Which empire's roads were traveled by chasqui runners?

The Inca, whose road network ran some 40,000 kilometres through the most difficult terrain in the Americas - up the Andes, across deserts, over rope suspension bridges rewoven annually by the communities beneath them. One such bridge, Q'eswachaka, is still rebuilt every June from grass rope in a three-day communal effort.

The chasquis were relay runners stationed in pairs at posts a few kilometres apart, carrying messages and quipus at a sprint and handing off to the next. The system reportedly moved messages 240 kilometres a day - faster than a horse could sustain over that ground, and fast enough that fresh fish was said to reach the emperor in Cusco from the coast.

None of it used the wheel, which the Inca knew as a concept and never applied to transport - reasonably, given mountains, steps and no draught animals capable of pulling a cart. It also had no writing in the alphabetic sense. An empire of ten million people across three thousand kilometres was administered by runners carrying knotted cords, which is a fair rebuke to the assumption that particular technologies are prerequisites for particular achievements.