Many Roads Were Built

During a time of peace and prosperity in the Land of Promise, “There were many highways cast up (built), and many roads made, which led from city to city, and form land to land, and from place to place” (3 Nephi 6:8)

According to Saunders in “Monumental roads,” the Peruvian Road System of antiquity “must rank alongside the Great Wall of China and the Egyptian Pyramids as one of the greatest achievements of any ancient civilization.” This vast communications network covered about 24,000 miles, running for more than 14, 290 miles directly through Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile. Generally, these roads were 36 to 82 feet wide, and were greatly superior to anything built in Europe at that time.

These roads through the Andes were built long before the Inca, by a pre-historic civilization dating well into the first millennium B.C. When the Spaniards came, the Inca were using the roads to travel throughout their Empire, and as a result, the conquistadores called the road system the Inca Roads, a title which has been handed down for nearly 600 years. However, these roads were built long before the Inca who told the Spanish conquerors they “had been built long before the Inca arrived.”

According to the Spaniards who first saw them, this road system was superior to anything they had ever seen. Built in a country of harsh weather, extremely difficult topography, very tall mountains, deep canyons, wide rivers, and deserts (some of the driest in the world), these roads had tunnels that cut through mountains of solid rock, rope bridges that ran across deep ravines, canyons and rivers, and at the same time, had level road areas that remain level even today.

Some roads were causeways 60-feet wide across swamps and water courses, had rock walls to delimit the roadways. The builders hauled cut stone for miles to pave the roads and build the steps over hills and mountains in such a way that they have survived, pretty much intact, for more than 1000 years in one of the worst earthquake areas in the world, and in both damp coastal areas, high arid altiplano valleys, and freezing, snow covered mountains.

Photos Courtesy Rutashsa Adventures