The ruins of Machu Picchu Inca Civilization history
High in the Peruvian Andes, the Citadel of Machu Picchu seems suspended in the mist of the mountains. Precariously standing in a rocky creston with deep precipices at the sides, this city of an extinct race long ago was discovered just in the 20th century, 400 years after its fall.
Alcove summits above the Urubamba river, Machu Picchu is invisible to anyone who know its location. The city centre is a small plateau where the sacred square, flanked by the main temples and more spacious houses. On the slopes to your round, the terraced fields that supplied in its day its inhabitants are.
In total, nearly two hundred stone buildings have been discovered, and archaeologists estimate that, in their days of glory, he should lodge a few thousand inhabitants. The water of the city came from springs located behind the Machu Picchu and was distributed at various levels through ponds and fountains ritual.
Being in a place of difficult access, Machu Picchu was defended by its protected location, which also helped keep it hidden for so many centuries. It is believed that it was built around 1450 A.d., which was inhabited by a few thousand people, mostly priests and families of high rank with their servers.
Machu Picchu is the emblematic monument of the Peru. It was discovered by English archaeologist Hiram Binghamin 1911, it is indeed one of the monumental ensembles more imposing and impressive of the planet, rightly recognized Cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO.
Hidden between cliffs and lush vegetation, the ancient city of Machu Picchu remained secret until the 20th century, and not even the Spanish conquistadors, in their search for treasures, knew how it to find. Machu Picchu was quiet, uninhabited and silent among the mists of the Peruvian mountains with their secrets hidden since it was already abandoned before the conquest.
To get there it must be venturing along a sinuous path that climbs to the top of the mountain, bordering impressive abysses. The atmosphere is typical of the jungle until you reach a height in which the vegetation decreases, allowing suggests, for the first time, about three hundred meters higher up, the ruins of ancient buildings. However, to achieve them, we must deal with still a steep staircase. But worth the climb so long staircase, because at the end it flows in the Intihuatana and the sacred Plaza.
Rather, first in the square (which is the urban center of the city) and then into the Intihuatana. In quechua, the language of the inca Empire, inti means "Sun" and "linked" huatana . Intihuatana, therefore, means "the place where the Sun is linked": the Astronomical Observatory equipped with a large Sundial.
This is not the only important building.
On the square is also the Temple of the Sun: a triangular building, homeless (perhaps there were no roofs, or perhaps they were made of perishable materials), consisting of gigantic blocks, some of which measured four and a half meters wide by two and a half tall.
Machu Picchu era a fortress city of the ancient incas, on a mountain between two peaks, 80 km. to the Northwest of Cusco, Peru. The extraordinary pre-Colombian ruins comprise 13 km. square stone buildings United by 3,000 steps.
How is got transport blocks of this size to the top of the mountain, and also to join them so perfectly to the point not to leave the slightest gap between them, is not only a problem for the man of today, but to a mystery. And much more considering the simplicity of the techniques used by the incas.
The drag of materials - all of them coming from quarries located more than 30 km. of the city, with points seven kilometers to some games approach-became by means of rollers, which moved the rocks without the aid of animals in transport. Everything was done by dint of arms, by pulling on strings attached to the projections of the same stones.
And this was only the beginning. Arriving at work, the blocks had to be carved and shaped, operation which was done with stone tools and some copper or bronze. Then he had to "adapt" one block with another, which was achieved after a long work of wear or rub between them, until complaints respective surfaces were perfectly embedded.
So much so that they are often still larger stones placed in the middle of a Crown of smaller stones, and this is precisely because workers put in motion these latest stones scraping them against older stones after having spread a thin layer of wet sand that served as a abrasive between the two blocs
This city understood not only houses, but also a considerable number of terraces for agricultural use. That was also a huge work, since the required land had been "imported" from other regions and deposited there up to allow for the cultivation of potatoes, vegetables, fodder and even corn (which, to not be able to mature because of the high altitude, was used to feed livestock).
