The Llama, the Incas, Perú and the Andes
by Charles Young and Karl Klooster

The Inca Empire

A mountaintop world filled with wonder and shrouded in mystery and a land laden with treasure - silver and gold beyond ones wildest dreams; a place where so much still remains unknown. These are the images that spring to mind when discussing the Empire of the ancient Incas.

Although then one of the most advanced societies in the world, it presents a most puzzling paradox. Despite their many innovative technologies, the Incas had no written language, no knowledge of the wheel or the arch. Why they did not know of these innovations, which were an integral part of Old World societies going back two thousand years, and how they were able to do so much without them, is a baffling mystery, indeed.

The Inca Empire, called "Tawantinsuyu", flourished from the 12th through the 16th centuries. At the height of their power, the Incas dominated the South American continent from the Andes west to the Sea, from Ecuador to Chile - a vast domain up to 200 miles wide and 3,000 miles long.

One of the Empire's most significant and substantial attributes was a 20,000-mile network of "roads". In some places it was wide, tree-lined and paved with cobblestones, in others no more than steep, rocky, narrow trials that wound their treacherous way up and over mountain passes. The Llama was the general, all-purpose, all-terrain vehicle of that roadway system.

The primary "highway" of the Incas' road system was called "Capac-nan". Even today, it would be a major undertaking. In terms of half a millennium ago, modern man can only marvel at such a monumental accomplishment. The highway stretched from Cuzco, the Inca capital, to Quito, modern Ecuador's capital - a distance of 1,500 miles.

For most of its length, Capac-nan was totally straight; a uniform 25 feet wide, and paved with dovetailed blocks of matched stone so perfectly worked and laid that the joints were barely noticeable. Furthermore, much of the highway was tree-lined to shade the traveler. These trees were considered to be of such great value that the penalty for damaging or cutting one of them down was death.

Not content merely to build such a fabulous highway, the Incas went so far as to landscape Capac-nan. On either side of the road, stone walls were placed at regular intervals packed on top with earth in which agave cacti were planted. At intervals of twelve miles they built shelters called "tampus" where weary travelers could rest or spend the night.