Machu Picchu: The Lost City of the Incas

i arrived at the site at about 6.15 and without hesitation i climbed the stone stairs which zig zagged up the side of a steep mountain, as i reach the top, the breathtaking view machu picchu emerges in front of me. i climbed up many of the stone stairs and terracces to try and find a the highest point i could . i sat on a rock and took out a sandwich and a bottle of water from my backpack. i still have two hours until the tour guide arrives and the sky tells me that the Inca Sun God "Inti" is going to give us a glorios sunny day. what a place to have breakfast!


Machu Picchu

well here it is, the lost city of the incas.
or perhaps i should say, one of them!
as there is reason to believe there are more cities not yet discovered. in the time of the brutal spanish conquest the last remaining Inca warriors are said to have fled into the jungle where their descendents may even be today . though the spanish had been sending scouts fo follow the inca trails to find the settlements, the incas started to destory these trails towards the end of this era in order to prevent the spanish from finding such places.
this is a possible reason that the spanish never discovered machu pichhu along with the fact that one doesnt exactly expect to find a city on top of a mountain. though it is the most popular inca site its is not the biggest nor the most recently found. new inca ruins are still being found from time to time including one small site at the top of a nearby mountain just 6 months ago. apparently there is enough written information to suggest that there may indeed be other lost cities deep within the jungle.



though already known by the locals in the area, machhu pichhu was made world famous in 1911 by a man named Hiram Bingham who went to peru in search of a lost inca city. he coined the phrase "lost city of the incas" in several books that he wrote. at that time the city was overgrown by trees and difficult to see.
due to certain artifacts fuond on site, some believe that machu picchu was a kind of university city for the inca elite. possibly those who would go on to be the ruling class of the inca society. but much about this city is a complete mystery, we do not even know its real name, the Quechua name macchu pichhu is merely the name of the mountain meaning "old mountain". historians do not know why the city was abandoned, though they have reason to believe that the spanish never found it since there are no records or evidence of this, moreover the place is still intact which is proof enough you might say given the state of the other places that the spanish found. its possible that the incas fled to keep it from being found but with the intention of returning at a later stage, many of the artifacts were left behind which backs this theory up. all of the golden items normally associated with the inca culture were gone however, some presume that the incas took these items with them and some say the site had been looted at some stage prior to 1911.
interestingly from the hundreds of buried skeletons found here experts determined that 3 of them had in fact been shot with guns, this suggests that some spanish may indeed have encountered this place but perhaps the incas had then killed the gunmen which is why the city remained a secret.













there is evidence that these walls had been coated with clay and kinds of dye were used to paint them in varous colors. also many of the smaller terraces were decorated with flowers for estethic purposes only. once upon a time this must have been a very colorful place indeed.








a gold bracelet from inca times was found near this tree in 1995



Some wildlife in Machu Picchu.
apparently bears are spotted around there every other week.


the incas kept llamas and alpacas in machu picchu, now days the job of these ones is to keep the grass short.


coca plant, used by the incas. particularly by the runners who relayed messages right across the inca empire on foot. it is not normally found at this altitude and therefore is smaller than its normal 4 foot approx height, but there is evidence that the incas cultivated it.


lizards keeping cool within the stone buildings



viscacha


and not to mention about 400,000 human beings per year


some climb to the top of Huayna picchu , the high peak just behind the city. im not sure but i think i can make out two people at the top.


looks as if one of them is gone now.


14.30 PM approx. if you look closely you will see a white aircraft flying past the upper part of Huayna Picchu


Machu Picchu is 2400 metres above sea level
Cuzco at 3360 metres is actually almost one kilometre higher in the sky.


the Urubamba river goes around the mountain




Some colorful country people in Cuzco, these people speak Quechua, the official language of the Incas.











i feel that i now understand why the peruvians always ask me if i have been to machu picchu. they are very proud of it. and so they should be, machu picchu is a truely work of genius and an exemplification of the magnificent civilization from which they decend.

links
machu picchu wiki
The Inca Empire
Quechua
Hiram Bingham

Music
Roxana Gutierrez - Solamente un Amor