In terms of water, supplied in copious amounts by a spring, it was collected and stored in large deposits excavated in the rock. The fields did not have great extension, symptom, or cause, of the limited population of the city-fortress, which would have no more than nine thousand souls.
Perhaps it has been the last INCA stronghold after the Spanish conquest. It was virtually intact when it was discovered by Hiram Bingham in 1911. Bingham (1875-1956) was an archaeologist and American statesman born in Honolulu, Hawali. He was Governor of Connecticut (1925) and Senator (1925-33).
City fortress: The Huayna Picchu presides over the ruins of Machu Picchu, high in the Andes on the Urubamba river. The grandeur of the building suggests the possibility that outside an inca hilly for the aristocracy of Cuzco, capital guard, staffed by a permanent population of servants and farmers. In careful relations of the Spanish conquerors after the fall of the Inca Empire, in 1533, not mentioned to Machu Picchu, so that the reasons for its demise are exclusively based on assumptions.
Name: Hiram Bingham - 1875-1956
Country: United States
Profession: archaeologist, Explorer, Professor and politician
Curriculum:
1905: degree of Havard, after been Yale in 1898 and Berkeley in 1900.
1908: Professor at Princeton, began his career of Explorer.
1911: at the end of its investigations in South America, he rediscovered the Inca city of Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes.
1924: is elected as Governor of Connecticut. Why are reminded:
He rediscovered Machu Pichu, Inca city forgotten since the 16th century.
Archaeologist's training, have wanted to always present mostly as a browser.
Hiram Bingham was the last capital of the ancient inca civilization when it gave with the ruins of Machu Picchu (Peru), one of the best preserved urban centers of the pre-Columbian civilization. Bingham, Professor of Latin American history at Yale University, also was an expert climber.
Members less matadors of his expedition stayed at the camp while he, accompanied by an armed escort and an Indian Guide, it climbed the forested slopes and steep slopes to find a ghost town hung between two sharp peaks. Their houses, their landscaped embankments (interlinked by around three thousand steps) and its temples were a marvel of masonry and were constructed without mortar.
The time and the identity of Machu Picchu are still a mystery, although its reverential splendor is unmistakable. Bingham ended up being a United States Senator; in the 1950s, he chaired the Board of the loyalty of the public administration, and intervened in the case of an alleged communist infiltration in the Government
When the mountains looms Inti, father Sun, the Supreme God of the incas, shows an amazing Citadel
assembled like a puzzle of built-in parts, temples in a semicircle, granite walls, palaces, houses, and steps, a city complete built by a civilization that did not know the wheel nor did pack animals. Due to its magnificence, there is speculation that Machu Picchu has perhaps been a refuge of the aristocracy of Cuzco, the capital of the inca Empire.
Machu Picchu (machu picchu means, among other senses, "old mountain" in quechua) runs between the peaks of Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu to about 700 m above the Valley (2800 m a.s.l.) and is suspended between the high peaks of the Peruvian Andes. It was built in the 15th century of our era.
Perhaps it has been a fortified town of about 1,000 people connected by roads to other Andean cities and abandoned in 1572. Machu Picchu was never found or destroyed by Spaniards and hence its remarkable state of preservation when it was found. Palaces, temples, houses, stairs, channels, fountains and terraces at different levels, a masterpiece of planning and construction. Those works were carried out without the help of draught animals or tools of iron and the transport of large blocks of rock was more wheels and levers.
With its ensemble of palaces, temples, houses, stairs, channels for water, fountains and terraces at different levels, Machu Pic-chu is a masterpiece of planning and construction. The incas architects built probably the city from a maquette of clay or stone. Workers, without the aid of animals shot or iron tools, transported huge blocks of granite to the place by means of wheels and levers. The blocks were then carved and polished, and adjusted his position without any mortar.
Inca society was highly organized and hierarchical, which should be reflected in Machu Picchu. Nobles, priests, artisans and ordinary people living in specific areas of the city, and everyone knew perfectly, their respective rights, duties, privileges and clothing.
