page_title: Inca road system
section_title: Purposes of the road
hierarchical_section_title: Inca road system / Purposes of the road
caption_attribution_description: English: a view of the Inka road climbing a hillside at the Mosollaqta lake, Peru
context_page_description: The Inca road system was the most extensive and advanced transportation system in pre-Columbian South America. It was at least 40,000 kilometres long. The construction of the roads required a large expenditure of time and effort.
  The network was composed of formal roads carefully planned, engineered, built, marked and maintained; paved where necessary, with stairways to gain elevation, bridges and accessory constructions such as retaining walls, and water drainage system. It was based on two north-south roads: one along the coast and the second and most important inland and up the mountains, both with numerous branches.
  It can be directly compared with the road network built during the Roman Empire, although the Inka road system was built one thousand years later.
  The road system allowed for the transfer of information, goods, soldiers and persons, without the use of wheels, within the Tawantinsuyu or Inka Empire throughout a territory with an extension was almost 2,000,000 km² and inhabited by about 12 million people.
context_section_description: The Inkas used the road system for a variety of reasons, from transportation for people who were traveling through the Empire to military and religious purposes.  The road system allowed for a fast movement of persons from one part of the Empire to the other: both armies and workers used the roads to move and the tambos to rest and be fed. It also allowed for the fast movement of information and valuable small goods which traveled through the chasquis. The Inkas gave priority to the straightness of the roads, whenever possible, to shorten the distances.
  According to Hyslop the roads were the basis for the expansion of the Inka Empire: the most important settlements were located on the main roads, following a provision prefigured by the existence of older roads. The Inkas had a predilection for the use of the Altiplano, or puna areas, for displacement, seeking to avoid contact with the populations settled in the valleys, and project, at the same time, a straight route of rapid communication. Other researchers pointed out additional factors that conditioned the location of Inka settlements and roads, such as the establishment of control zones in an intermediate location with respect to the populations and productive lands of the valleys, the requirement of specific goods, and storage needs, which were favored in the high plains of the Altiplano, characterized by low temperatures and dry climates. As an example, the administrative center of Huánuco Pampa includes 497 collcas, which totaled as much as 37,100 cubic metres (1,310,000 cu ft) and could support a population of between twelve and fifteen thousand people. Cotapachi (nowadays in the Bolivian region of Cochabamba) included a group of 2,400 collcas far away from any significant village.
  Collcas were long term storage houses, primarily for the storage of grains and maize, which had an extremely long expiration date and made them ideal for long term storage for the army in the event of conflicts.
  According to Hyslop the use of the Inka road system was reserved to authorities. He states: «soldiers, porters, and llama caravans were prime users, as were the nobility and other individuals on official duty… Other subjects were allowed to walk along the roads only with permission…»
  Nevertheless, he recognizes that «there was also an undetermined amount of private traffic … about which little is known». Some local structures (called ranchillos) exist alongside the road which may allow to infer that also private trade traffic was present.
  The use of the Inka roads, in the colonial period, after the Spanish conquest of Peru was mostly discontinued. The Conquistadors used the Inka roads to approach the capital city of Cusco, but they used horses and ox carts, which were not usable on such a road, and soon most of the roads were abandoned.
  Only about 25 percent of this network is still visible today, the rest having been destroyed by wars (conquest, uprising, independence or between nations), the change in the economic model which involved abandoning large areas of territory, and finally the construction of modern infrastructure, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which led to the superposition of new communication channels in the outline of pre-Hispanic roads.
caption: a view of the Inka road climbing a hillside at the Mosollaqta  lake, Peru
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