This is How They Built the Inca Stone Walls | Ancient Architects

[Music] hello everybody and welcome to ancient architects please subscribe now to get the latest ancient history news an independent research from around the world more than one year ago I made a video about the famous Inca or pre inca stone walls of Peru and I presented the hypothesis that the reason they are made from irregular blocks of stone yet interlock so perfectly is because they are made from stacking cement bags although I presented the idea many viewers have pointed out a number of problems with this hypothesis I have to admit that geologically this idea doesn't work as the rocks have been analyzed and the quarry's have been located so I have since been searching for an alternative explanation and I believe I found a researcher who does have the answer thanks to a subscriber who sent me a link I have read a paper by Helmut tree bouche for the STRP Journal for Earth Sciences and environmental studies that was published back in December 2017 titled on the reddish glittery mud the inky use for perfecting their stone masonry and Wow I think he may have solved this age-old conundrum in this video I will quote his paper and present Helmut's ideas but I strongly urge you to download the paper by clicking the link in the description below since its discovery by the Spanish conquerors the masonry of the Inca buildings have left most archaeologists earth scientists and independent researchers truly baffled with stone blocks frequently megalithic in nature fitted together in such an exact and perfect manner so that often a razor blade cannot be inserted into the joints it is without doubt one of the most amazing accomplishments of human construction and it certainly deserves our attention especially as iron tools were apparently not known to the culture that is supposedly responsible for them the Inca I and many others have long believed that the stone structures are the work of a lost ancient civilization because nobody has yet come up with a logical explanation of just how the Inca could have built them yet radiocarbon de from organic material from beneath the structures as well as archaeological finds associated with them or give a date within the Inka time line it is generally accepted by researchers associated with Peruvian history that there is no secret formula to the construction of these stone walls and they were simply created with primitive stone tools for hammering and fine sound for polishing the builders were just incredibly patient and meticulous but I don't buy this look at this sides look at the size of the overall structures as well as some of the size of some of the individual blocks and then just look at how perfectly they have been put together where these really done just a few hundred years ago by the Inca civilization with stone tools before we can hypothesize about the age of these structures we first need to work out how they were built in the first place and I think that helmet rubbish has finally done it's as the authors say is the quality of the Inka masonry is highly varied and many structures have been crudely patched up at a later date but the most important monuments are those that are made with perfectly jointed stone of different shapes and sizes the stones are polygonal and often of convex pillar like faces and sunken joints some believe that the Inca builders enjoyed the effects of this irregularity and the play of light and shadow on the walls but there is also no doubt that such intricate stonework would have also been earthquake resistance inca walls are also typically inclined inward by three to five degrees and this is no accident as it makes them more stable in the earthquake rich area of South America also building in this manner means that every single stone in a structure has its preferred position in an earthquake the walls do become destabilized because of the vibration and they dance around accordingly but when the movement stops stones in such a structure find their original place again because gravity favors their position with perfectly matched interfaces this of course does not happen with regular brick structures as the vibrational damage becomes permanent this style of stone building is also not unique to Peru it is also used by the Egyptians as seen on the casing stones at the Giza pyramid of menkaure and is also seen in ancient Greece but in this video we are going to look at the interlocking stone structures of South America the softest stone used in these structures is limestone which as the author states is applied for the foundations of the Sacsayhuaman fortress but not for the impressive facades which are made of undersides an igneous rock quarried 35 kilometres away in fact the commonality in the rocks used in these interlocking stone structures is the fact that they are all made of hard igneous rocks that contain quartz feldspars and other minerals the composition of the stone structures of Peru are not widely known but Sri bouche explains this in detail and aside is one such volcanic rock and is also found in the walls at Cusco and rock chai diorite which is magmatic in origin is also frequently used this is compositionally the same as undersides well has larger crystals as it formed at a slower raids granite which is also composed mainly of quartz and feldspar as well as its fine grained equivalent rhyolite are found at machu picchu and Alanta Tumbo respectively what we learn from studying the rock types of the walls in ancient Peru is that they are igneous in nature and were the andesite diorite Granite's or rhyolites their composition is characterized by having a high quartz and feldspar content these are known as silicate minerals due to their high silica content it is these rock types and their composition that is key to understanding how these stone walls were built but there are more observations that first need to be considered first of all generally when you look at the stone walls in cross-section only the front or visible section of such a wall show the perfect fitting where the wall is load-bearing though most of the rock interfaces are well fitted many joints are only well fitted to a depth of a few centimeters and the leftover space is filled with smallest as tribute points outs on the rear side of such walls the fitting is not perfect and is often accompanied by filling material so in most cases of such walls the perfect joints are observed on the outer faces so that they look beautiful from the outside it was often simply a finish almost always on the bottom surfaces where a stone sits directly on another the joint is also perfect by the imprint of the entire irregular bottom face of the upper stone can be seen on the upper face of the stone below it is almost like the lowest stone acted like plasticine deep inside the wall though the joints between rocks on the left right front and back are far from perfect but the joints are both and below are however there are places where the perfect fitting does extend into the inside of the wall and in some cases it continues all the way through to the opposite side such as a sax aha man and the sacred plaza in Machu Picchu so just how did they do this how did the ancient people of Peru make a perfect imprint of the bottom of the stone above on to the top of the stone below true bouche takes a look at the writings of early chroniclers and cites Garcilaso de la Vega who wrote in 1609 and Caesar de Leon who wrote in 1553 as two of the best sources of information Casa la Sol have a Spanish father but his mother was an Inca princess niece of the Inca ruler who ena capac he had a good education and mixed with influential Incas before emigrating to Spain at age 20 there he wrote his Inca history Caesar de Leon was a Spanish conquistador with a modest education but has proved to be quite a reliable chronicler in terms of the accuracy of his writings both confirm what mainstream researchers say that the inker used harder stone tools to chip and grind stones into shape the Jesuit priest Barnaby Cobo reports seeing the Inca using tools made from extremely sharp volcanic glass known as obsidian and this was used to dress stones he also says that the size of the construction teams who are employed to cut and grind the stones were huge so there was an element of brute force as well as a high volume of workers to prepare building projects Goss elasto de la Vega mentions the perfectly fitted stone walls and although they look to have no space for mortar he says that mortar was applied into the construction he says it was made from a reddish sticky clay known as a lanka Kalpa which they made into a paste