Practiced Human Sacrifice.
Did not have a writing language.
No IRON. But had Gold.
A man appeared called " Son of the Sun" and built the Empire out of hunter gathere, nomadic people into agriculture based civilization with social hierarchy.
1450-1572
Lagging behind 2000 years from India, 2500 Years from Middle east and 3000 years from Egypt.
Machu Picchu escaped notice from Spanish conqueror. Well preserved.
The Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu which can be translated as The Four Regions or The Four United Provinces.There were many local forms of worship, most of them concerning local sacred "Huacas", but the Inca leadership encouraged the worship of Inti - the sun god - and imposed its sovereignty above other cults such as that of Pachamama. The Incas considered their King, the Sapa Inca, to be the "child of the sun." As ancient civilizations sprang up across the planet thousands of years ago, so too the Inca civilization evolved. As with all ancient civilizations, its exact origins are unknown. Their historic record, as with all other tribes evolving on the planet at that time, would be recorded through oral tradition, stone, pottery, gold and silver jewelry, and woven in the tapestry of the people.
Machu Picchu (in hispanicized spelling,
Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmatʃu ˈpiktʃu]) or
Machu Pikchu (
Quechua machuold, old person,
pikchu peak; mountain or prominence with a broad base which ends in sharp peaks,
[1] "old peak", pronunciation
[ˈmɑtʃu ˈpixtʃu]) is a 15th-century
Inca site located 2,430 metres (7,970 ft)
above sea level.
[2][3] It is located in the
Cusco Region,
Urubamba Province,
Machupicchu District in
Peru.
[4] It is situated on a mountain ridge above the
Sacred Valley which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of
Cusco and through which the
Urubamba Riverflows. Most
archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor
Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is the most familiar icon of
Inca civilization.
The Incas built the estate around 1450, but abandoned it a century later at the time of the
Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian
Hiram Bingham. Since then, Machu Picchu has become an important tourist attraction. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like.
[5] By 1976, thirty percent of Machu Picchu had been restored.
[5] The restoration work continues to this day.
[6]
Since the site was not known to the Spanish during the colonial period, it is highly significant as a relatively intact cultural site. Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a
UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.
[3] In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the
New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll.
Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished
dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the
Inti Watana, the
Temple of the Sun, and the
Room of the Three Windows. These are located in what is known by archaeologists as the
Sacred District of Machu Picchu.
[citation needed]
Machu Picchu is vulnerable to threats. While natural phenomena like earthquakes and weather systems can play havoc with access, the site also suffers from the pressures of too many tourists. In addition, preservation of the area's cultural and archaeological heritage is an ongoing concern.
History[edit]
Machu Picchu was built around 1450, at the height of the Inca Empire.[7] The construction of Machu Picchu appears to date from the period of the two great Incas, Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui (1438–71) and Tupac Inca Yupanqui (1472–93).[8] It was abandoned just over 100 years later, in 1572, as a belated result of the Spanish Conquest.[7][9] It is possible that most of its inhabitants died fromsmallpox introduced by travelers before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the area.[10] The latter had notes of a place called Piccho, although there is no record of the Spanish having visited the remote city. The types of sacred rocks defaced by the conquistadors in other locations are untouched at Machu Picchu.[9]
View of the city of Machu Picchu in 1912 showing the original ruins after major clearing and before modern reconstruction work began.
[5][6]
Although the citadel is located only about 80 kilometers (50 mi) from Cusco, the Inca capital, the Spanish never found it and consequently did not plunder or destroy it, as they did many other sites.[9] Over the centuries, the surrounding jungle grew over the site, and few knew of its existence.
Hiram Bingham was an American historian employed as a lecturer at Yale University; he was not a trained archaeologist. In 1909, on his way back from attending the Pan-American Scientific Congress in Santiago, he traveled through Peru and was invited to explore the Inca ruins at Choqquequirau in the Apurimac Valley, which gave him an interest in Inca ruins, and an introduction to Peruvian President Leguia. He organized the 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition with one of its objectives to search for the lost city of Vitcos, the last capital of the Incas. He researched sources and consulted Carlos Romero, a historian in Lima who showed Bingham helpful references and Father Calancha’s Chronicle.
Armed with this information, the expedition went down the
Urubamba River valley on the new road that was completed in 1895. En route he asked local people to show them Inca ruins. By the time they camped at Mandor Pampa with Huayna Picchu 2000 feet above them on the opposite bank they had already examined several ruins, including five sites that Herman Tucker explored. But none fitted the descriptions they had of Vitcos.
At Mandor Pampa Bingham asked a local farmer and innkeeper, Melchor Arteaga, if he knew of any ruins in the area and he said he knew of some excellent ruins on the top of Huayna Picchu.