The core of urban life was the Gran Plaza, where they celebrated festivals and markets. The houses and offices of the nobles rose on terraces around the square, while rustic peasants stone houses were situated in lower levels. They had thatched roofs and were grouped around the courtyards where Inca women wore out their household chores.
96 Km journey between the city of Cuzco and Machu Picchu can do today in a couple of hours, by train or by bus, but in 1911 it took him five days to the archaeologist and American historian Hiram Bingham through the Valley of the Urubamba river to reach the now famous ruins. He believed to have discovered the strong inca of Vilcabamba, city razed by the Spaniards in the conquest of the Inca Empire in 1572. He later summarized his impression saying that "it seemed a far-fetched dream". Bingham always believed that the place he had discovered was Vilcabamba, because getting there was the aim of his expedition, which led him from Yale to Peru.
The Sun, divine ancestor of Inca rulers, was revered by the heat and light that provided to crops. The sacred Intihuatana, lies on the top of a small hill just behind both temples "post where is moor the Sun». This low flat, irregularly stepped, crowned by a short pillar platform square, was the site in which the Sun was symbolically bound during the winter solstice to ensure his return the following year.
The uniqueness of Machu Picchu lies in its location between the misty peaks of the Andes, as an aguilera of stone half-way to heaven.
Although none of the buildings is significantly superior to the others, stands the Temple of the three Windows, designed to obtain views of the Andes. This and other similar were buildings open, surely so that the priests could observe the Sun, Moon and stars. The Sun is the divine ancestor of the incas by the heat and light that provided life and crops.
Today its ruins are very visited and archaeologists, historians and anthropologists continue investigating it to find out even more about customs and meanings of the Inca culture.
Macchu Picchu is one of the most fascinating cities in the world. It was probably a Holy City, so late in a lost region of the Andes that the conquerors ignored its existence, and the own fall of the inca Empire eventually leave it abandoned. You can access her walk, along fascinating uninhabited cities.
Characteristic of Incan architecture is the way in which stones, with many facets that fit perfectly without mortar, forming a simile of three-dimensional puzzles are cut. This type of design significantly increases the stability of the wall, which is necessary to be able to resist the frequent Earth tremors that shake the Andes. In Cuzco there is an inca wall with a famous stone having twelve angles in their faces. Torontoy, one of the small locations that surround Machu Picchu, there is another stone with 40 angles.
How did the incas such perfection in construction?The labor problem was solved with the work of the captives from other tribes. For example, the temples of Ollantaytambo were built by Indians colla, inhabitants of the shores of Lake Titicaca. But, how do they managed to cut the granite in blocks so long? Even when his ability was great for smelting and alloy of soft metals - gold, silver, copper and bronze, with those who did magnificent work-the incas never discovered how to manufacture iron utensils.
Despite not having supplies able to transform such hardness stones, and therefore lack the technology to carry out such work, the incas overcame all kinds of setbacks. This is one of the greatest enigmas that has left us this mysterious race, reason for multiple explanations.
The Guide to Sacsahuaman, near Cuzco, ensures that these works were made with fragments of Hematite of meteoric origin. If this is so, the Andes had undergoing a tremendous bombardment of meteorites, as instruments made of Hematite are not very strong, despite which the stones represent a work of millions of man hours. Another theory that is often invoked as an explanation of these constructs is the use of lasers by extraterrestrial visitors.
This theory, which denies the ability to carry out its task by themselves, the Incas is based on deeply rooted opinion that 20th century represents the pinnacle of human progress. This conception of the world, with their simple concatenation of causes and effects, helped to overcome diseases and conquer the globe, but does not consider the possibility that humanity has lost some powers held by the races of antiquity.
One of the wonders of the inca architecture is repeated here: the perfect combination of stones.
He still does not know how were transported without knowing the wheel.
Alcove summits above the Urubamba river, Machu Picchu is invisible to anyone who know its location. The city centre is a small plateau where the sacred square, flanked by the main temples and more spacious houses. On the slopes to your round, the terraced fields that supplied in its day its inhabitants are.
