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From Primedia Publications
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The Mysteries of Machu Picchu
For centuries this breathtaking Inca city lay deserted and forgotten in the mountains of Peru. Rediscovered in 1911, it has tantalized visitors with unanswered questions ever since.

By Randall Hyman

"Were the Incas stupid or just crazy?" laughs an Australian after an hour-long climb up 700 vertical feet of slippery trail and narrow ledges. "Why would they build up here?" he asks between breaths. "They would have to carry everything!"

As he stands atop the terraced pinnacle of Huayna Picchu, ringed by Peru's soaring Andean mountains and lush Amazon valleys, his remarks are irreverent, yet to the point. Other visitors squeezing onto the summit with him silently share his sentiments as they take in the scene, awestruck. Seven hundred feet below, perched above a plunging river canyon, lies the Inca city of Machu Picchu. Seen from above, it is a geometric maze of temples, stairways, houses and terraces—an ancient tapestry set in stone.



Machu Picchu is, above all else, a place of mystery. Huffing up its endless steps (there are 3,000 of them) and poking in and out of the labyrinth of alcoves, plazas and temples, you can easily imagine priests, royalty and commoners materializing from the 1400s and thatch roofs reappearing atop the naked stone walls. Though Machu Picchu is now the most visited archeological site in all of South America, answers to the questions of when the Incas built this sacred city and why and when they abandoned it remain hazy.

To answer the Australian's question, the Incas were far from stupid or crazy. One reason they chose to build at the site was precisely because it was so inaccessible. Invaders had no hope of approaching up the steep canyon walls or down the backdrop of ridges where only one narrow pass leads over the mountains to the city.

From here the trail threads its way down across the precipitous cliff face on a narrow ledge. The sight makes your skin crawl.
Modern visitors wanting a visceral taste of Machu Picchu's impregnability can hike 20 minutes past the city to a sheer granite cliff face. Public access beyond this point is prohibited, but the wooden barricade adorned with a prohibido el paso sign is only for the benefit of the insane. From here the trail threads its way down across the precipitous cliff face on a narrow ledge. The sight makes your skin crawl. Halfway across, stretched over thin air, is a large gap spanned by a few logs that Inca guards once slid back and forth as a "drawbridge" to control access. An invading army stood no chance.

But how did a civilization with no iron tools and no wheel manage to chisel and move huge 15-ton blocks along this Andean ridge? Large teams of men apparently dragged the boulders from nearby quarries, positioning them atop building walls via earthen ramps. Half-worked boulders at the small quarry inside Machu Picchu still bear notches where bronze chisels were inserted into cracks. Experts believe heat was then applied to help split boulders. The building blocks were sculpted to fit one another precisely, without mortar—no small task considering how many times the massive blocks had to be moved to get the right fit. Today, even after centuries of earthquakes and weather, you can't slip a razor blade between the stones of some walls.

Archeologists speculate Machu Picchu was built in the 1400s as more than simply a citadel or fortress. Its alignment with sacred Inca mountains, rivers and astronomical points suggests agreement with celestial and terrestrial deities was at least as important as inaccessibility from invaders.

A short walk up the pyramidal mount called Intihuatana in the center of Machu Picchu gives visitors a vivid sense of the city's spiritual magnetism. At the top is a man-sized obelisk. It's said that Inca priests "lassoed" the sun to the obelisk at each winter solstice so it couldn't continue its northward retreat and leave them in darkness. In Quechuan, the language of the Incas, Intihuatana is interpreted by some to mean "hitching post of the sun."

Near this obelisk is a carefully carved cluster of small boulders that silhouettes a distant mountain range. Many such homages to surrounding peaks are peppered throughout the city. The shape of the Intihuatana obelisk is itself suggestive of Huayna Picchu, the sacred peak toward which the entire city is oriented. The view east and west affords a wide vista for priests to observe the sun, the principal Inca deity.

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Randall Hyman is a writer and photographer whose photographs appeared in many Historic Traveler articles. He's done stories on history, nature and travel worldwide for such magazines as Smithsonian and International Wildlife.

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