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Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu Was Built To Last–and It Did

Gradually, as early as the thirteenth century, the Inca began to expand and incorporate their neighbors. Inca expansion was slow until about the middle of the fifteenth century, when the pace of conquest began to accelerate, particularly under the rule of the great emperor Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (1438-71). Historian John Hemming describes Pachacuti as "one of those protean figures, like Alexander or Napoleon, who combine a mania for conquest with the ability to impose his will on every facet of government." Under his rule and that of his son, Topa Inca Yupanqui (1471-93), the Incas came to control upwards of a third of South America, with a population of 9 to 16 million inhabitants under their rule. Pachacuti also promulgated a comprehensive code of laws to govern his far-flung empire, called Tawantinsuyu, while consolidating his absolute temporal and spiritual authority as the God of the Sun who ruled from a magnificently rebuilt Cusco.

By the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, the Inca Empire had reached its maximum size. Such powerful states as the coastal Chimú Kingdom were defeated and incorporated into the empire, although the Chimús spoke a language, Yunga, that was entirely distinct from the Incas' Quechua. But as the limits of the central Andean culture area were reached in present-day Chile and Argentina, as well as in the Amazon forests, the Incas encountered serious resistance, and those territories were never thoroughly subjugated.

At the outset, the Incas shared with most of their ethnic neighbors the same basic technology: weaving, pottery, metallurgy, architecture, construction engineering, and irrigation agriculture. During their period of dominance, little was added to this inventory of skills, other than the size of the population they ruled and the degree and efficiency of control they attained. The latter, however, constituted a rather remarkable accomplishment, particularly because it was achieved without benefit of either the wheel or a formal system of writing. Instead of writing, the Incas used the intricate and highly accurate khipu (knot-tying) system of recordkeeping . Imperial achievements were the more extraordinary considering the relative brevity of the period during which the empire was built (perhaps four generations) and the formidable geographic obstacles of the Andean landscape.

Who in their right mind would construct an estate on an unstable mountain slope prone to landslides? "A terrible building site," clucks engineer Kenneth Wright, author of Machu Picchu: A Civil Engineering Marvel. But the 15th-century Incas knew what they were doing. When they built a retreat for their king Pachacuti, they chose that "terrible" plot based on the oldest and wisest real-estate maxim in the world: location, location, location. And they knew how to build structures that would last an eternity.

They also knew how to build with style and grace. Stonemasons carved and polished the gray granite building blocks of the terraced, 25-acre compound until they nearly glowed. Most every room in the temples and residences had a view — and what a view it was. Perched 1,640 feet above Peru's sacred Urubamba River on a narrow ridge that joins two massive granite peaks, the regal inhabitants gazed at a cathedral of snowcapped mountains. But they weren't just nature lovers. The king and his company returned from royal hunts in the jungle to feast and dance in an elongated central plaza.

Pachacuti claimed direct descent from old Sol, so the engineers who built the Inca king's retreat made sure its every feature glorified his stature. As the sun moves across the sky, "the whole place shifts," says Patricia Lyon, an anthropologist with the Institute of Andean Studies who spent decades studying the site with her husband, Inca specialist John Rowe. Because of the patchwork quilt layout of buildings and walls, "patterns of light and shadow shift across the terraces, corners, and doorways, highlighting first one and then another as if the complex was in a constant state of reconstruction."

Neither buckets of rain no landslides have wiped away the well-built royal retreat of Machu Picchu - Incan for "old peak."

Although the crumbling Inca Empire abandoned Machu Picchu amid the Spanish onslaught of the early 16th century, the masterwork has survived exquisitely intact (albeit consumed by a jungly thicket). "The magic of Machu Picchu is unseen," says Wright. His recent excavations revealed that Inca engineers meticulously prepared the site, laying a coarse layer of rocks beneath the topsoil and buttressing granite walls with additional stones so the 79 inches of annual rain wouldn't wash away the structures. Expert hydrologists as well, the Incas estimated the runoff from tropical downpours, then designed a drainage system to channel water through small holes cut in the rock. "It's a problem many modern cities weren't designed to handle," says Wright. "The Incas thought things through."

That's particularly true of the 16 fountains, which draw water from a perennial spring a half mile uphill. With an elegance reminiscent of architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater house, a carefully constructed canal system channels water throughout the complex, "so the Inca ladies could always fill jugs with fresh water," says Kenneth Wright.

Not lost.

Machu Picchu spent centuries in obscurity, but in 1911 American archaeologist Hiram Bingham rediscovered the king's compound. He thought it was the "Lost City" — the traditional birthplace of the Inca people. After his discovery of Machu Picchu, Bingham became the first recipient of a National Geographic Society archaeological grant. He went on to lead three expeditions back to the site in 1912, 1914, and 1915. Of his original find in 1911, Bingham wrote in the April 1913 Geographic: "Machu Picchu might prove to be the largest and most important ruin discovered in South America since the days of the Spanish conquest." In Bingham's day the site was a six-day walk from the city of Cusco. Today the same journey takes a few hours by train.

The Sacred Plaza was the site of the finest structures. The Chief Temple is in the center, with the Temple of the Three Windows at right.

The explorer believed that the fact that a temple at Machu Picchu had three large windows — a rare feature in Inca architecture — was evidence of the city's importance to the Inca. "Machu Picchu," wrote Bingham, "has the ... advantage of not having been known to the Spaniards, of not having been occupied by their descendants, and of not having been torn to pieces by treasure hunters ..."

Others have surmised that Machu Picchu was an impenetrable citadel. Neither theory appears true. Pottery from the site dates from no earlier than the classical Inca period of the mid-1450s. And a supposed military barracks turned out to be a standard community house. Wright's work, along with that of other scholars, has helped solidify assertions that Machu Picchu was a royal retreat from damp, chilly winters in the highland capital of Cuzco.

A new exhibit, "Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas," supports the idea. Now at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, the traveling show includes items suggesting a long-ago Club Med: the remains of residents whose skeletons appear unburdened by heavy labor, a clay flute, a pair of dice.

Alex Markels. Inca derring-do. . June 30, 2003.

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