Slashdot Mirror
MIT Students Show How the Inca Leapt Canyons
PCOL writes "When Conquistadors came to Peru from Spain in 1532, they were astonished to see Inca suspension bridges achieve clear spans of at least 150 feet at a time when the longest Roman bridge in Spain had a maximum span of 95 feet. The bridges swayed under the weight of traffic terrifying the Spanish and their horses, even though, as one Spaniard observed, they were almost as "sturdy as the street of Seville." To build the bridges, thick cables were pulled across a river with small ropes and attached to stone abutments on each side. Three of the big cables served as the floor of the bridge, two others served as handrails and pieces of wood were tied to the cable floor before the floor was strewn with branches to give firm footing for beasts of burden. Earlier this year students at MIT built a 70-foot fiber bridge in the style of the Incan Empire. The project used sisal twine from the Yucatan Peninsula and anchored it by wrapping it around massive concrete blocks. The weekend's burst of activity was preceded by 360 hours of rope-twisting as the 50 miles of sisal twine was turned into rope. Working together as a group was part of the exercise. "A third of the time was spent learning to work together," one of the students said. "But after a while, we were banging those cables out.""
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Nah, the Sumerian Gods told them how to do it... They'll be back around 2012 - you can get the real scoop from them at that time.. that is, as long as the humans aren't turned into a slave race - AGAIN.
"Here, Icxtuatl, hold this."
... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" {fwap!}
"Ok. Say, looks like you're building a bridge or som
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Mmm... kinky. :)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
According to Mayan glyphs found carved in stones near one of the bridges, Bolontiku, Ixzaluoh and Ac Yanto were in fact idiots. Ixzaluoh in particular, was believed to have had difficulty finding his ass, despite using both hands.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
What... is your name?
What... is your quest?
What... is the capital of Assyria?
Blog
In the light of that, I have three questions:
Are you doing it again?
Do you need volunteers?
Are the rest of the volunteers likely to be hot, naked chicks?
I have to admit that if the answer to the third one is "no" I may not be very interested.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
This was an engineering project, not an attempt to hold a conversation with females of the opposite sex.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Sadly for him, the the Mayans had not invented the flashlight or the map.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
Exactly. When I read the title, I thought they'd be delving into how the first guy 'leaped' across the 150ft canyons.... I was thinking they flung a midget inca over the crevase by trebuchet or something... the article did not tell me, so I'm moving forward believing it was midget Inca's and trebuchets.
Don't be silly. Their technology wasn't that advanced. They fired Incan midgets from mangonels, not trebuchets.
John
So the moral of the lesson is that ancient men weren't idiots.
"We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me." - Jack Handey
-kgj
-kgj
Injunuity: noun.
The annual return of previously invested Native Americans.
Wow, they must have been pissed when it got cut in half for that Indiana Jones movie.
No kidding. I've seen rope bridges before. I made like a finity of those at Scout Camp.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
...but, can you get wireless internet in the middle of it?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Someone got rejected...
The finely finished blocks are only on the outside. Inside, the blocks are quite rough and don't fit together tightly.
Trust me, nothing's changed. The most common statements on a construction site today are: