A team of archaeologists has discovered an ancient labyrinthine system of tunnels hidden beneath the Peruvian city of Cusco, a former Inca stronghold nestled in the Andes mountains. The tunnel network, known as a Chinkana, stretches over 1,750 metres at a depth of up to 2.5 metres, and is evidence of Cusco’s centrality to the Inca Empire, the largest nexus of power in Pre-Columbian America.
The Kingdom of Cusco was founded as a small city-state in the early 13th century by the Incas, who eventually incorporated vast swaths of South America during the empire’s zenith in the late 1400s.
In a press conference held at the Provincial Municipality of Cusco, the lead archaeologists Jorge Calero Flores and Mildred Fernandez Palomino detailed the breadth of the Chinkana, which reaches from Cusco’s Temple of the Sun towards a citadel on the city’s outskirts known as Sacsayhuamán. The system has three branches—one leads to Callispuquio, the second runs behind the Church of San Cristóbal, and the third stretches through the Muyucmarca sector of Sacsayhuamán. The existence of these branches suggests that the underground network may have linked various ceremonial and administrative sites within the ancient Inca capital.
Palomino and Flores’s team operates as part of the Chinkana-Sacsayhuamán Project, which used ground-penetrating radar and sound prospecting to locate the tunnels based on historical documents dating as far back as the 16th century. The most helpful insights into the tunnel layout came from a historical record written by an anonymous Jesuit in 1594, revealing that the underground Chinkana was untouched when Cusco’s landmark Church of the Society of Jesus was constructed in the 1570s.
The Chinkana beneath Cusco Association of Archaeologists of Peru
By cross-referencing historical accounts, researchers were able to find the Chinkana’s entrance in Cusco’s Rodadero sector, where it creeps along the side of the city’s geological formations through an esplanade before descending towards the Choquechaca River. The route then continues beneath the Incan Colcampata Palace, eventually straightening towards the Church and Convent of Santo Domingo.
The discovery of the Chinkana emphasises the cultural importance of Cusco, adding another gem to the Inca archeological wealth still present in the Andes. Research is expected to continue this year with a variety of targeted excavations throughout the city.
