Inca Houses and Homes


Inca houses were very simple. They often consisted of just one room (although some houses did have an upper storey with a wooden floor). Inca homes did not have furniture. People sat and slept on reed mats or animal skins.

The Incas were most famous for their masonry. Masonry were blocks of stone that were cut, ground, and polished until the surface was smooth and shaped to perfection.

Types of Masonry

The Incas developed two types of masonry: coursed and polygonal. In coursed masonry, all stones were rectangular, placed in even horizontal rows, and tightly joined with sunken joints.

At night people slept on the floor around a crude stove, which was made of stone cemented with mud. During the day, people spent most of their time outdoors.

Inca Houses and Homes

All the Inca homes of the city of Ollantaytambo, follows the exactly same traditions since the Inca times. It's like they frozen in time. The Peruvian people that live in this city salt their fish, dry their meat, dry the potatoes and corn with the same techniques the Incas use before.

Inca Houses Facts

The Incas did not use tiles or shingles to cover their roofs, but had to depend on thatch made of grass as bushes. The thatch was tied to the purlins and was kept from blowing away by being tied to the ends of the projecting roof pegs.

The rest of the time, the fortress housed some of the military. The military checked everyone coming in or out of the cities. The cities were very safe. Inca architects were careful about drainage and guarded against the accumulation of ground water wherever it was not wanted.

Inca Houses and Homes

The main room of the Inca homes was the kitchen. It had a fireplace for cooking and a mud oven to bake corn bread. The Inca kitchen had containers with dry food, guinea pigs walking free in the floor and dry strips of meat of llama hanging from the roof.

Inca Houses Facts

A typical Inca house was a one-room rectangular building of adobe brick or stone with a thatched, gabled roof, and without windows or a chimney. The use of bar-locks, eye-bonders and roof pegs by the Incas is an evidence of inventive genius which testifies to long occupancy in the high lands.

Cancha was the term used to describe a collection of six houses of Inca. Such cancha's made the city of inca. All the Inca homes of the city of Ollantaytambo, follows the exactly same traditions since the Inca times. It's like they frozen in time.

More info on- Inca Architecture, Religion, Building, Clothing

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