Walk like an Inca [33/50]

The Incas in the 16th Century controlled an empire of states and bands of indigenous South Americans that stretched from the south of Colombia to just below Santiago in Chile. To connect the empire, they constructed a vast and complex road network, similar to the Romans in Eurasia, but unlike the Romans, the Incas had never figured out how to make a wheel nor ride a horse, so they had to walk everywhere. The roads are often called the Inca trails, and there are many of them weaving their way through the hills and river valleys near Cusco, Peru (the Capital of the Inca Empire).

The trails are lined with rocks and paved with stones and usually go past Inca ruins, notably the stepped hills used for agriculture. I spent a few days wandering around the Inca trails near Cusco, which are surprisingly deserted (free of instrumentalists!). I met a friend of mine, Dr Chris Shepherd, an Ethnographer working on the impact of mining on traditional indigenous communities in the Amazon, who showed me some of the local trails. There is a whole network of trails running all over the Andes, but as the Incas also hadn’t figured out how to write, I am not sure what records remain of them.