Two villages either side of the Apurimac River in Peru must rebuild the rope bridge linking their communities every year. You wonder: why don’t they build a modern one that lasts? Then you watch the video and you know why.
Produced for the exhibition “The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire” (http://americanindian.si.edu/inkaroad/), on view at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., through June 1, 2018. Every year, local communities on either side of the Apurimac River Canyon use traditional Inka engineering techniques to rebuild the Q’eswachaka Bridge. The old bridge is taken down and the new bridge is built in only three days. The bridge has been rebuilt in this same location continually since the time of the Inka. This video is narrated by John Ochsendorf, professor of civil engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and produced by Noonday Films.