Brochure

Qhapaq Ñan Andean Road System

The Republics of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru share in its territory a common cultural legacy with outstanding value: the Qhapaq Ñan or Andean Road System.

For more than 10 years these countries worked together with the collaboration of the World Heritage Centre in a

pioneering project: prepare the candidacy nomination of the Qhapaq Ñan for its inscription on the World Heritage List, through a process of original and innovative regional cooperation.

Qhapaq Ñan and its Outstanding Universal Value

Qhapaq Ñan, the Andean road system, is a cultural itinerary that constitutes a unique physical accomplishment of the utmost importance to the history of humanity and of the continent of South America.

The construction of Qhapaq Ñan gave rise to an extraordinary road network, planned and laid as a permanent tract through one of the world's most broken and extreme geographical terrains, where the world's greatest biological diversity, coupled with great cultural diversity, is to be found. The roads were used by armies, whole population groups that often amounted to more than 40,000 persons and a large number of llama caravans, transporting goods and raw materials.

In addition to the distance covered by that extensive road system, the sheer scale and the quality of the road, built to link the snow-capped mountain range of the Andes, at an altitude of more than 6,000 meters high, to the coast, running through hot rainforests, fertile valleys and absolute deserts, are most outstanding.

All territories were linked to the trunk road along the mountain range of the Andes. Towns, villages and rural areas were thus integrated into a single road grid. There are outstanding examples of the road administration, architectural and engineering technology used in finding solutions to myriad problems posed by the difficult terrain and in adapting to its variable landscape by means of bridges, stairs, ditches and cobblestone paving. This all conduced, under a specific maintenance program, to the continuity, safety and sanitation of Qhapaq Ñan. Similarly, travel was facilitated by signposts, stores and staging and supply posts (wayside inns) all along the road.

When, in the sixteenth century, the Spanish reached Tawantinsuyu, a very large political entity in the Andes, they found a territory linked together by a communication system that was nearly 6,000 km long and had some 26,000 km of feeder roads. The road network was the outcome of a political project implemented by the Cusco Incas and linking towns and centers of production and worship together under an economic, social and cultural program in the service of the State.

The Europeans compared Qhapaq Ñan with the Roman road network, pointing out that, in their opinion, the Andean road technology was even more advanced than that used in Europe at the time.

The central thrust of the Incas' policy, initiated in the sixth century and recorded in millennia of pre-Hispanic Andean history, was expressed to the fullest in terms of territorial spread and maximum linkages among cultures in the fifteenth century. The exceptional feature of this great engineering feat is that its legacy is still physically, functionally and symbolically relevant to Andean peoples today.

The States of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru have now made this living heritage the focus of a transnational integration project, thus undertaking to safeguard this outstanding feature of the common cultural heritage of Andean America, a unique legacy to the world.

Colombia

Ecuador

Peru

Bolivia

Argentina

Chile

Argentina Argentina

The sections of the Qhapaq Ă‘an nominated by Argentina and the associated sites are tangible evidence of multicultural and multi-ecological integration unprecedented in world history, including the logistical challenges involved (extraction and storage of agricultural, pastoral and mining resources, mobilization of the workforce, supply of roads traversing vast deserts), exceptional military and cultural command of political boundaries and a religious tradition unique in the world, which worshipped the mountains, performing rituals and sacrifices in temples built on numerous summits higher than 6,000 meters.

Bolivia Bolivia

Andean Road extended, in the Inca era, over a large portion of Bolivian territory, across high plateaux, valleys, punas and mountain ranges inhabited by a highly diverse mosaic of peoples grouped under the name of Qollasuyo.

Apart from connecting Peru and Argentina through the high plateau, in Bolivia, the Qhapaq Nan road network penetrated region of great environmental diversity such as hot and humid tropical valleys. On one side the Desaguadero-Viacha route, the main section of the Qollasuyu, connected Cuzco to this vast and complex region. Parts of the road near Lake Titicaca, an important Andean sacred entity, traversed areas whose inhabitants conveyed ancestral cultural traditions. Even today, many of the ritual sites and points on this road have remained in oral memory and are areas of ritual activity for the Aymara people, who live on this plateau. On another side, the Choro road is clear evidence of pre-Hispanic engineering in a very difficult topography unlike many others, which certainly posed great logistical challenges because of its remoteness from populated centers at the time. In both sections of the Qhapaq Nan, the complete engineering ingenuity of Inca road technology is revealed, through the use of a wide range of efficient building resources and notable features.

