The last Inca bridge master

As the cable continued to tremble over the canyon, Arizappana remembered what his father once told him: “Believe in yourself, have faith in the aps, and don’t bow your head.” He reached for a new rope above his head, leaned forward, Face met the sloping cable, and then continued diligently performing the duty that the men of his family had held for more than 500 years: weaving Q’eswachaka, the last rope.

Located on the western edge of South America, sandwiched between the largest rainforest (Amazon), the driest desert (Atacama), and the highest mountain range in the Western Hemisphere (the Andes), the Inca Empire was the most unique empire in the world. One civilization. They developed in near isolation, expanding territory from Cusco, Peru in the 1430s, and ruled for just 100 years until their conquest by Spain in 1532. The largest empire of all time was in the Americas—a civilization covering 2 million square kilometers across parts of modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina—encompassing as many as 12 million people and 100 languages. It was approximately ten times the size of the Aztec Empire and had twice the population. Remarkably, the Incas managed to build this massive society without wheels, arches, money, steel tools, draft animals to plow the fields, or even a written language.

Instead, one of the keys to the Inca’s rapid expansion was the extraordinary network of roads, called “roads,” used for communication, trade, and military activity. road to wealth (Royal Road). Qhapaq Ñan is considered one of the greatest engineering feats of the ancient world, and was gleefully declared by the 19th-century geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt to be “the greatest engineering feat ever created by mankind.” The greatest and most useful project ever.” Globe. Stretching from Quito, Ecuador to Santiago, Chile, it has two main north-south routes, with more than 20 smaller routes stretching from east to west, like a giant ladder.