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From Primedia Publications
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The Mysteries of Machu Picchu (cont.)
Why Machu Picchu was abandoned in such pristine condition is a mystery. During excavation Bingham found scores of skeletal remains, mostly female. Perhaps war called away the men, leaving behind their wives and the so-called "chosen women" who served as nuns of the sun god and concubines of the royalty.

Contemplating the breathtaking views from the Temple of the Three Windows and walking beside the aqueduct that gurgles down the Stairway of the Fountains, I found it hard to imagine why the Incas left such a paradise. Food, water and clothing must have been plentiful. Potatoes, corn and quinoa, a high-protein grain, were grown on the terraces. The meat of choice was cuy, guinea pigs who lived in the people's houses until suddenly invited for dinner. Wool came from llamas whose descendants still wander among the ruins, so tame they tolerate petting. For outside commerce, residents relied on a path over the mountains, a favorite hike backpackers now call the Inca Trail, that connected with the Inca's version of an interstate highway system.



The Inca empire was brilliant and short-lived, a bright burst on the radar screen of history.
The Inca empire was brilliant and short-lived, a bright burst on the radar screen of history. Though it lasted less than 100 years, it was the largest and most advanced civilization of the Americas before the European conquest. To some historians, the Incas are an anomaly, a set of contradictions. They were a people who built thousands of miles of paved "highways" throughout the Andes and down to the coast, yet they possessed no wheel. Their empire was highly organized, yet they had no written language. They were an agrarian civilization, but they inhabited some of the least arable land on the continent, from coastal deserts to icy tundra. And perhaps most puzzling, the Inca army that had forged an empire stretching over half the length of South America was defeated by barely 200 Spanish conquistadors in their first battle.

The conquistadors were ruthless and avaricious in their destruction of this culture. Anything made of gold or silver, regardless of its beauty or sacredness, was melted into ingots. The elite "chosen women" were raped, defiled and bartered away. Royalty was disgraced, tortured and executed in public. Eventually the conquistadors began murdering one another, and little was left of a once-glorious civilization by the time Spain established civil order. And though it took the white man centuries to appreciate the value of another treasure the Incas left the world, a little white tuber first bred by pre-Columbian Andeans saved much of Europe from famine. It has been said that all the gold and silver plundered from the Incas would still not equal the world's annual potato harvest. In spite of all they gave, the Incas' only reward was oblivion.

On an early morning at Machu Picchu, as the chill from the Andes mingles with the damp breath of the Amazon, all these cruelties seem remote. Clouds roil up from the sweeping Urubamba river valley and begin to lift off the mountains, revealing a city of gold bathed in shimmering sunlight. Where better to worship the sun and the earth? For all that has been lost and for all that is unknown about Machu Picchu, the world seems a better place with such mysteries.
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