Chile Chile

The Qhapaq Ă‘an in Chile is a planned road system embedded in a unique landscape of extreme conditions in terms of aridity and altitude, which shows the Inca's will and need to expand into these lands, motivated mainly by obtaining mineral resources, as underscored by the large number of road networks and archaeological sites associated with mining. The Inca managed this exploit into inhospitable territory by virtue of the exchanges it maintained with local communities who converted to the all of the ancestral knowledge required to master and cross the world's driest desert: the Atacama.

Colombia Colombia

The Qhapaq Ă‘an in Colombia represents a wide array of heritage values associated with past and present socio-cultural processes and practices. In the NariĂąo region of southern Colombia, the Pre-columbian Andean World reached its most northerly location, as part of Chinchay-suyu.

Since about the 10th century, the Andean road system was part of the basic economic strategies for the configuration of the chiefdoms, and the territories that 16th century Spanish settlers called "provincias". At that time, the micro-vertical economy- a strategy of settlement location that guarantees access to different ecosystems and resources, all located less than a day's walk from the main settlement - made use of a profuse network of roads to efficiently link sequences of the various climate zones that characterize the rugged Andean geography.

Similarly, but on a broader scale, these paths provided links for exchange and social interaction between the Andean groups in NariĂąo and those located south of the Guaitara River, at the foothills of the Amazon to the east and on the Pacific coast to the west.

During the 17th and 19th centuries, and due to the resistance of Indigenous peoples before the colonial activities of the Spanish, some of these routes and networks continued in use or were strengthened. They supported the new scheme of economic exchange, but also linked Indigenous, Mestizo, African American and European communities, fostering a unique kind of cultural diversity still present in this region of Colombia. As a legacy of these ancient processes, the Qhapaq Nan still embodies existing knowledge and techniques for the management of local soil, topography and resources, and acts as a transit corridor for local wildlife, including embankments and associated vegetation, encompassing an appropriate ecological niche.

Moreover, today these paths still link local communities, forming a fundamental part of solidarity networks and places where people meet to conduct religious festivals and pilgrimages. Therefore, the heritage values of the Qhapaq Nan in the geographical context of Southern Colombia have additionally a contemporary dimension as a living socio-cultural creation representative of the Andean worldview.

Ecuador Ecuador

The outstanding aspects of this road system are its routes and the building techniques used to cross such a complex orogen as the Ecuadorian Sierra, from the Nudo del Azuay to the north. The command of land planning, the long-term presence and role which the Mindalaes maintained in short- and long-distance exchanges led to the reuse and building of infrastructure which sustained the Inca advance.

In Ecuador, the roads enabled the relationship between the peoples of Chichaysuyu to be maintained.

The Road's itinerary lent itself to a process of exchange of social, economic and political values. The territory was occupied before the advancement of the Inca by the Paltas and Malacatos, Calvas, Ambocas and Chaparra, some of the most important peoples with their own economy and reciprocal exchange relationships to strengthen their ancient ties in various regions and ecological zones.

Ethno-historical data suggests that these groups generated surplus produce which made them self-sufficient

and

enabled

the

development of redistribution systems playing a major role for the Mindalaes, who represented trade and influenced ethnic and multi-ethnic trade and the exchange of products from different altitude tiers. The main products traded were garlic, cotton, salt, coca and particularly Spondylum and Strombus shells.

PerĂş PerĂş

Qhapaq Ă‘an starts in the Inca Plaza of Haukaypata, located in Cuzco, the centre of political, social and economic power of the Inca State, where gods, people, animals and resources from all of the Andean world converged. The roads integrated and connected the Inca capital with all of the populations and complementary centres for trade, exchange, production and worship through the administrative, production, military and religious centres implemented in the four regions of the Inca Empire: Chinchaysuyu in the north, Antisuyu in the east, Kuntisuyu in the west and Qollasuyu in the south.

Peru harbours major traces of the longitudinal and cross roads which are the result of the perfect command and control of the territory and which in themselves show highly specialized road engineering. In this region, road design and technology are developed to the maximum, with well-accomplished road and bridge designs and fine finishings on the buildings in the monumental administrative and service centres that are part of the Qhapaq Nan network.

Peru's territory illustrates almost all of the geographical contexts of the Qhapaq Nan, from the warm and wild coast, to the thick, humid and mysterious forest, not to mention the summits of the immense Andes, complex and majestic settings which evoke the magnitude of the logistics implemented and managed and the size of the workforce used to build and maintain it.

