Unesco grants Inca Qhapaq Nan road system World Heritage status

Qhapaq Ñan otherwise know as the Main Andean Road, was the backbone of the Inca Empire’s political & economic power. The whole network of roads over 30,000 km (18,600 miles) in length used to connect various production, administrative & ceremonial centres constructed over more than 2,000 years of pre-Inca Andean culture from modern-day Colombia in the north to Argentina and Chile in the south, via Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.

The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu is famous around the world and thousands of tourists flock to the region to walk the trail each and every day.  However, the trail that many tourists know is just a small sector of the thread of Inca paths that held this great empire together, physically & organizationally.


Description

The Main axis of the route, also known as the Royal Road runs along the peaks of the Andes which is at it's most discernable between Quito (Ecuador) and Mendoza (Argentina). In addition to this backbone over the highest peaks, other roads also run in a north-south direction along the Pacific coast. The Inca Empire organized its network on a continent-wide scale; its roads are an invaluable expression of the organizing and planning spirit of the available labour force and constituted a key instrument in unifying the Empire physically and organizationally.

This route is a demonstration of universal value on a grand scale. Experts' meetings have been held to identify the cultural significance and unitary value of the entire network with a view to considering options for its inclusion on the World Heritage list through various forms of technical cooperation.

The Incas of Cuzco achieved this unique infrastructure with a unitary character in less than a century, making it functionally coherent and establishing additional centres for commerce, exchange, production and worship, adapting production sectors to topography and climate, in each ecological area to be found along the Road. The Road also expressed these peoples’ harmonious relation with and their adaptation to the complex Andean natural setting. Today, the cultural landscapes of Qhapaq Ñan form an exceptional backdrop on which living Andean cultures continue to convey a universal message: the human ability to turn one of the harshest geographical contexts of the American continent into an environment for life.

Source: Unesco