In total, nearly two hundred stone buildings have been discovered, and archaeologists estimate that, in their days of glory, he should lodge a few thousand inhabitants. The water of the city came from springs located behind the Machu Picchu and was distributed at various levels through ponds and fountains ritual.
Being in a place of difficult access, Machu Picchu was defended by its protected location, which also helped keep it hidden for so many centuries. It is believed that it was built around 1450 A.d., which was inhabited by a few thousand people, mostly priests and families of high rank with their servers.
Machu Picchu is the emblematic monument of the Peru. It was discovered by English archaeologist Hiram Binghamin 1911, it is indeed one of the monumental ensembles more imposing and impressive of the planet, rightly recognized Cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO.
Hidden between cliffs and lush vegetation, the ancient city of Machu Picchu remained secret until the 20th century, and not even the Spanish conquistadors, in their search for treasures, knew how it to find. Machu Picchu was quiet, uninhabited and silent among the mists of the Peruvian mountains with their secrets hidden since it was already abandoned before the conquest.
To get there it must be venturing along a sinuous path that climbs to the top of the mountain, bordering impressive abysses. The atmosphere is typical of the jungle until you reach a height in which the vegetation decreases, allowing suggests, for the first time, about three hundred meters higher up, the ruins of ancient buildings. However, to achieve them, we must deal with still a steep staircase. But worth the climb so long staircase, because at the end it flows in the Intihuatana and the sacred Plaza.
Rather, first in the square (which is the urban center of the city) and then into the Intihuatana. In quechua, the language of the inca Empire, inti means "Sun" and "linked" huatana . Intihuatana, therefore, means "the place where the Sun is linked": the Astronomical Observatory equipped with a large Sundial.
This is not the only important building.
On the square is also the Temple of the Sun: a triangular building, homeless (perhaps there were no roofs, or perhaps they were made of perishable materials), consisting of gigantic blocks, some of which measured four and a half meters wide by two and a half tall.
Machu Picchu era a fortress city of the ancient incas, on a mountain between two peaks, 80 km. to the Northwest of Cusco, Peru. The extraordinary pre-Colombian ruins comprise 13 km. square stone buildings United by 3,000 steps.
How is got transport blocks of this size to the top of the mountain, and also to join them so perfectly to the point not to leave the slightest gap between them, is not only a problem for the man of today, but to a mystery. And much more considering the simplicity of the techniques used by the incas.
The drag of materials - all of them coming from quarries located more than 30 km. of the city, with points seven kilometers to some games approach-became by means of rollers, which moved the rocks without the aid of animals in transport. Everything was done by dint of arms, by pulling on strings attached to the projections of the same stones.
And this was only the beginning. Arriving at work, the blocks had to be carved and shaped, operation which was done with stone tools and some copper or bronze. Then he had to "adapt" one block with another, which was achieved after a long work of wear or rub between them, until complaints respective surfaces were perfectly embedded.
So much so that they are often still larger stones placed in the middle of a Crown of smaller stones, and this is precisely because workers put in motion these latest stones scraping them against older stones after having spread a thin layer of wet sand that served as a abrasive between the two blocs
This city understood not only houses, but also a considerable number of terraces for agricultural use. That was also a huge work, since the required land had been "imported" from other regions and deposited there up to allow for the cultivation of potatoes, vegetables, fodder and even corn (which, to not be able to mature because of the high altitude, was used to feed livestock).
In terms of water, supplied in copious amounts by a spring, it was collected and stored in large deposits excavated in the rock. The fields did not have great extension, symptom, or cause, of the limited population of the city-fortress, which would have no more than nine thousand souls.
Perhaps it has been the last INCA stronghold after the Spanish conquest. It was virtually intact when it was discovered by Hiram Bingham in 1911. Bingham (1875-1956) was an archaeologist and American statesman born in Honolulu, Hawali. He was Governor of Connecticut (1925) and Senator (1925-33).
