Road Through Time by Mary Soderstrom

Author:Mary Soderstrom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Regina Press
Published: 2017-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

In human memory I believe that there is no account of a road as great as this, running through deep valleys, high mountains, banks of snow, torrents of water, living rock and wild rivers.…Oh! Can anything similar be claimed for Alexander or any of the powerful kings who ruled the world, that they were able to build such a road and provide the supplies found on it?42

November in Cusco, Peru, the former Inca capital, can be glorious. The rainy season is just beginning, which means that a storm may blow in during the afternoon, leaving air so clear that the mountains surrounding the high valley glow with clarity. It is high—3,400 metres (11,000 feet)—which means that even though it is only thirteen degrees south of the equator (on a par with sweltering Luanda, Angola in Africa), it never is very hot. Today, it is served by an international airport and modern highways, linking it with other centres in Peru. But when the Incas reigned, it was the centre of their empire, the point where all roads were ultimately headed.

Some of the vestiges of the Inca roads remain, either in the orientation of present-day streets or as stone passages along hillsides or through towns and cities. One of the most charming of these is in the centre of Cusco, running from the great palace of Qorikancha, on top of which the Iglesia Santo Domingo now stands. The way between two rows of buildings is no wider than the extended arms of two grown men. It runs straight as a die up toward the square whose name once meant “plaza of tranquility,” but now is the Plaza de Armas.

The west coast of South America is an area of great seismic instability, and the Incas built with this in mind. Along this short street, you can see how stone blocks on the lower courses of the old buildings fit together flawlessly. They narrow upward to produce an inclination of ten to fifteen degrees, so that the weight falls solidly on the block beneath. The convex upper surface of one fits perfectly into the concave bottom of the block on top of it. Set together without mortar, the Inca constructions have frequently fared much better than more recent buildings during earthquakes.

The Qorikancha is a case in point. Built on the edge of a hill, the palace overlooks a grassy square that covers a buried and channeled stream that forms the depression through which a major street, the Avenida do Sol, now runs. The building was the secure treasure house of the last Incas, filled with gold: Qorikancha, indeed, means “room or space containing gold.” But after the Spaniards captured the city, the structure was turned over to the Dominican Fathers to be used as a Roman Catholic Church. Part of the original building was torn down to remove reminders of the pagan past, and the stone blocks were used to build the church. Inside it’s clear where the stone blocks were recycled, because they were cemented together with mortar.

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