Abstract

The question of how the Inca megalithic blocks were transported, some of them exceeding forty tons, is traditionally framed as a problem of horizontal traction. This article proposes to reformulate it as a problem of gravitational guidance, and then to draw out its mechanical, logistical and cosmological consequences. A systematic examination of the topography of the great Inca sites (Sacsayhuaman, Machu Picchu, Pisac, Chinchero) reveals their constant positioning on a summit or a dominant flank, never on a plain. We propose that the Inca builders exploited the downward slope from the high-altitude extraction zones, the chamfered edges of the blocks documented in the literature being mechanically consistent with controlled tipping rather than with hauled transport. We show, through a first-principles energy analysis, that this change of frame inverts the nature of the problem: it is no longer a matter of supplying energy to overcome friction over a distance, but of dissipating, in a controlled way, the potential energy released by descent. This model, which we call descent and stacking, implies a cascading worksite logic in which the residual quarry becomes the next site, which explains the systematic vertical stratification of Inca architecture. We then show that this single physical principle, descent from height, structures the whole of Andean cosmology: glacier water, cut stone and the sacrificial victim would be manifestations of the same flow. Terrace cultivation, the altitude hierarchy of social statuses and the orientation of the ceques radiating from Cusco form a coherent system whose generating principle is gravity. A testable prediction is proposed: tribological analysis of the wear striations on the chamfered edges of the blocks should show an orientation statistically consistent with the downward slope of the site.

1. Introduction: a poorly posed question

Since the first Spanish descriptions of Inca worksites in the sixteenth century, the dominant question has been the following: how could a civilization without a transport wheel,(...) 

10. Conclusion (...)

Four testable predictions have been formulated. The most direct and the least costly, the tribological analysis of the wear striations on the chamfered edges, can be conducted on existing material without a new field campaign. It constitutes the most immediate test of the proposed model. A hypothesis that reorganizes a file as vast as this around a principle as simple as this must be refutable by a measurement as simple as this. It is to this test that we submit it.