Machu Picchu is a XV century Inca site built in the mountains next to the Sacred Valley of the Inca; find here Machu Picchu History
Machu Picchu History.- Machu Picchu will be always the main attraction center of the world let’s take care of it. Machu Picchu is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization.
The great Machu Picchu is situated at 112 km at northeast of the city of Cusco at 2,400 or 8,079 ft. above sea level Machu Picchu or Machu Pijchu is a Quechaua word that means old mountain or old peak; It is located in on a mountain ridge above the Sacred Valley through which the Urubamba River flows.
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. In 2007,
Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll.
Archaeologist said that the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu was built around 1450, at the height of the Inca Empire, it constructions appears to date from the period of the two great Incas, Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui (1438–71) and Tupac Inca Yupanqui (1472–93), during this time thousands of people worked doing different tasks; Machu Picchu was built and habited 100 years approximately then abandoned at time that the Spanish conquistadors arrived to Cusco at 1536.
The famus Machu Picchu is a stone city with over 170 buildings, more than one thousand stone steps, hundreds of terraces which provided food for the inhabitants and preserved from erosion caused of the rain water; Machu Picchu has several religious temples, 16 water baths, many astronomical observatories, beautiful gardens, holy squares and one palace which was used by the Inca.
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Machu Picchu was discovered by Hiram Bingham – Machu Picchu History
In 1909 Hiram Bingham arrived to Cusco city as a result of exploring the route of the South American liberators (Jose de San Martin and Simon Bolivar); Upon his arrival he was interested in the Inca constructions and he commenced to read chroniclers of XVI century where he found information about Vilcabamba.
Mr. Bingham organized expedition to search the Vilcabamba Inca citadel, the last refuge of “Manco Inca”, who fought against the Spanish conquerors in the 1530s; in one of his expeditions Bingham followed the valley beyond The Actual town of Ollantaytambo by mule and on foot to a small settlement called Mandor Pampa, near Aguas Calientes town, where they encountered a local farmer named Melchor Arteaga.
Through Bingham’s policeman-interpreter, Arteaga told him that there were extensive ruins high on the mountains nearby at what Arteaga in his native Quechua called Machu Picchu, meaning ‘Old Mountain’, since this moment the name is Machu Picchu no one knows exactly was the name in the time of the Incas; all of this happens at 23 of July of 1911. They climbed up to the ruins next morning through a persistent drizzle of rain.
No one else in Bingham’s party showed any interest, but Bingham, Arteaga and the interpreter spent two exhausting hours clambering up the mountain to a small hut occupied by peasants who were growing crops there. They greeted the American hospitably and deputed a small boy to show him the astonishing things close by.
Hiram Bingham & Vilcabamba
Bingham was sure he had discovered Vilcabamba. He believed that to the end of his life, mistakenly as it turned out, and he was fascinated by the mystery and magic of the place, with the great snowy peaks looming above it. Returning in succeeding years he took thousands of photographs. He also took thousands of objects to the United States for study and safekeeping, which was to cause wrangling between the Peruvian government and Yale University for years afterwards.
Hiram Bingham theorized that Machu Picchu was the traditional birthplace of the Incan “Virgins of the Suns” (the most beautiful girls of the Inca empire whose life was dedicated to the religion); More recent research by scholars such as John Howland Rowe and Richard Burger, has convinced most archaeologists that Machu Picchu was an estate of the Inca emperor Pachacuti.
In addition, Johan Reinhardt presented evidence that the site was selected because of its position relative to sacred landscape features such as its mountains that are purported to be in alignment with key astronomical events important to the Incas.
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