The giant interlocking stones form pathways and staircases over and across some of the most epic landscapes of the world, capturing the imaginations of travelers and dreamers for centuries. Its remains can be found along the coasts, cloud forests and mountains of six countries. Many of these ancient passageways are still used today, both by tourists climbing one of the most popular stretches to the ruins of Machu Picchu near Cusco and by local Andeans who travel lesser-known sections across South America.
The Inca Road systems spans at least 23,000 kilometers, and perhaps as many as 60,000 kilometers, according to Ramiro Matos, a curator emeritus at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Listed with UNESCO World Heritage, it represents one of the enduring achievements of one of the greatest pre-Columbian empires of the Americas.
The road facilitated message relays, allowing communication between a vast empire that lacked a writing system and practical use of the wheel. Stones from a sacred quarry near Cusco infused the pathway with the divine, and legitimized the rule of the Inca emperors. The fast travel and movement of goods helped rulers organize a complex economy across an area that today includes Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina — which lacked a shared monetary system.
“The immensity of it, this planning and the vision, were something not seen anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere until that time,” says Terence D’Altroy, an anthropologist at Columbia University who wrote The Incas, a popular book exploring the people who built and maintained the road.
