Ben van Kerkwyk
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
These words have many meanings in Quechua.
But it starts with like the oldest stuff seems to be this monolithic carved, really bizarrely carved mountains, like rock, bedrock.
It seems vastly ancient.
There's all these channels and massive structures and shapes carved into the living rock of the mountain.
It's like the lowest level usually shows the most erosion.
Then you have the megalithic stuff like Sacsayhuaman.
You've seen pictures of that, Sacsayhuaman and the core of Machu Picchu.
Ollantaytambo, these giant streets of Cusco, these huge...
megalithic blocks that are all got these perfect joins between them.
You can't fit a razor blade in between them.
They're mortarless walls.
It's one of the best, the most amazing parts of the Sacred Valley is the proliferation of this sort of megalithic work.
But then on top of that, you have the Inca work, the Ikunpacha.
It's literally cobblestones that are put together with mud mortar.
It's like a local rock.
and they've stuck it together and so you have this you have this very distinct layers um i have pictures of this stuff jamie in the south america um directory on there but it's it's super clear like there's no blending like it's it's like boom okay here's here's the oldest layer here's the next layer here's the ink and it's always in that order like it's always like hundred partial on the bottom then the megalithic stuff on top and then the inca work on top of that because they were repairing stuff so
Even the Inca never talked about them making sites like Sacsayhuaman.