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Fabled Lost City Of The Incas
Machu Picchu Machu Picchu, spectacularly sets atop a mountain of
a 1200 foot serpentine road which leads to the fabled Lost City of the
Incas. The City was never found by the Spanish Conquistadors and only
rediscovered in 1911 by American explorer Hiram Bingham. The mystery and intrigue that surrounds Machu Picchu is one of the great
dramatic moments of archaeological legend.. Hiram Bingham arrived in
the Peruvian Andes in 1911 to find that a new mule trail had been blasted
from Cuzco down towards the Amazon. According to Bingham, he wandered
almost by chance along this new route and on July 24th was directed by
a local farmer to take a look at the top of a nearby hill. What he found
was Machu Picchu, an untouched Inca city of startling beauty sprawled
across a remote 8,000 foot ridge. The spectacle left him breathless.
There is a tremendous feeling of awe on first witnessing this incredible sight. The ancient citadel straddles the saddle of a high mountain with steep terraced slopes falling away to the fast-flowing Urubamba river snaking its hairpin course far below in the valley floor. Towering overhead is Huayna Picchu, and green jungle peaks provide the backdrop for the whole majestic scene. 
Machu Picchu was the only major Inca site to escape 400 years of looting and destruction, it was remarkably preserved, And it was no ordinary Inca settlement. It sat in an inaccessible location above the Urubamba gorge and contained so many fine buildings that people have puzzled over its meaning ever since. 
Bingham claimed he had discovered the lost city of Vilcabamba, and for 50 years everyone believed him. But he was proved wrong, and the mystery deepened. Later discoveries have revealed that Machu Picchu was the center of an extensive Inca province. Many finely preserved satellite sites and highways also survive. This is craggy terrain, and the value of a province with no mines and little agricultural lands - it was not ever self sufficient - is hard to determine why it was built. Bingham postulated it was a defensive citadel on the fringes of the Amazon. But the architecture fails to convince us, and in any case, defense against whom? 
The Incas were the first to build permanent structures in this region, which was unusual because they arrived at the tail end of 4,000 years of Andean civilization. 16th-century land titles discovered in the 1980's revealed that Machu Picchu was built by the Inca Pachacuti, founding father of the Inca Empire. But they do not tell us why he built it. One reasonable speculation is that this area provided access to coca plantations in the lower Urubamba valley. However, the fine architecture of Machu Picchu cannot be explained away simply as a coca collecting station.
Machu Picchu was deliberately abandoned by its inhabitants - when, we do not know. This may have happened even before the Spanish invasion, perhaps as a result of the Inca civil wars, or the epidemics of European diseases which ran like brush fires ahead of the Spanish in the New World. One theory proposes that the city ran dry in a period of drought, another suggest a devastating fire. Or the city may have been evacuated during the period of Inca resistance to the Spanish, which lasted nearly 40 years and was concentrated not far west of Machu Picchu.
When the Spanish conquerors entered Peru, they came upon an island near Puna on which was a royal garden so astonishing it might have come out of a fairy tale. Every living thing was reproduced in gold and silver models. Trees, even to the roots, and lesser plants with leaves, flowers and fruit fashioned in natural size and style; some ready to sprout, others half-grown or in full blossom.
Golden birds sat perched on silver trees, as if singing, while others were flying and sucking honey from flowers. Nothing remained uncopied: rabbits, foxes, mice, lizards, lions, tigers, stags, snakes. All were set in their natural surroundings to enhance reality. And as if that were not enough, golden butterflies flited around in
the breeze. Life-size fish, ropes, hampers, baskets, bins and even woodpiles for burning were all fashioned in gold and silver, soldered together. Such gardens graced all royal residences throughout the land. The others were disassembled before the treasure-lusting invaders could reach them. So carefully were these artifacts hidden, they have never been found. Regretfully, most of which the invaders did not lay their hands on was melted down and shipped to Europe. So vanished an unbelievably precise metal technology. The Incas were heirs to a much earlier culture as evidenced from their advanced knowledge of metallurgy and bears an aesthetic superiority to our own. Their eating utensils, garden tools and even footwear and furniture of their finely worked gold is irrefutable. There were bathtubs of gold and silver fed by water pipes of silver and gold.
Spanish Conquistadors who conquered the ancient Inca Empire reported
that in a temple at Cuzco they were breathless when they beheld an
image of solid god inlaid with emeralds and other gems which covered
a total wall of 50feet. When struck by the rays of sunlight the rooms
brilliantly illuminated the interior of the building. It also caught
the moonlight..
The highest ranking deity of the Inca was a celestial supreme being
who About ten miles from Lima, on a bare desert overlooking the Pacific, stand the remains of the city Pachacamak. The temples of Pachacamak were fastened with gold nails that were found to weigh a ton. It was the holy city of Old Peru of the greatest antiquity. Of the vast amounts of goods excavated form its graves and rubble is a tapestry, whose symbols are substantially the Hittite script. Montezuma of the Aztecs never ate twice from the same gold or silver plate. Thus the high and rich technology of early civilizations on metallurgy is forgotten and we are still attempting today to rediscover its secrets. MIDI: |