they used it to philip gashes and pits caused in working the stones Caesar de Leon rised in some buildings of a lanty Tambo molten gold was found instead of mortar in a certain area of the Royal Palace and together with applied bitumen ensure the stones remain fitted together Gosselaar saw also states in many of the royal palaces and temples of the Sun they poured in molten lead silver and gold for mortar when explaining the Inca masonry when Caesar de Leon talks about a bitumen substance Tribute believes he is clearly defining a combustible material so in summary both chroniclers confirm that a mortar or bitumen was used and it is described as a reddish and sticky clay and it was also combustible in other instances gold and silver were poured into the joints but strangely nothing remained visible in the joint between the stone blocks and Garcilaso de la Vega even says that no trace of mortar remained between the stones after it was applied this is therefore quite the conundrum as the brilliant Brien Foerster has shown in many of his videos many of the Inca stone walls display a glazed appearance particularly as stone junctions but sometimes across the entire stone surface this can only suggest a special surface treatment it is seen in the city of Cusco Alanta Tumbo machupicchu and many more as shown in helmet trebuchet paper here we see part of a wall some four meters high Atalanta tombos son temple here only the joints are highly reflective and they appear to be vitrified whilst the rest of the structure looks to be simply hammered there was obviously special treatment with regards to the joints many of these surfaces also refract and diffract lights and due to the vitrification the surfaces are also smoother to the touch it is therefore a clear scientific fact that there is partial and selective chemical treatment of stone joints and surfaces as true boosh explains natural humic acid slowly weathers silica minerals in rocks such as rhyolite and Granite's certain acids like tartaric acid dissolved silicate minerals ten times faster than other acids so as the Inka structures are all made from silica rich rocks which we detailed earlier did the builders have access to a highly acidic liquid mud or paste to artificially accelerate the weathering of the rocks to fit them together the answer is yes during their mining activities Inka miners would have certainly learned to know about what is known as acid mine water which comes from mines rich in sulfide minerals such as iron pyrite also known as fool's gold as tribute stays acid mine water is an unavoidable problem of environmental pollution in sulfide containing mines and it's severely damages stone and wooden equipments in mines and there is evidence of historic sulfide mining in the Inca Territory mining in this region goes back two to three thousand years as the Incas and pre inca civilizations mined gold silver copper and tin these mines were associated with sulfide deposits and the workers must therefore have been familiar with acid mine water and his corrosive effects on rocks certain types of bacteria that are present in mine environments are responsible for activating the chemical reactions they gain their energy from the oxidation of sulfide minerals such as pie rides I won't go into detail by the chemical reactions that take place as this is detailed in the fantastic scientific paper link below in the description but the whole prose test results in an acid substance sometimes a solution but it can also be in the form of a paste or a merged basically it is a byproduct of the bacterias reaction with the pyrite minerals the Incas were therefore have certainly learned how to transform metal sulphide particles into a reddish acidic mud and would be all too familiar with how it affects silica rich rocks from their extensive mining activity the red acid mud would have been a common sight for the Inca miners with a pH as low as 0.5 it is approximately 10,000 times more acidic and the natural humic acid that is known to slowly degrade the rocks used to build the Inca structures can in the silica rich minerals they contain into kaolin and clay this all ties in with what the historic Chronicle has said about the reddish mud being used by the Incas in their construction projects and helmet rubbish puts forward the case that this acidic paste was used to soften the edges and faces of the rocks to mold them into tightly fitting walls as well as the substance made of dissolve silicates being pushed into the tiny gaps between the stones as we can see here but there's more tribute recalls the old Peruvian legend written down by priest George Lehrer that states that the Inca stonemasons used a herb or plant to soften rocks the legend may actually have a hint of truth because if you had organic matter - the acidic red clay substance from the mines it's actually aids in the silicate minerals dissolution are scientifically proven by Bennett and Cayce in their 1994 paper titled chemistry and mechanisms of low-temperature dissolution of silicates by organic acids the substance was already a low enough pH to dissolve the silicate minerals but the organic material would further accelerate this again the details of the science can be read in the paper the historian Caesar de Leon did mention of the Inca used bitumen to fit stones together which of course is a combustible material he also said that molten gold was used with it real gold has never been found inside the joints of the Inca stone wall and tributes therefore makes the fair assumption that he mistook gold for fool's gold the iron sulfide mineral pie rides well for Caesar de león's bicha mint with the acidic red clay it assumes that heat was involved pyrite when finely grained is subject to self heating when in the right conditions temperatures and when mixed in the right substance for example heating the clay substance with additional crushed pyrites by 100 degrees can generate a temperature of 330 degrees within the substance the stone builders of the Inca could have added extra crushed pyrite from the red clay from the mines and heated the substance to accelerate the chemical reactions and to mold the rocks faster self oxidation would be the results and it would have produced very hot sulfuric acid very easily so to summarize tribute thinks and the acid mud and possibly with the extra crushed pyrite and organic matter is likely to have been placed between two building stones and the weight of the upper stone would have gradually leveled the unevenness the dissolved silica particles would be redistributed before recrystallization creating the tight fit that we see this would have modeled the shape of the weight-bearing stone onto the lower one as you can see only the tops of the stones in the wall look to be unevenly shaped and that is simply due to the weight of the stones above thanks to the acidic substance the dissolve silicate particles could even be applied to the small holes and gaps and that is why we see seemingly small multi-faced perfectly cut stones inside walls of larger blocks because the dissolved silicate substance was inserted into the hole like a paste and allowed to cool and recrystallize once the stones molded into one another they would have been treated and finished with tools a similar but slightly different strategy would have been applied for the vertical interfaces between the stone blocks to add further credence to this theory scientific tests on the vitrified jointed areas of the rocks have shown traces of and so far just as we would expect to see due to the makeup of the mineral pyrites the author of the paper admits that is more work to be done but as somebody who has looked into the Inca stone walls a great deal this theory for me is without doubts the most compelling one I've ever come across surprisingly is one that doesn't require ancient high technology and it also doesn't imply a lost ancient civilization the only mysteries remaining are the protrusions or nose that we see so often and also how such large stones were brought into position but maybe these also have straightforward explanations and I'll be discussing this further in future videos next month I am launching a second youtube channel called space and planets which will focus on earth and space science news as well as independent scientific research please subscribe now to give my channel a head start and I'll begin making videos next month you can find the link in the description below thank you very much for watching this episode of ancient architects if you enjoyed the video please subscribe to the channel please like the video and please leave a comment below thank you very much

