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The
ruins of Machu Picchu, rediscovered in 1911 by Yale archaeologist
Hiram
Bingham, are one of the most beautiful and enigmatic ancient sites in
the world. While the Inca people certainly used the Andean mountain top
(9060 feet elevation), erecting many hundreds of stone structures from
the early 1400's, legends and myths indicate that Machu Picchu (meaning
'Old Peak' in the Quechua language) was revered as a sacred place from a
far earlier time. Whatever its origins, the Inca turned the site into a
small (5 square miles) but extraordinary city. Invisible from below and
completely self-contained, surrounded by agricultural terraces
sufficient to feed the population, and watered by natural springs, Machu
Picchu seems to have been utilized by the Inca as a secret ceremonial
city. Two thousand feet above the rumbling Urubamba river, the cloud
shrouded ruins have palaces, baths, temples, storage rooms and some 150
houses, all in a remarkable state of preservation. These structures,
carved from the gray granite of the mountain top are wonders of both
architectural and aesthetic genius. Many of the building blocks weigh 50
tons or more yet are so precisely sculpted and fitted together with such
exactitude that the mortarless joints will not permit the insertion of
even a thin knife blade. Little is known of the social or religious use
of the site during Inca times.
The skeletal remains of ten females to
one male had led to the casual assumption that the site may have been a
sanctuary for the training of priestesses and /or brides for the Inca
nobility. However, subsequent osteological examination of the bones
revealed an equal number of male bones, thereby indicating that Machu
Picchu was not exclusively a temple or dwelling place of women. |
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