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Inca Homes

The prime design of the Inca homes was a single rectangular shape. It's believed the Incas use reed mats to separate the environments of the house. The Inca houses have two environments one for parents and other for children, kitchen and living room. The Incas use mud bricks for the walls and wooden beams for the roofs, covered with straw. The roofs of straw were so compress that they were waterproof; the roof was replace every three years.

The original Inca houses are build with no windows and one entrance without door. Peruvian investigators believe the Incas use reed mats doors to protect the house from the cold at night. The Inca homes were call Pirkas and they were primary build using mud bricks with corn straw as binding material. But for high status families it was use polished stone; the quality of the stone use to build the house increase with the status of the family.

The Inca homes in the city had a different distribution. They still have the rectangular shape unique space, but they are group in six rectangular homes with a central common area. The six houses are group in a rectangle, with a mud wall around them, with two common entrances to the left and right. The name of this multi home format was Cancha; it was the basic construction cell of the Inca cities. We assume that in each Cancha lived at list six families.

The Inca homes in the city did not belong permanent to one family. Remember, everything belongs to the Inca Government so they decide when a family has to move. The reference the Incas use to maximize the use of the houses was simple. They put one couple in one rectangular space until this couple has one or two children. Ones the family gets bigger, they are move to a bigger space and a new couple enters the house; big families could take a full Cancha.

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. Containers with salted fish and containers with corn, plus other fresh vegetables; sometimes the kitchens were next to small corrals with llamas.

During cold winter's, the Incas use llamas to get warm at night. It means, the llamas enter the house and sleep with the family as a group to stay warm at night. Another common practice of the Inca People was to keep skulls of death ancestors. They place them in a corner of the house; it was believe the skulls will protect the family from dangerous people and bad spirits.

All Inca homes had a small altar with their favorite divinities images and other important items for the family. The Incas had a strong tradition of family ties, so honor their ancestors was part of the Inca Daily Life. All Inca traditions are not death, because as incredible as it sounds, the Inca city of Ollantaytambo in Cusco is the last living Inca city.

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. They still speak Quechua, which is the language of the Incas. They still use the Andenes to grow their crops, llamas to stay worm in the winter and guinea pigs in the kitchen. Everything just like it was over 500 years ago.