Macchu Picchu

View from the Sun Gate looking down on the ruins.
We hiked to the top of the peak in the background - Hauyna Picchu.

Machu Picchu was one of the Inka's many lost cities. It Rivals Ankor Wat, the Great Wall, Petra and the Greek ruins. And has the same status of El Durado, the city of gold. The Inkas built many temples and universities but Machu Picchu tops them all.

In the early fifteen-hundreds the Inkas started to build a huge city in the middle of the jungles. It was to be the finest university in all of the Inkan Empire, and one of the greatest cidadels in the known world of the Inkas. There was to be two parts, the agriculture section and the living/industrial section. The Inkans were excellent farmers and scientists.

the Living Section

They would thach terraces into the side of the mountain so that they could grow a variety of crops at one time. As the people built up the mountain they ran into a problem, altitude. To conquer this the Inkas built a giant area that look like a terraced colleseum. They would plant one plant at a time and cover all of the area with that one plant. Then they would watch it and see at which elevation that particular plant would grow the best. Then they did this with all sorts of crops and then took that information and planted different plants at that specific elevation, all the way to the top of the mountain peak at Machu Picchu.

The Inkas were also very good stone-masons. At Machu Picchu the masons built temples to the condor, the sun, and the puma all out of huge monoliths with no mortar.

They did this by cracking the stones into smaller ones. Once the stones were cracked they would stick dry limbs of trees into the cracks and then fill it with water. After a few hours the water would soak in and the limbs would expand and break the rock into the prescice length, hight, and width they wanted. They were so good at masonry that they could carve animals into the rock and make fountains that came out of the stones. A good example of this is at a site called Sacsayhuaman outside Cusco (sounds link of like "sexy woman" according to the German tourists we met) where they built a labrinth using only the stone that was already there.

Sacsayhuaman stone work

At Machu Picchu they did the same thing but used different methods. At the entrance to climb Hauyna Picchu there is a huge stone that looks like a mountain and a little one in front of it. When you back up a bit you realize that is is an image of the same mountain behind it! Another example of architecture is the university itself. The Inkas were very spiritual and built cities in forms of sacred animals and Machu Picchu is in a shape of a condor. Many cities were built this way, Old Cuzco is in the shape of a puma, Pisac, a snake, and Ollantaytambo(oi-an-tay-taam-bo) an alpaca.

When the Spainsh Conquistadors came to South America the Inkas were still building Machu Picchu.

Macchu Picchu

News of the Spanish spread like wildfire all the way to Cusco, the Inkan Captiol. The Inkas had an excellent commuication line that was composed of very fast runners. From Cuzco a Quechua messenger would run from to Machu Picchu in seven hours and relay the message to the scollars in the cidadel. Immedtaly everyone left Machu Picchu, in fear of the Spanish and wanting to distract them away from Machu Picchu in hopes they would not discover it, and fled into the jungles, seven different ways. They took all of their relics and idols with them and scattered them in the jungles. They burnt their Alpaca, Llama, and Vicunya clothing because they thought the clothing was more valuble than gold and silver.

An Alpaca. The mountain behind me is shaped like a face if you look at it sideways.

The Spanish took the gold and silver and made them into coins for the empire. Today that gold and silver is still floating around the world. Although the Spainsh never found Machu Picchu it was forgotten about until the early 1900's. when it was redescovered.

The local Quechua people had still known about the ancient city of the Inkas, but it wasn't until Hiram Bingham discovered it in the 1911. Bingham was a Proffesor at Yale and was searching for the City of Gold (El Dorado) when he came about Machu Picchu. It was then that the myth became truth and spread around the word at lightning speed and is now celebrating it's 100th anniversary of rediscovery. Today it is one of the seven wonders of the world and I had an excellent time there.
 

The view a the end of our day.