reply to post by Has2b
Aaaah, just having fun. We shall deem you the wet blanket of this thread!
To your question
Short answer: Unproven
Longer answer: Based on what is known of stone masonry you have several options.
One misconception about Inca and earlier cultures stone working, only a small amount of it is the high quality-all-the-way-thru-the-wall stuff, the
majority is not and much of this uses the following masonry trick
They worked to line up the outer edges, similar to a a Roman technique of using two cut faces over a body of rubble.
Now for the really good cut stuff. they may have used measuring frames, abrasives and wood splits. All involving intensive, repetitive labor. They did
tend to use smaller stones on upper courses.
The quarrying was done by precussion and spliting and there are some indications of fire spliting.
For greater detail you can look at: Protzen, J. -P. (1986) Inca stonemasonry. Scientific American, 254, 94-105.
Protzen, Jean-Pierre and Stella E. Nair (2000). On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture.
In the above there is discussion of the use of groves to aid in handling and the use of copper I 'staples' to bind the stones together
Now usually this amazement at the stone work leads to concepts of mechanization, aliens and advanced humans. There are several problems with this. One
we know where the quarrying took place and these show no sign of anything beyond stone age quarrying techniques. ie, they bashed or split the rocks.
No evidence for any advanced tools or techniques.
Refusal to believe that the Inka would spend the time and effort to get this level of detail, is common. If you ever visit a European cathedral,
you'll see stone work superior to the Incans - hand done, there biggest advantage was iron tools - but you can do the same things with stones - its
just a magnitude more difficult.
[edit on 7/2/09 by Hanslune]