Tinkuqchaka: A Suspension Bridge over the Upper Pampas River, Ayacucho, Peru

Abstract

Andean geography has posed diverse challenges to human activity. High mountains, rugged terrains, deep canyons, and torrential rivers were significant obstacles that effectively would have isolated settlements and entire regions. However, the desire to reach out to adjacent communities and distant lands pushed to the limit the ingenuity and imagination of past Indigenous Andean societies. By the time the Inka Empire flourished, the peoples of the Andes had already mastered the difficult geography, not only by building agricultural terraces over rugged terrain but also by building across the challenging landscape a road system described by the Spaniards as “the longest and grandest in the world.” However, the road system would have been ineffective without its most important component, the suspension bridges built over deep canyons and rapid currents. The suspension bridges, some of them as long as 50 m, made the interaction between distant peoples possible. Although it remains uncertain when suspension bridges were first built in the region, they likely antedated the Inka Empire by several centuries. Suspension bridges, so critical in the past, have largely been abandoned. One exception is Tinkuqchaka, a suspension bridge that continues to be renewed over the upper Pampas River, in the Peruvian central highlands. Tinkuqchaka is built by the inhabitants of Sarhua, one of the few Andean communities to maintain ancient technology. We assert that the survival of this technology initially was due to the marginal location of Sarhua that until just over a decade ago was reachable only by foot.