City fortress: The Huayna Picchu presides over the ruins of Machu Picchu, high in the Andes on the Urubamba river. The grandeur of the building suggests the possibility that outside an inca hilly for the aristocracy of Cuzco, capital guard, staffed by a permanent population of servants and farmers. In careful relations of the Spanish conquerors after the fall of the Inca Empire, in 1533, not mentioned to Machu Picchu, so that the reasons for its demise are exclusively based on assumptions.
Name: Hiram Bingham - 1875-1956
Country: United States
Profession: archaeologist, Explorer, Professor and politician
Curriculum:
1905: degree of Havard, after been Yale in 1898 and Berkeley in 1900.
1908: Professor at Princeton, began his career of Explorer.
1911: at the end of its investigations in South America, he rediscovered the Inca city of Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes.
1924: is elected as Governor of Connecticut. Why are reminded:
He rediscovered Machu Pichu, Inca city forgotten since the 16th century.
Archaeologist's training, have wanted to always present mostly as a browser.
Hiram Bingham was the last capital of the ancient inca civilization when it gave with the ruins of Machu Picchu (Peru), one of the best preserved urban centers of the pre-Columbian civilization. Bingham, Professor of Latin American history at Yale University, also was an expert climber.
Members less matadors of his expedition stayed at the camp while he, accompanied by an armed escort and an Indian Guide, it climbed the forested slopes and steep slopes to find a ghost town hung between two sharp peaks. Their houses, their landscaped embankments (interlinked by around three thousand steps) and its temples were a marvel of masonry and were constructed without mortar.
The time and the identity of Machu Picchu are still a mystery, although its reverential splendor is unmistakable. Bingham ended up being a United States Senator; in the 1950s, he chaired the Board of the loyalty of the public administration, and intervened in the case of an alleged communist infiltration in the Government
When the mountains looms Inti, father Sun, the Supreme God of the incas, shows an amazing Citadel
assembled like a puzzle of built-in parts, temples in a semicircle, granite walls, palaces, houses, and steps, a city complete built by a civilization that did not know the wheel nor did pack animals. Due to its magnificence, there is speculation that Machu Picchu has perhaps been a refuge of the aristocracy of Cuzco, the capital of the inca Empire.
Machu Picchu (machu picchu means, among other senses, "old mountain" in quechua) runs between the peaks of Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu to about 700 m above the Valley (2800 m a.s.l.) and is suspended between the high peaks of the Peruvian Andes. It was built in the 15th century of our era.
Perhaps it has been a fortified town of about 1,000 people connected by roads to other Andean cities and abandoned in 1572. Machu Picchu was never found or destroyed by Spaniards and hence its remarkable state of preservation when it was found. Palaces, temples, houses, stairs, channels, fountains and terraces at different levels, a masterpiece of planning and construction. Those works were carried out without the help of draught animals or tools of iron and the transport of large blocks of rock was more wheels and levers.
With its ensemble of palaces, temples, houses, stairs, channels for water, fountains and terraces at different levels, Machu Pic-chu is a masterpiece of planning and construction. The incas architects built probably the city from a maquette of clay or stone. Workers, without the aid of animals shot or iron tools, transported huge blocks of granite to the place by means of wheels and levers. The blocks were then carved and polished, and adjusted his position without any mortar.
Inca society was highly organized and hierarchical, which should be reflected in Machu Picchu. Nobles, priests, artisans and ordinary people living in specific areas of the city, and everyone knew perfectly, their respective rights, duties, privileges and clothing.
The core of urban life was the Gran Plaza, where they celebrated festivals and markets. The houses and offices of the nobles rose on terraces around the square, while rustic peasants stone houses were situated in lower levels. They had thatched roofs and were grouped around the courtyards where Inca women wore out their household chores.
