel.

For most of its length, the ramp has a gentle slope.

But halfway down the mountain, the incline suddenly turns into an almost vertical 800-foot chute to the valley below.

With a block more than ten times the size of this one,

it must have been extremely difficult for the Ancient stone haulers to negotiate this chute.

Unlike the Inca blocks observed on the transport route, this boulder has not been squared off,

ED FRANQUEMONT: Probably not the way the Incas wanted to see it happen.

VINCENT LEE: And you know, once it-if it turned this way, it was kind of cylindrical.

It was kind of easy for it to get rolling, where a big square block might not have-

JEAN-PIERRE PROTZEN: That's true. -might not have done that.

Having gotten the boulder down in pieces by a distinctly non-Inca method,

everyone hopes to do better with the next challenge:

getting a block across the Urubamba River.

At this time of year, the water level is at its lowest, and the river looks quite placid.

But after the rainy season, it becomes a torrent impossible to ford.

David believes the Inca hauling teams would have chosen to cross at the shallowest stretch.

But even here, there is a stiff current, and many of his men can't swim.

David has arranged for an offering of cane alcohol.

but this turns out to be an advantage when it comes time to pull the rock.

ED FRANQUEMONT: It was perfect! It was easier than moving it no the ground, went pretty quick.

The task of getting rock across the Urubamba turned out to be much easier than everyone had imagined.

But crossing the fields on the valley bottom is much more of a problem,

because the stone acts like a plow digging into the soft ground.

There was probably once a road crossing the valley, but it has been destroyed by centuries of farming.

Permission has been obtained to excavate one of the blocks abandoned in Inca times,

to see if there is any evidence of a roadbed underneath.

VINCENT LEE: What turned up underneath was a layer of small stones

on top of what appears to be a prepared gravel road base.

So the resulting surface that the stone appears to have actually been bearing on is just these stones

about the size of a softball-not necessarily round,

but you know-and that's not unlike the surface we find on the ramps today, still.

Now that they have found the kind of road used by the Inca stone haulers,

the team wants to see how difficult it would be to drag a much heavier block on a similar surface.

In the plaza below the citadel, they find a genuine fifteen-ton Inca block,

and the sloping cobbled surface is a good approximation of  the eight-degree ramp that leads up to the sun temple.

To pull the block, David has assembled a team of two hundred and fifty men,

women and children from Ollantaytambo and neighboring villages.

Everyone has turned out to see the great block being dragged through town.

Unfortunately, the stone refuses to budge.

But after another offering of cane alcohol, and some levering, the stone finally comes unstuck.

The ease with which the block travels on the cobbled surface proves

that it could have been dragged up the slope to the sun temple.

DAVID CANAL: (English translation) I had no doubt that we could do it.

Our ancestors did it, so I knew we could do it, too. Human labor can accomplish anything.

The determination displayed by David's people  makes the speed and

scale of the Incas' empire building achievements much more understandable.

According to legend, around 1450 A.D., a leader called Pachacuti, whose name means "Earth-Shaker",

began an aggressive military campaign that transformed the Incas from a small Cuzco valley community

into a juggernaut that swallowed up all its Andean neighbors.

In return for the benefits of a stable state, conquered peoples paid tax to their Inca masters in the form of labor.

This huge workforce enabled Pachacuti and his successors to build the infrastructure

that could support their rapidly expanding territorial gains.

In the Urubamba valley, wide, rambling sections of the river were placed in canals to create cultivatable land.

Terraces watered by elaborate irrigation schemes climbed the mountainsides,

the Inca lords built a chain of remarkable citadels in the sky.

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"Inca" Stoneworking Theories - NOVA Secrets of Lost Empires Inca - Jean Pierre Protzen

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