Qhapaq Ñan is the Royal Road of the Incas. By the 15th Century the Incas ruled from Columbia, way the hell down to Argentina
and like the Romans, build roads and paths to tie it all together. For the Incas it was 30,000 km(18,600 miles) of connections.
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The Qhapaq Ñan was serviced by around 2,000 tambos, or refuges, strategically located about a day’s walk from one another. The tambos served as rest stops for the chaskis (relay runners) who carried messages throughout the empire. The system allowed the Incas to get a message from Cusco, Peru, to Quito, Ecuador, (a distance of 2,500km) in only seven days.
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Certainly faster than fedex.
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In June 2014, the Qhapaq Ñan was designated the largest Unesco World Heritage Site on Earth, comprising 273 component sites across six different countries.
Still, little is being done in the way of preservation, and much of the Qhapaq Ñan has been lost over the centuries. Erosion has always been a foe, and climate change has exacerbated its effects. Earlier this year, devastating floods caused by El Niño conditions in northern Peru washed away vast sections of the road.
More than 18m wide at some points, the Qhapaq Ñan easily meanders along the dizzy ravines and craggy cliffs of the Andes. Some steep passes feature thousands of individual stone steps, while boggy areas are forded by spectacular causeways. Rope bridges – which could bear loads of up to 90,000kg – were rebuilt every year to ensure their strength.
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But in the end it was a mistake, because it provided a way to reach these remote nearly inaccessible spots for the Conquistadors
to
snuff save the souls of the heathen Inca empire.
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