Incan architecture is the most significant ancient structures in South America. They inherited the technique from the Tiahuanco culture, present in the high lands of the Andes around 14,000 BC. and improved it.
The capital of the Inca empire, Cuzco, contains many fine examples of Inca masonry, and the famous royal state of Machu Picchu is a surviving example of Inca's skills in taming stones. It was finely worked to produce a precise arrangement of interlocking blocks in their finest buildings.
Europeans architecture incorporated in their buildings ancient Inca foundation structures and walls.
The finish surface of Inca stone masonry at microscopic level indicates how it was worked, ruling out standard procedure when it comes to Incas's skill to work on stones.
Granite and the other hard, igneous rocks are difficult to tame. Granite contains 15% to 30% quartz crystals, and a few other minerals of varying degrees of hardness which is important to know when viewing the marks left in a worked stone under the microscope.
They had 3 types of stones: Yucay limestone, Green Sacsay-Huaman diorite porphyry, and Black Andesite. Some of them appear to have slick surfaces as it occurred in Machu-Picchu, and Ollantay-Tambo, and at the sliding spot (rodadero) at Sacsay-Huaman, still used as a slide by children.
The conventional methods used in the ancient Old World, such as pounding, hammering, grinding, polishing with abrasives, and wedging, just don't match up the way in which the Incas tamed the stone.
In the case of hammering, rock is wanting to break along pre-existing planes of weakness. In the case of sanding the rock, which is mostly quartz, the softer minerals are sanded out, while the quartz crystals are little affected, being left standing above the rest of the minerals on the surface. In the case of wedging the rock, the absence of long-angle fractures avoided inability to control the cracking. In the case of a surface worked with pounding stones, in which all minerals ended up unevenly fractures, is incompatible with what is observed with Inca masonry under the microscope.
It is known that the Incas used layers of gold sheets over stones to catch the powerful Sun's rays at a very high altitude and with the help of parabolic reflectors made of transparent rocks and gold, they were able to concentrate the heat and amplified the effect of it and use such power to make the rock diminish it density for a small period of time but good enough to work on it. They also mixed gold and silver to make the mirror devices increased the reflective power. This thermally disaggregate process helped them to treat rocks in the best way possible to maintain their endurance and strength.
Then the rocks were pounded into shape rather than cut. Blocks then were moved by sliding using ropes, and ramps or by lifting using logs, poles, levers, etc. Tell-tale marks can still be seen on some blocks. and others still have nodes protruding from them or indentations used to help workers grip the stone. Mortar was not necessary because of the fine setting of them. Finally, a finished surface was often provided using grinding stones and sand.
Rocks were roughly hewn in the queries and then worked again at their final destination as it is indicated by unfinished examples left at the quarries on various routes to building sites.
The meticulous process of laying, removing, re-shaping and then re-laying blocks to make them fit exactly together was a very exhausting taming process. Interlocking blocks and sloping walls make Inca buildings extremely resistant. 500 years of earthquakes have done remarkably little damage to Inca structures.
The most common shape in Machu Picchu, the sacred city of the Incas, buildings are rectangular without any internal walls, once layered with the mixture of gold and silver that the reflection of the Sun over it maintained a thermally controlled environment inside the buildings. The roofing material of the habitations were made mostly of Totora reeds.
Inca architecture includes some of the most finely worked stone structures from any ancient civilization. The vast majority of the buildings were rectangular and most of these had a single entrance and were composed of only one room. The norm was straight-walled structures, and dividing walls were not common in Inca design. Most buildings had only one level, but there are some structures with two levels, especially those built into hillsides, and the more impressive imperial structures at the capital Cuzco had three levels.
For religious purpose, it is found some rare examples of multiple-door long rectangular structures and even buildings which were circular or U-shaped.
The buildings were always practical and pleasing to the eye. Inca exterior walls commonly slope inwards as they rise, typically 5 degrees, giving the building a distinctive trapezoid form. The trapezoid form is more common in the North and Centre of the empire and one of its optical effects is to make walls seem higher and thicker than they actually are. The trapezoid form was repeated in doorways and windows and interior wall niches. Doorways have double jams topped with a large single stone lintel and windows just have doble jambs.
The buildings are also remarkable uniform in design with grand imperial structures taking on a similar look to more humble buildings, with the only significant differences being their much larger scale and quality of finish.
Fond on the principle of duality in many areas, a feature of Inca architecture is that it typically incorporated the natural landscape and at the same time the taming of it to create an often spectacular blend of geometrical and natural forms.
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