🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE The city’s longevity attests to the craftsmanship and practical prowess of its builders.
Besides these critical centerpieces, the walled-in urban sector included another 170 or so buildings. Although the Inca had no written language, the design of these structures seems to be laid out based on a set of rules. For example, the windows are typically the length of a forearm, and the space between them two forearms. “They standardized it,” Ruth says. “You can go into the forest and find a stone building and know it’s Inca because they’re all the same.
But more important was their management of the water that, if left unmanaged, would have long since ravaged the site. “The reason that Machu Picchu has stood up over five centuries was because of good drainage,” Ken says. The terraces that line the hillsides below the city, besides adapting the slopes to agriculture, also protected them from runoff and erosion. They came complete with stone retaining walls and carefully layered soil to help water drain into the ground.
Back in the urban sector, granite stairways and walkways doubled as a network of runoff channels, all feeding water into a main drain that discharged into the rainforest below the city. Many buildings, especially important ones like the emperor’s residence, had specific drainage plans, which again empty into the main drain. “They were masters at sustainability,” Ruth says.
They had to be if they wanted to build on a precipitous mountain ridge, of course. But the ethic was baked into their worldview. Lee notes that “they cared about the planet,” calling it, or Mother Earth. “They had this philosophy that if you’re going to mess with it, you better do it right.”Much of the Inca's work on Machu Picchu, though impressive, is inconspicuous. Ken has estimated that 60 percent of the construction is underground.
Remember that the Inca had no steel or iron tools. These blocks were hewn with bronze and stone, yet with such delicacy that you would never guess. Somesuggests they chose the site partially because, thanks to intersecting fault lines, the rocks were already fractured to suit their needs and that made them easier to carve. In other places, however, the Inca built in a polygonal style, in which the sides of the rocks are planar to ensure tight joints.
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