96 Km journey between the city of Cuzco and Machu Picchu can do today in a couple of hours, by train or by bus, but in 1911 it took him five days to the archaeologist and American historian Hiram Bingham through the Valley of the Urubamba river to reach the now famous ruins. He believed to have discovered the strong inca of Vilcabamba, city razed by the Spaniards in the conquest of the Inca Empire in 1572. He later summarized his impression saying that "it seemed a far-fetched dream". Bingham always believed that the place he had discovered was Vilcabamba, because getting there was the aim of his expedition, which led him from Yale to Peru.
The children of the Sun
There is ostensibly spectacular buildings in Machu Picchu. Rather than compete with the surrounding peaks, the buildings of the city in harmony with them. For example, the huge trapezoidal windows of the Temple of the three Windows were designed to frame a breathtaking view of the Andes. This, and next to him the main temple, there were simple structures in U-shape, maybe to open so that the priests could observe the Incan gods of the Sun, the Moon and the stars.The Sun, divine ancestor of Inca rulers, was revered by the heat and light that provided to crops. The sacred Intihuatana, lies on the top of a small hill just behind both temples "post where is moor the Sun». This low flat, irregularly stepped, crowned by a short pillar platform square, was the site in which the Sun was symbolically bound during the winter solstice to ensure his return the following year.
The uniqueness of Machu Picchu lies in its location between the misty peaks of the Andes, as an aguilera of stone half-way to heaven.
Although none of the buildings is significantly superior to the others, stands the Temple of the three Windows, designed to obtain views of the Andes. This and other similar were buildings open, surely so that the priests could observe the Sun, Moon and stars. The Sun is the divine ancestor of the incas by the heat and light that provided life and crops.
Today its ruins are very visited and archaeologists, historians and anthropologists continue investigating it to find out even more about customs and meanings of the Inca culture.
Macchu Picchu is one of the most fascinating cities in the world. It was probably a Holy City, so late in a lost region of the Andes that the conquerors ignored its existence, and the own fall of the inca Empire eventually leave it abandoned. You can access her walk, along fascinating uninhabited cities.
The construction of the Holy City
The most fascinating fact for current visitors is the grandeur of the building. The incas did not have draft animals, and despite this erected massive walls with stones weighing several tons each, and as well built-in it is impossible to insert the blade of a knife at any juncture.Characteristic of Incan architecture is the way in which stones, with many facets that fit perfectly without mortar, forming a simile of three-dimensional puzzles are cut. This type of design significantly increases the stability of the wall, which is necessary to be able to resist the frequent Earth tremors that shake the Andes. In Cuzco there is an inca wall with a famous stone having twelve angles in their faces. Torontoy, one of the small locations that surround Machu Picchu, there is another stone with 40 angles.
How did the incas such perfection in construction?The labor problem was solved with the work of the captives from other tribes. For example, the temples of Ollantaytambo were built by Indians colla, inhabitants of the shores of Lake Titicaca. But, how do they managed to cut the granite in blocks so long? Even when his ability was great for smelting and alloy of soft metals - gold, silver, copper and bronze, with those who did magnificent work-the incas never discovered how to manufacture iron utensils.
Despite not having supplies able to transform such hardness stones, and therefore lack the technology to carry out such work, the incas overcame all kinds of setbacks. This is one of the greatest enigmas that has left us this mysterious race, reason for multiple explanations.
The Guide to Sacsahuaman, near Cuzco, ensures that these works were made with fragments of Hematite of meteoric origin. If this is so, the Andes had undergoing a tremendous bombardment of meteorites, as instruments made of Hematite are not very strong, despite which the stones represent a work of millions of man hours. Another theory that is often invoked as an explanation of these constructs is the use of lasers by extraterrestrial visitors.
This theory, which denies the ability to carry out its task by themselves, the Incas is based on deeply rooted opinion that 20th century represents the pinnacle of human progress. This conception of the world, with their simple concatenation of causes and effects, helped to overcome diseases and conquer the globe, but does not consider the possibility that humanity has lost some powers held by the races of antiquity.
One of the wonders of the inca architecture is repeated here: the perfect combination of stones.
He still does not know how were transported without knowing the wheel.