[11] The next day, 24 July 1911, Arteaga led Bingham and Sergeant Carrasco across the river on a primitive log bridge and up the mountain. At the top of the mountain they came across a small hut occupied by a couple of
Quechua, Richarte and Alvarez, who were farming some of the original Machu Picchu agricultural terraces that they had cleared four years earlier. After a rest and refreshments Bingham was led along the ridge to the main ruins by Pablito, the 11-year-old son of Alvarez.
[12]
The ruins were mostly covered with vegetation except for the cleared agricultural terraces and clearings used by the farmers as vegetable gardens. Because of the vegetation Bingham was not able to get a full extent of the site. He took some preliminary notes and measurements, took some pictures and observed the fine quality of Inca stonework of several principal buildings. Bingham was unclear of the original purpose of the ruins, but decided that there was no indication that it matched the description of the city of Vitcos.
The expedition continued down the Urubamba and up the Vilcabamba Rivers, examining all the ruins they could find, eventually finding and correctly identifying the site of the old Inca capital, Vitcos, and the nearby temple of
Chuquipalta. He then went across a pass and into the Pampaconas Valley where he found more ruins heavily buried in the jungle undergrowth at
Espiritu Pampa. Because the site was so heavily overgrown, he only noted a few of the buildings and didn’t appreciate the large extent of the site. In 1964,
Gene Savoy [13] did further exploration of the ruins at Espiritu Pampa and revealed the full extent of the site, identifying it as Vilcabamba Viejo where the Incas fled to after the Spanish drove them from Vitcos.
On the return of the expedition up the Urubamba River, Bingham sent two of the team to do some clearing and mapping of the site he referred to as Machu Picchu. As Bingham failed to identify the ruins at Espiritu Pampa as
Vilcabamba Viejo, he erroneously theorized that Machu Picchu was Vilcabamba Viejo.
Bingham returned to Machu Picchu in 1912 under the sponsorship of Yale University and National Geographic Society and with full support of Peruvian President Leguia. The expedition undertook a massive four-month clearing of the site with local labor, which was expedited with the auspices of the Prefect of Cuzco. Excavation started in 1912 with further excavation of the site undertaken in 1914 and 1915.
Bingham’s focus on Machu Picchu was because of the fine Inca stonework and the well preserved nature of the ruins that had not been disturbed since it was abandoned. Although Bingham put forward various hypotheses to explain the existence of Machu Picchu, none of them have stood the test of further examination and study. Bingham’s lasting contribution is in publicizing Machu Picchu to the world and undertaking a rigorous and thorough study of the site. Bingham wrote a number of books and articles about the discovery of Machu Picchu, the most popular of which today is "Lost City of the Incas", a retrospective account of his 1911 Yale expedition and his discovery of Machu Picchu, written in 1948 near the end of his life.
During Bingham's archaeological studies, he collected various artifacts which he took back to Yale. One of the more prominent artifacts he recovered was a set of ceremonial Incan knives made from bismuth bronze. These knives were molded in the 15th century and are the earliest known artifacts containing bismuth bronze.[14]
As Bingham's excavations took place on Machu Picchu, local intellectuals began to oppose the operation of Bingham and his team of explorers.
[15] Though local institutions were initially enthused at the idea of the operation supplementing Peruvian knowledge about their ancestry, the team began to encounter accusations of legal and cultural malpractice.
[15] Local landowners began to demand payments of rent from the excavation team, and rumors arose about Bingham and his team stealing artifacts and smuggling them out of Peru through the bordering country of Bolivia.
[15] (In fact Bingham removed many artifacts, but openly and legally; they were deposited in the Yale University Museum.) These accusations worsened when the local press caught wind of the rumors and helped to discredit the legitimacy of the excavation, branding the practice as harmful to the site and claiming that local archaeologists were being deprived of their rightful knowledge about their own history because of the intrusive excavations of the American archaeologists.
[15] By the time Bingham and his team left Machu Picchu, locals began forming coalitions in order to defend their ownership of Machu Picchu and its cultural remains, while Bingham claimed the artifacts ought to be studied by experts in American institutions, an argument that still exists today.
[15]
In 1981 Peru declared an area of 325.92 square kilometres (125.84 sq mi) surrounding Machu Picchu as a "Historical Sanctuary". In addition to the ruins, the sanctuary includes a large portion of the adjoining region, rich with the flora and fauna of the Peruvian Yungas and Central Andean wet puna ecoregions.[16]
In 1983 UNESCO designated Machu Picchu a
World Heritage Site, describing it as "an absolute masterpiece of architecture and a unique testimony to the Inca civilization".
[2]
The
World Monuments Fund placed Machu Picchu on its 2008 Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in the world because of environmental degradation. This has resulted from the impact of tourism, uncontrolled development in the nearby town of
Aguas Calientes, which included a poorly sited tram to ease visitor access, and the construction of a bridge across the
Vilcanota River, which is likely to bring even more tourists to the site, in defiance of a court order and government protests against it.
