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The last Inca bridge master
Nearly 500 years after the collapse of the largest empire in the Americas, a single bridge remains from the Inca's extraordinary road system – and it's rewoven every year from grass.
But through an ingenious system of engineering and strict organisation, they managed to create the largest empire ever seen in the Americas – a sprawling two-million-sq-km civilisation that extended across parts of modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina – encompassing as many as 12 million people and 100 languages. Considered one of the greatest engineering feats in the ancient world and rapturously proclaimed "the most stupendous and useful works ever executed by man" by 19th-Century geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, the Qhapaq Ñan extended for nearly 40,000km – roughly the circumference of the globe. After the cables have been heaved to the edge of the rocky canyon and painstakingly pulled into place by teams working on opposite sides of the river, the villagers cut down the old, sagging bridge, letting the all-natural structure plummet into the Apurimac and slowly decompose.
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