Channel: Ancient Architects

Views: 770,601

Rating: 4.276288 out of 5

Keywords: Inca, Inca Stone Walls, Peruvian, Peru History, Machu Picchu, Cuzco, Brien Foerster, Ancient Architects, Helmut Tributsch, sacsayhuaman, Ollantaytambo, Spanish Conquistadors, Spanish, Incas, The Inca, Garcilaso de la vega, Huayna capac, Barnabe Cobo, Cieza de leon, How did the Inca Build their walls?, Ancient High Technology, Lost Ancient Civilisation, Pre-Inca History, Inca Gold, Graham Hancock, Bright Insight, Lost History

Id: _KbSFphHCZY

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/PracticalWriting]

Slow acidification. How long does it take to make a building? Are we talking about 10 years to fit a single stone, and then hope it molds into position, making it earthquake proof? If they could get the stone weighing 100 of + tonnes into position without the use of a wheel or horse or cattle or elephant. Has the theory been tested on stones that size, how long do they take to acidify?

The theory certainly grafts some smaller stones and possibly later construction.

It doesn't Explain their civilization coming out of Lake Titicaca the highest lake in the World with a submerged temple within.

[u/winstonsmithwatson]

This guy has the most annoying way of finishing sentences

[u/GeauxTiger]

This is very interesting, id love to know how possible it may or may not be

[u/monstrousvirtue]

Seems like a lot of acid, which suggests an industrial level chemical production capability. I'll have to watch to see if that's addressed.