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For Inca Road Builders, Extreme Terrain Was No Obstacle (20K mile road)
NPR ^ | 08/29/2015 | Jasmine Garsd

Posted on 08/29/2015 4:10:26 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen

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To: Jack Hydrazine

Excellent


21 posted on 08/29/2015 5:41:58 PM PDT by Tijeras_Slim
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To: MUDDOG

From the article:

“Kevin Gover, the director of the National Museum of the American Indian, says the road is largely forgotten because it just doesn’t fit into a typical Western narrative.
“Indians play one of two roles in that narrative,” he says. “They are either the opponents of civilization or they are literally part of the nature that was there to be settled and conquered. We’re not taught that some of these were very advanced civilizations, because that means this wasn’t a wilderness. And that means somebody had to be displaced. And it wasn’t necessarily a noble endeavor.”

Yes. They were quite skilled for a culture just barely out of the Stone Age. They were very good at fitting blocks together and knowing where the stars would be, and they were on the verge of creating writing. My ancestors had a similar stage of development about 2500 years ago, before the Greeks and Romans brought civilization to them.


22 posted on 08/29/2015 5:48:24 PM PDT by VanShuyten ("a shadow...draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.")
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To: DUMBGRUNT
The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is four feet, eight and a half inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the U.S. railroads.

Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the prerailroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long-distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long-distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of its legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts? Roman war chariots made the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Thus, the standard U.S. railroad gauge of four feet, eight and a half inches derives from the specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.

Specs and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two warhorses."

23 posted on 08/29/2015 5:54:40 PM PDT by jpsb (Believe nothing until it has been officially denied)
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To: VanShuyten

There is a lot of political correctness in building up the Incas.

Europe was FAR ahead of them, as you point out.


24 posted on 08/29/2015 5:56:23 PM PDT by MUDDOG
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To: VanShuyten
from wiki

The Incan high priests took the children to high mountaintops for sacrifice. As the journey was extremely long and arduous, especially so for the younger, coca leaves were fed to them to aid them in their breathing so as to allow them to reach the burial site alive. Upon reaching the burial site, the children were given an intoxicating drink to minimize pain, fear, and resistance. They were then killed either by strangulation, a blow to the head, or by leaving them to lose consciousness in the extreme cold and die of exposure.[9]

25 posted on 08/29/2015 5:59:28 PM PDT by jpsb (Believe nothing until it has been officially denied)
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To: DUMBGRUNT

Here’s a good, basic article about the migrations into the Western Hemisphere:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2172522/The-First-Americans-Humans-arrived-THREE-great-migrations-land-bridge-Siberia—DNA-differences-detected-today.html


26 posted on 08/29/2015 6:04:19 PM PDT by VanShuyten ("a shadow...draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.")
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To: MUDDOG

From the article;

“Back in the day — more than 500 years ago — commoners like me wouldn’t have been able to walk on the Inca Road, known as Qhapaq Ñan in the Quechua language spoken by the Inca, without official permission.”

They might not have been as PC as the promoters want us to believe.


27 posted on 08/29/2015 6:04:35 PM PDT by Balding_Eagle (The Great Wall of Trump ---- 100% sealing of the border. Coming soon.)
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To: jpsb
And the ruts? Roman war chariots made the initial ruts,

Not a problem for the Incas!
The never got around to the wheel!

No pizzas! No bicycles, no Jeeps to ride the back roads they made!!!

The Euros had about a 6,000 year head start on the Incas!

28 posted on 08/29/2015 6:18:44 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT (BINGO!)
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To: DUMBGRUNT

Not really, humans have been in the Americas since the end of the last ice age. Not much was happening in Eurasia with mile high ice on most of it. Only when the ice melted it civilization get going and modern humans were in all continents at that time.


29 posted on 08/29/2015 6:25:31 PM PDT by jpsb (Believe nothing until it has been officially denied)
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To: Kid Shelleen
And for some reason; at least according to the Republicrats, the Democans, the enemedia and miscellaneous enemies of the United States, we can't build a simple concrete wall with all of our modern technology.
Makes you wonder just how stupid and helpless Americans have become.
30 posted on 08/29/2015 6:28:10 PM PDT by 5th MEB (Progressives in the open; --- FIRE FOR EFFECT!!)
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To: SunkenCiv

not seeing a ggg ping yet, sorry if redundant (?)


31 posted on 08/29/2015 6:39:10 PM PDT by SteveH
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To: jpsb

“Only when the ice melted it civilization get going and modern humans were in all continents at that time.”

If Al Gore and his followers had been alive at that time they would have had a field day with all that global warming melting the ice!


32 posted on 08/29/2015 7:04:01 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (Pubbies = national collectivists; Dems = international collectivists; We need a second party!)
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To: Smokin' Joe

IIRC, margarine too.


33 posted on 08/29/2015 7:16:12 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT (BINGO!)
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To: Kid Shelleen

Necessity is the mother of invention.

The Incas had no need for such an elaborate road system. Indeed, the Incas acknowledge that these roads were the technology of a more ancient civilization. The pier bridge building techniques were never duplicated by the Incas as were most of the ancient sites located along the road. The roads and the megalithic sites far outdate the Incas. Ancient aliens? Nah... just very industrious farmers with really good wood and stone tools.


34 posted on 08/29/2015 7:17:23 PM PDT by UglyinLA
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To: WayneS

When the Incas had to transport heavy objects, they relied on manpower, often to the considerable sorrow of the men doing the powering (some 3,000 of 20,000 workers died dragging one particularly massive stone, according to chronicles)

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/223/why-did-the-peoples-of-the-new-world-fail-to-invent-the-wheel


35 posted on 08/29/2015 7:17:50 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT (BINGO!)
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To: VanShuyten

Thanks!

Thor Heyerdahl had the latest info when I was in school.


36 posted on 08/29/2015 7:21:53 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT (BINGO!)
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To: MUDDOG

Oh yes the Incas were so advanced and influential at 3’ tall

Our superiors in every way

Does any studies tht ends in “_____ology” of humanity not exist today to find any evidence real or imagined to diminish European civilization and white accomplishment as either stolen or inferior

Meanwhile just look at the world and tell me who’s the liar in this charade?


37 posted on 08/29/2015 7:23:09 PM PDT by wardaddy (White boy wiggers in pickups with Cope and Rebel Flags and cowboy rap....FMR)
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To: wardaddy

“White folks was in caves while we was building empires!” —Rev Al.


38 posted on 08/29/2015 7:31:36 PM PDT by MUDDOG
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To: JoeProBono

So that’s how it got to be 20,000 miles long. What distance is it “as the crow flies” 20-30 miles?

20,000 miles is approx. 80% circumference of the earth.


39 posted on 08/29/2015 7:36:26 PM PDT by Graybeard58 (Hillary not only brings old baggage wherever she goes, she picks up new baggage when she gets there)
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To: VanShuyten

Well done thank you

I’m old enough to have been raised before the brown and black and yellow accomplishment bullshit brainwash began

This relativism belongs with global warming

The biggest accomplishment ever in the Andes wasn’t these little sacrifice altar dweebs

It was Bolivar troop movement from Venezuela to Colombia and later on to Peru

That still is a modern marvel of epic proportion from 5000 meter passes to jungle and llanos and victorious

I saw his victory site near Tunja and where he quartered at Villa de Leyva

Done by an idealistic white man


40 posted on 08/29/2015 7:36:33 PM PDT by wardaddy (White boy wiggers in pickups with Cope and Rebel Flags and cowboy rap....FMR)
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