Kuélap
How did a pre-Inca cloud-forest people, with no writing, no draft animals, and no iron tools, quarry and haul an enormous volume of limestone up to a 3,000-metre ridgetop and raise perimeter walls up to 20 metres high around more than 400 stone houses — and why did they wrap a mountaintop settlement in defences on that scale?
main construction c. 900–1100 CE, on a site first occupied around the 6th century (Chachapoya culture) · Kuélap, near Tingo, Luya Province, Amazonas Region, PeruAdded July 2026