Notes from the Basement

We have a low retaining wall made from railroad ties in our front yard that is deteriorating and needs replacing. We’re thinking of stonework this time, and I’m thinking we’ll want to find some Incas to do it for us. I mean, look at the work they do:

Photo by Alexander Fiebrandt at Wikipedia

They may not have discovered the wheel (and for good reasons), but their building skills astounded the city slickers from Europe:

At the heart of the new [ca. 1463] Qosqo was the plaza of Awkaypata, 625 feet by 550 feet, carpeted almost in its entirety with white sand carried in from the Pacific and raked daily by the city’s army of workers. Monumental villas and temples surrounded the space on three sides, their walls made from immense blocks of stone so precisely cut and fit that Pizarro’s younger cousin Pedro, who accompanied the conqueror as a page, reported “that the point of a pin could not have been inserted in one of the joints.” —Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 79.

By the way, 1491 is a wonderful, eye-popping read. It will change the way you think about the “New World” and everything you learned in school about virtually empty continents waiting to be populated and developed.

Tags: American Indians, history, technology

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