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MACHU PICCHU History.

Machu Picchu means Old Peak on the native language Qechua of Peru. It is located at 7,900 ft. above the sea level, and 60 miles North West of Cusco in Peru; above the Urubamba River, principal tributary of the Amazons River. According to investigations Machu Picchu was built in the XV century when the Emperor Pachacuteq ruled the Tawantinsuyo or Inca Empire.

..."when explorer Hiran Bingham first saw the overgrown ruins of the lost city of Machu Picchu in Peru in 1911, he was stunned by the "Cyclopean" size of its stone blocks and the masterful way they were fitted together. “It seemed like an unbelievable dream,"..."what could this place be? Why had no one given one idea of it?"

Experts now agree that Machu Picchu was one of the series of royal estates build in the Urubamba Valley on the Inca Empire's eastern frontier. The valley which lies at a lower, warmer altitude than the Inca Capital of Cusco provided an escape from the June-through-August Andean winters.

Construction of Machu Picchu was begun by Inca Ruler Pachacuti around 1450 and it was used for little more than a hundred years. When the Spanish entered to Inca Territory in 1532, the empire rapidly collapsed. Spaniards pillaged and razed sites that promised gold or held strategic importance. Remote Machu Picchu survived inviolate, its buildings losing only their thatch roofs to time.

To look upon this sanctuary is to understand what the Inca saw as beautiful and sacred. Huacas, or natural features believed to possess supernatural powers, surround Machu Picchu. Mountains peaks, the meeting place of earth and sky, rise to the north and south, while the Urubamba River, carried of life-giving water, curls along the valley floor more than 1,500 feet below. The annual cycle of the sun, worshiped by the Inca us a god, can be traced from several observation points. During the June solstice –beginning of Andean year- the Inca are thought to have held a festival at Machu Picchu re-created here by an artist.

It took enormous skill to build this imperial outpost in such a rugged setting especially as the Inca possessed only wooden, stone and bronze tools and relied on their own labour to move the heavy blocks. More than the half construction effort involved site preparation, drainage and foundation work, according to civil engineer Kenneth Wright and archaeologist Alfredo Valencia Zegarra, experts on the site. Massive retaining walls and breathtaking staircase terraces have kept the city from washing off its cliff site perch for more than 500 years.

For the descendants of Andean civilizations, Machu Picchu is still a source of pride and identity, a testament to a history and culture foreign conquest could not obliterate. “Tall city of stepped stone,” wrote Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.” High reef of the human dawn….The fallen kingdom survives us all this while.”

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