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Jul 2, 2018 · 6 ancient sites that people are convinced were built by aliens — and why they probably weren't. Taylor Tobin. ... Some people still believe Machu Picchu was built by aliens.
8 Unsolved Mysteries of Machu Picchu. Despite the fact that Machu Picchu was built over 500 years ago, with no mortar used to hold together its stones, and sits up a mountain — on an earthquake fault! — the city’s 500 stone buildings are, amazingly, still standing today. Located 50 miles from Cusco, Machu Picchu measures an incredible 116 ...
Sep 26, 2019 · Some of the faults the researchers identified stretch up to 175 kilometres (109 miles) in length. It's quite literally a case of X marks the spot for Machu Picchu – with the X being the meeting point of fractures running northeast-southwest and northwest-southeast. Other Incan cities, including Ollantaytambo, Pisac, and Cusco, are located at ...
- Overview
- The Wrong "Lost City"
- Modern Theories
- Machu Picchu Today
This Peruvian city was discovered over 100 years ago, but archaeologists are still trying to solve the mystery of its purpose.
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On the morning of July 24, 1911, an enterprising lecturer-explorer from Yale University set off in a cold drizzle to investigate rumors of ancient Inca ruins in Peru. The explorer chopped his way through thick jungle, crawled across a "bridge" of slender logs bound together with vines, and crept through underbrush hiding venomous fer-de-lance pit vipers.
Two hours into the hike, the explorer and his two escorts came across a grass-covered hut. A pair of local farmers walked them a short way before handing them over to a small boy. With the boy leading the way, Hiram Bingham stumbled upon one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century—and what was named in 2007 as one of the new seven wonders of the world: Machu Picchu.
What Bingham saw was a dramatic and towering citadel of stone cut from escarpments. Fashioned by men without mortar, the stones fit so tightly together that not even a knife's blade could fit between them. He wondered: Why? By whom? For what?
Certainly, what he saw was awe-invoking. Contemporary Peruvian expert Luis Lumbreras, the former director of Peru's National Institute of Culture, describes "a citadel made up of palaces and temples, dwellings and storehouses," a site fulfilling ceremonial religious functions.
Bingham's discovery was published in the April 1913 issue of National Geographic magazine, bringing the mountaintop citadel to the world's attention. (The National Geographic Society helped fund Bingham on excursions to Machu Picchu in 1912 and 1915.)
Bingham believed he had found Vilcabamba, the so-called Lost City of the Inca where the last of the independent Inca rulers waged a years-long battle against Spanish conquistadors. Bingham argued for and justified his conclusions for almost 50 years after his discovery, and his explanations were widely accepted.
What Bingham had found, however, was not the lost city, but a different lost city.
In 1964, adventurer Gene Savoy identified ruins and proved that Espiritu Pampa (in the Vilcabamba region of Peru, west of Machu Picchu) was the lost city that Bingham had originally sought. Ironically, Bingham had actually discovered these ruins at Espiritu Pampa during his 1911 trek. He uncovered a few Inca-carved stone walls and bridges but dismissed the ruins and ultimately focused on Machu Picchu. Savoy uncovered much of the rest.
So what then was this city that Bingham had revealed? There were no accounts of Machu Picchu in any of the much-studied chronicles of the Spanish invasion and occupation, so it was clear European invaders had never discovered it. There was nothing to document that it even existed at all, let alone its purpose.
Bingham theorized that Machu Picchu had served as a convent of sorts where chosen women from the Inca realm were trained to serve the Inca leader and his coterie. He found more than a hundred skeletons at the site and believed that roughly 75 percent of the skeletons were female, but modern studies have shown a more reasonable fifty-fifty split between male and female bones.
Modern research has continued to modify, correct, and mold the legend of Machu Picchu. Research conducted by John Rowe, Richard Burger, and Lucy Salazar-Burger indicates that rather than being a defensive stronghold, Machu Picchu was a retreat built by and for the Inca ruler Pachacuti. Burger has suggested it was built for elites wanting to escape the noise and congestion of the city.
Brian Bauer, an expert in Andean civilization at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a National Geographic grantee, says Machu Picchu—which was built around A.D. 1450—was, in fact, relatively small by Inca standards and maintained only about 500 to 750 people.
One thing is certain, says Bauer, archaeological evidence makes it clear that the Inca weren't the only people to live at Machu Picchu. The evidence shows, for instance, varying kinds of head modeling, a practice associated with peoples from coastal regions as well as in some areas of the highlands. Additionally, ceramics crafted by a variety of peoples, even some from as far as Lake Titicaca, have been found at the site.
"All this suggests that many of the people who lived and died at Machu Picchu may have been from different areas of the empire," Bauer says.
As for farming, Machu Picchu's residents likely made use of the grand terraces surrounding it. But experts say these terraces alone couldn't have sustained the estimated population of the day and that farming most likely also took place in the surrounding hills.
Dr. Johan Reinhard, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, has spent years studying ceremonial Inca sites at extreme altitudes. He's gathered information from historical, archaeological, and ethnographical sources to demonstrate that Machu Picchu was built in the center of a sacred landscape.
In September 2007, Yale University agreed to return to Peru some of the thousands of artifacts that Bingham removed to Yale to study during his years of exploration and research. These items were placed in the UNSAAC-Yale International Museum for the Study of Machu Picchu and Inca Culture, which opened in Cusco in 2011.
Being named a modern world wonder as part of a worldwide poll in 2007 was a mixed blessing for the people of Cusco, the former center of the Inca world and the closest city to Machu Picchu. The site is a source of national pride for Peru, as well as a valuable tourist attraction. However, with an increase in international interest comes an increase in pollution, a need for hotels and other facilities, and the need to protect the lost city that, before the past century, the world didn't know existed.
It's highly unlikely that researchers will find an archaeological smoking gun that will definitively identify the purpose and uses of Machu Picchu. Scientists, however, continue to excavate and rebuild the site. Modern scientific advances, such as those that re-identified the gender of the skeletons that Bingham found, could help uncover clues to reveal the reasons for its construction, the activities that took place there, and its subsequent abandonment.
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Archaeologists study a colossal Olmec stone head in La Venta, Mexico in this 1947 National Geographic photo. The Olmec civilization, the first in Mesoamerica, offers valuable clues into the development of the rest of the region.
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- Kelly Hearn,Jason Golomb
Aug 3, 2021 · Those historical accounts suggested Machu Picchu was built between 1440 and 1450. But in the new research, Burger and his co-authors found that human remains unearthed at the site show Machu ...
Jan 20, 2022 · The Machu Picchu discoveries, which include parts of a water system that ran through the area, are yielding new insights into Inca civilization and the role of ceremonial complexes at Machu Picchu.
Jan 8, 2016 · Theory #5: Machu Picchu was built to honor the landscape. According to archaeologist Dr. Johan Reinhard, the Inca may have built Machu Picchu to honor the geographical features of the Amazon River Basin and surrounding mountains which were venerated by the Inca. Support for this theory is bolstered by the fact that Machu Picchu is built atop a ...
