This is quite impressive. There was an excellent PBS documentary on how much technology was used in building Macchu Picchu in such a way as to provide water without flooding or drought.
There are some impressive pre-Inca ruins in Ecuador that are much more accessible. Ingapirca is the best known, only a few kms. off the Panamerican highway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_EcuadorIt would be inaccurate to assume that because the pre-Inca cultures were conquered by the Incas that they were less cultured, less civilized, less advanced or less skillful in building and artisanry. The Banco Central de Ecuador has an incredible amount of objects and some very well done dioramas that show this.
There are pre-Inca sites in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile. The Incas were better warriors, for sure,and had a clever system of reorganizing the people they conquered to turn them into fellow Incans, but in other aspects, they were more or less equal to the Andean peoples they conquered.
Ecuador was conquered by the Incas only about 100 years before the Spanish arrived.
