"local" supply might be several kilometers distant and involve a transportation problem that would have daunted a less capable people. At Ollantaytambo, huge blocks were quarried from one side of the Urubamba Valley, shaped in part, and then brought down the mountainside, across the Urubamba River, and up a long construction ramp to the great fortress-temple complex above Ollantaytambo village.

How the Inka cut stone without iron tools is not known with any certainty, but in all likelihood stone was cut and shaped mainly with stone tools. Bronze or copper tools may also have been used, but would be of limited use with the hard varieties of igneous rock commonly used by the Inka

What the Inkas must have considered their very finest stonework is found, naturally, in their most important buildings, their temples. Temple walls are battered (inwards sloping), and constructed of finely hewn ashlars laid in courses that get progressively thinner upwards. This creates a wall with a wonderfully stable and pleasing appearance, and which is, in fact, highly resistant to seismic shaking. Earthquakes are a common building hazard in the Andean region, and Inka stonework has survived for centuries, even as Spanish colonial structures have collapsed. In fact, the most durable Spanish constructions have been those that incorporated Inka walls. Here original Inka walls have been breached by Spanish colonial doorways; note the inward slope of the lower wall, as opposed to the vertical upper wall of European construction.