The Inca stone walls throughout Cuzco and the Sacred Valley truly fascinate me. So large, so precise, no matter how many angles the cut ...... boggles my mind.
The Stone of Twelve Angles. The palace Hatunrumiyoc was built by Inca Sinchi Roca, the most important thing about this palace is the Lienzo pétreo which is a beautiful wall which bends backwards, built out of dorita verde or green stone, here you will find the famous Stone of Twelve Angles. The palace was destroyed and the only part that remains perfect is this geometric wall.
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| Here are noted the 12 angles of this stone. |
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| The Incas' engineering medium was stone. They didn't need to use mortar to hold the walls in place. Instead, they used precise geometry to cut the stones and create tight joints. |
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| All the angles that went into the cutting of this one stone, and then the corresponding outer stones to make it all fit together makes this a unique stone puzzle. |
These stones are very large (hundreds of pounds if now tons) and fit together perfectly. Similar walls can be seen throughout the Sacred Valley of the Inca. The mystery of how the Inca, some 500 to 800 years ago were able to cut these massive stones with such precision that when placed one, on top of another, no matter what the angle of the cut, the stones fit together perfectly. Even now, it is impossible to slip even a knife inbetween these stones, the store work was done with such precision.
The building on the opposite side of the street (this street is maybe at best 10 feet across) from the Inca wall, was built by the Spanish. The craftmanship of the two examples of stone masonry is light years apart! The Inca were superb in their craft! The Spanish could have learned alot from the Inca ..... but that never happened.
2 comments:
Beautiful pictures. I visited the area myself. The Incas never built those things. They just found them, took possession of the remains. Tiahuanacu is not so far, and you can still see the devastation of a War eons of years back, in their remains. This war happened when the Scriptures stated "And there was war in heaven..." Billions of years back, perhaps. Again, your pictures are beautifully taken. Thanks.
My understanding is that these marvelous stone works predate the Inca. You can see 3 distinctive types of quality to the way Peruvian walls were built. Neither the Spanish not the Inca techniques were as superb as the ones from the previous civilization that has now been lost to time.
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