Currently, some Peruvian peoples continue to use the Qhapaq Nan as a communication system, keeping it in service physically and functionally, with the use of Andean technology and traditions based on reciprocal and complementary systems characteristic of Inca society and the Andean world.

Based on the nomination and research work for the Qhapaq Nan carried out in the last few years, Peru has selected six sections of the road and a pre-Hispanic bridge for the current nomination process which, in this first stage, demonstrate the presence and importance of the Qhapaq Nan within its national territory.

Justification of Outstanding Universal Value (According with cultural criteria of the World Heritage Convention) The Advisory Body recommends the inscription of the Qhapaq Ă‘an Andean Road System under the following criteria: Criterion (ii) The features and archaeological evidence of the Andean Road network reflect a dynamic exchange of values, the use of architectural elements and political structures existing in the pre-Inca and Inca eras, such as the maintenance of strategic lines related to production and land occupancy in different altitude tiers, through the use of an agricultural system known as "vertical control".

Criterion (iii) The Inca stood amidst this panorama, their most notable achievement perhaps being that of having discovered the specificities of each of these peoples and applying a very strict system of organization enabling the exchange of social, political and economic values among them in the pre-Inca and Inca eras.

Criterion (iv) The road network has characteristic features in its different architectural elements, in terms of its walls, roads, steps, roadside ditches, sewage pipes, drains, etc., with construction methods that vary adapting to progression and region. To this must be added the construction of a State infrastructure with standardized architectural elements for the control, protection and management of the area and use of the products of the mountains, coast and Amazonia. The archaeological sites selected portray this magnificent infrastructure: administrative and political centres, resting places (inns), cairns, chasquiwasis (resting places for messengers), military fortresses used in wars caused by the expansion of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu), silos, ushnus (ceremonial platforms), earth mounds and petroglyphs, with a diverse landscape associated with natural elements: mountains, lakes, jungles and flora and fauna showing how populations coexisted with their natural environment.

Notwithstanding, the six State Parties consider that the property meets also the following criteria: Criterion (i) The outstanding aspects of this road network are the routes and building techniques used to cover one of the planet's most complex mountain systems. The construction of this network represents the synthesis of cultural development in South America. The Qhapaq Ă‘an Andean Road and some of the pre-Hispanic sites inscribed have been located and admired since the sixteenth century by many chroniclers, explorers and travellers who traversed this major engineering work of the pre-Inca and Inca eras.

Criterion (v) The road system reflects the interrelation of communities with their geographical and natural environment such as mountains, lakes and water. The altitude of the network ranges from 28 metres to 6,700 metres spanning plateaux, mountain ranges and valleys. The road and architectural infrastructure works maintain a relationship with the surrounding landscape such as water resources, mountains, lakes, etc. The topography of the network is very uneven. Similarly, interregional use via mountain passes determines its relationship and the exchange of products and the use of resources of the three zones (coast, mountains, Amazonia) as well as regional exchange with the other suyos (areas).

Criterion (vi) It connects living communities which still use the Road and keep it in their memory. Through language and oral tradition, it lives on as part of their world view and it is indirectly associated with ancestral traditions and techniques passed on from generation to generation. The respect and appropriate use of the different elements of nature: hills, water, animals and plants, create a world which nourishes part of their knowledge and wisdom in their desire to establish harmony, a balance between human beings and the natural environment.

Authenticity: Due to its unique historical evolution, this cultural itinerary has retained a level of authenticity in its integral natural and societal features that are outstanding in the Andean region. Resulting from a continental scale of cultural interaction between man and environment in some of the most extreme geographies of the planet, it has preserved its spatial and physical structure to an exceptionally high degree. Today cultural traditions allow the communication system to continue being functional in terms of exchange of production, symbolic practises and the persistence of Andean cosmovision.

Integrity: The property appropriately retains all the archaeological elements linked to the evidence of formation and development of the Inca Empire and all the anthropological capital that continues today serving as an articulation mechanism that still retains the significance and function of the communication system.

“ D estos caminos reales avía muchos en todo el reyno, así por la sierra como por los llanos. Entre todos quatro se tienen por las más ynportantes, que son los que salían de la çibdad del Cuzco, de la misma plaça della como cruzero a las provinçias del reyno. Y esto vemos claro porque yo e visto junto a Vilcas tres o quatro caminos...ya éstos llaman al uno camino de Ynga Yupangue y al otro Topa Ynga, y al que agora se usa y se usara para siempre es el que mandó hazer Guaynacapa… camino tan largo que avía de una parte a otra más de milI y dozientas leguas..."

Pedro de Cieza de León Crónista del Perú, 1553