For me today was another day of chores, mainly emails and updating the website. However Nina visited the nearby Inca ruins of Sacsayhuaman. These are right next door to the camping ground and are a large complex that has had very little excavation. It seems that up until recently all the money available for excavating Inca sites went towards the work at Machu Pichu, but now some money has been ear marked for work at Sacsayhuaman. The guide told Nina that in the 1930's locals mined stone from the ruins, using dynamite to break the stone, and sold the stone for one sol (today about 30c) per truck load.
The largest stone currently known on the site weighs over 300 tonnes. All the stone was transported from the quarry over 2 kilometress from the ruins by a culture that had not invented the wheel.
How did they get the stones to fit togetherso tightly - they made clay models of the shape that was needed, took the models to the quarry, and cut the full sized stones to the required shape using the model, hammer and chisel.
Not only do the stones fit together with very tight joint lines, but amazingly the joints are actually tongue and groove joints. This is what keeps the stones together without mortar.
