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Tambo metabolics
Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).
Claim (verbatim)
Tambo metabolics. The Inca road system, the Qhapaq Ñan, was punctuated by tambos — state way-stations providing lodging and stores — whose spacing has usually been described loosely as a day's walk apart. But a day's walk in the Andes is not a distance: it depends brutally on slope, and Tobler's hiking function, the standard GIS model of walking speed over terrain, converts any route into time and energetic cost. The conjecture is that tambo spacing is constant in energy cost, not in kilometres: compute the expenditure between successive tambos along the actual road, and the intervals should cluster tightly around a fixed caloric budget even as map distances swing widely between flat puna and vertical gorge. The empire, on this reading, measured its geography in calories — planners provisioning bodies, not surveyors chaining distance — and GIS energetics along the Qhapaq Ñan can now audit the accounting.
Prediction clause (verbatim)
For consecutive tambo pairs along mapped segments of the Qhapaq Ñan, compute both route distance and energetic cost using Tobler's hiking function over the terrain profile. Primary clause: the coefficient of variation of inter-tambo energetic cost is lower than the coefficient of variation of inter-tambo distance by at least 25%, indicating spacing regulated in energy rather than kilometres. The verdict follows the primary clause.
Kill-dataset (verbatim)
GIS energetics along the Qhapaq Ñan.
Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior. Kills and priors are credited here, by name, as they come in.
On Inferpedia
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Provenance
Run: Imported conversation (verbatim harvest) · model: claude-fable-5
Origin: operator conversation with Claude Fable 5 at max effort, conducted 2026-07-03, relayed verbatim by the operator into the shepherd session on 2026-07-04. No ModelRun exists for the original generation (it happened outside the pipeline); this transcript file is the canonical capture. Transcript path: docs/generated/conjecture_harvest_fablemax_20260703.md. Model (operator-attested, not pipeline-recorded): claude-fable-5. Novelty disclaimer (verbatim, load-bearing -- rule 4): "Same caveat as before, doubled: at 100 items across all of archaeology and history, some of these will have cousins in the literature I can't check. What I can guarantee is the format — each links two things not normally linked, and each names the dataset or measurement that would kill it."
Novelty / leakage triage
anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run
Chosen as a calibration suspect: Hyslop's classic Inka road work established day-of-travel tambo spacing, and Tobler-function least-cost analysis is the STANDARD method in movement archaeology (with energetic variants like Minetti available). The sharp discriminating test — spacing constant in energy cost rather than distance, fitted along the Qhapaq Nan — was not located as executed, so adjacent rather than leaked, but the join is close to standard practice.
- Least-cost analysis with Tobler's function as standard archaeological practice (review literature) — Method standardness
- Hyslop, The Inka Road System (1984) — day-spacing of tambos — Classic spacing finding; no URL, standard reference
Predictions
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