From above the Earth, looking down, the mile-long strip of land with the strange marks looks very much like the tire tracks left by a monster dirt bike made a long time ago, but you would be wrong.
Up close, the strip of land lazily winds up the slope of the nearby mountains, in a north-south orientation over the uneven terrain. Beginning at the end of a valley, the band runs up a hill for 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles). The band has an arrangement of easily seen blocks or segments. Inside the segments are holes or pits with raised edges about one meter (3.2 feet) in diameter and 50-100 centimeters (20 – 40 inches) in depth.
First public awareness of the band of holes
Strangely enough, the world didn’t learn of the band of holes until 1933, when aviator Robert Shippee published an aerial photograph in National Geographic. It wasn’t until 1953, 20 years later that Victor Wolfgang von Hagen did a survey of the area. In his book, The Royal Road of the Inca, he describes the band of holes as a line of empty graves.
He wrote: “There are over 5,000 such graves; empty, graves in so far as they are circular and stone-lined, and of the same construction of those graves which are found with mummies, weavings, and pottery.”
There were other visits to the band of holes site in the early 1970s. Archaeologists determined the holes might be a major storage area. This was based on the fact that the band of holes was located between two important regional Inca complexes, Tambo Colorado and Lima la Vieja, and very near the Incan Coastal Road.
The band of holes was a tax and tribute system
Two archaeologists, Charles Stanish and Henry Tantaleán from the University of California, Los Angeles, have been using drone technology to map the site. And their research has led them to the conclusion that the holes are actually part of an ancient Incan tax system.
They claim the rock-lined pits were used to measure and then redistribute food and other needed commodities. The two scientists say we have the journals of early European explorers to South America who described the Inca’s tribute system. So we know the Incas had an elaborate system that made use of the most prized possession, food.
The Incas didn’t have money as we know it, so it was necessary to develop an exchange system, but the problem was in how to quantify the value of corn, squash, rope or peppers. What archaeologists have found is that the region where the holes are located is “rock-hard.” So rather than dig uniform-sized holes, the people actually constructed the nearly 6,000 holes out of soil and fist-sized rocks they brought from elsewhere.
This latest hypothesis is based on the band of holes being fairly close to the main Inca highway and an Inca storeroom known as a colca. It was the colca that really made the theory work. The Incas, unlike some early civilizations that used vast marketplaces, used large colcas. These vast storehouses provided food and textiles to the members of the Incan state.
We still have a lot more to learn from this latest Incan find. There is the question of how an official would record the tribute or tax. Early European explorers recorded watching farmers bring their tributes and the officials measuring and recording the information using a unique writing system called khipu.
Khipu actually consisted of tying very precise arrangements of knots of different colors onto strings. Ars Technica says that these manuscripts looked like elaborate macrame wall hangings. Sadly, we know very little about the great Khipu libraries because the Spanish burned all the Khipus.
The archaeologists plan on doing further studies taking soil samples in order to find traces of pollen and plants. And, as with any strange-looking discovery, we also want to be sure we have ruled out any other theories, and in this case, the team will also be considering if the band of holes has any relationship to the Nazca lines.