Inca Road System

1. PressF5 for slideshow Inca Road System Written By: Andrew Vinter

2. The Incas built a system of 40,000 miles of road that rivaled even the Romans • They travelled on foot, as the wheel was not discovered • There were no horses or oxen, so the Inca used llamas and alpacas as beasts of burden, but they were not used for riding • One road stretched the whole length of the empire, from Quito, Ecuador, to Mendoza, Argentina.

3. There were many rivers and gorges, so the Inca used raised earth bridges where possible, and braided plant bridges when not possible to raise earth. • Travel by foot was tiring, so rest houses were built every few kilometers. • One road stretched the whole length of the empire, from Quito, Ecuador, to Mendoza, Argentina.

4. Since the bridges were critical to the system, if one broke, the local villagers would repair it as quickly as possible so the road could function fully again. • Runners carried all important messages • They could not run the entire way, so there were switching stations where the runners would rest and change the message carrier.

5. The current runner would blow a horn when close to a switching station to alert the next runner to his approach, so they could switch as quickly as possible • The runner system could carry a message 240 kilometers in 5 days. • The Inca’s extremely diverse terrain made them use different types of road, using only tree trunks to mark the sandy coastal roads, but paving them in the more mountainous terrain.

6. Though the Inca were famed runners, they still built walls to prevent travelers from falling off cliffs. • They used long stairways or multiple switchbacks to climb mountains • They had two main roads, from which sprouted thousands of small roads to link the other niches of the empire. • They reached higher than 5,000 meters • They were used mainly for transportation, but they assisted in both the Spanish invasion and the Inca retreat.