Acoustics were an important aspect of Incan architecture, according to a researcher.
In the remote town of Huaytará, Peru, the building that houses the Church of San Juan Bautista is more than what it seems. It was built upon a three-walled Incan structure called a carpa uasi that exchanged stability for something unexpected.
While the Incan Empire is best known for the iconic 15th-century citadel of Machu Picchu, a team of researchers is investigating the acoustic properties of the carpa uasi, another one-of-a-kind Incan construction that likely dates back to the same century. Their work emphasizes the importance of studying more than what meets the eye—literally—when tracing the footsteps of bygone civilizations.A three-walled building
“We’re exploring the possibility that the carpa uasi may have amplified low-frequency sounds, such as drumming, with minimal reverberation,” Stella Nair, associate professor of Indigenous arts of the Americas at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a university statement.
