machu picchu
When I first learned about the Machu Picchu I never thought that something like this exist. Seems the world has all the wonders to offer so let’s get a deeper look now beyond the secrets within the black owl…
The ruins of Machu Picchu, rediscovered in 1911 by Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham, are one of the most beautiful and enigmatic ancient sites in the world. While the Inca people certainly used the Andean mountain top (9060 feet elevation), erecting many hundreds of stone structures from the early 1400’s, legends and myths indicate that Machu Picchu (meaning ‘Old Peak’ in the Quechua language) was revered as a sacred place from a far earlier time. Whatever its origins, the Inca turned the site into a small (5 square miles) but extraordinary city. Invisible from below and completely self-contained, surrounded by agricultural terraces sufficient to feed the population, and watered by natural springs, Machu Picchu seems to have been utilized by the Inca as a secret ceremonial city. Two thousand feet above the rumbling Urubamba river, the cloud shrouded ruins have palaces, baths, temples, storage rooms and some 150 houses, all in a remarkable state of preservation. These structures, carved from the gray granite of the mountain top are wonders of both architectural and aesthetic genius. Many of the building blocks weigh 50 tons or more yet are so precisely sculpted and fitted together with such exactitude that the mortarless joints will not permit the insertion of even a thin knife blade. Little is known of the social or religious use of the site during Inca times. The skeletal remains of ten females to one male had led to the casual assumption that the site may have been a sanctuary for the training of priestesses and /or brides for the Inca nobility. However, subsequent osteological examination of the bones revealed an equal number of male bones, thereby indicating that Machu Picchu was not exclusively a temple or dwelling place of women.
One of Machu Picchu’s primary functions was that of astronomical observatory. The Intihuatana stone (meaning ‘Hitching Post of the Sun’) has been shown to be a precise indicator of the date of the two equinoxes and other significant celestial periods. The Intihuatana (also called the Saywa or Sukhanka stone) is designed to hitch the sun at the two equinoxes, not at the solstice (as is stated in some tourist literature and new-age books). At midday on March 21st and September 21st, the sun stands almost directly above the pillar, creating no shadow at all. At this precise moment the sun “sits with all his might upon the pillar” and is for a moment “tied” to the rock. At these periods, the Incas held ceremonies at the stone in which they “tied the sun” to halt its northward movement in the sky. There is also an Intihuatana alignment with the December solstice (the summer solstice of the southern hemisphere), when at sunset the sun sinks behind Pumasillo (the Puma’s claw), the most sacred mountain of the western Vilcabamba range, but the shrine itself is primarily equinoctial.
Shamanic legends tell that when a sensitive person touches their forehead to the Intihuatana stone it opens their vision to the spirit world. Intihuatana stones were the supremely sacred objects of the Inca people and were systematically searched for and destroyed by the Spaniards. When the Intihuatana stone was broken at an Inca shrine, the Inca believed that the deities of the place died or departed. The Spaniards never found Machu Picchu, even though they suspected its existence, thus the Intihuatana stone and its resident spirits remain in their original position. The mountain top sanctuary fell into disuse and was abandoned some forty years after the Spanish took Cuzco in 1533. Supply lines linking the many Inca social centers were disrupted and the great empire came to an end. The photograph shows the ruins of Machu Picchu in the foreground with the sacred peak of Wayna Picchu towering behind. Partway down the northern side of Wayna Picchu is the so-called “Temple of the Moon” inside a cavern. As with the ruins of Machu Picchu, there is no archaeological or iconographical evidence to substantiate the “new-age” assumption that this cave was a goddess site.
Although Hiram Bingham was the first person to bring word of the ruins to the outside world in 1911, other outsiders were said to have seen Machu Picchu before him. The site may have been discovered in 1867 by a German businessman, Augusto Berns, and there is some evidence that another German, J. M. von Hassel, arrived even earlier. Maps found by historians show references to Machu Picchu as early as 1874. In 1904, an engineer named Franklin supposedly spotted the ruins from a distant mountain.
The Intihuatana stone, Machu Picchu
Ruins of Machu Picchu, Peru
Ruins of Machu Picchu, Peru
Road from Aguas Calientes up to Machu Picchu, Peru
Detail of stone work at Machu Picchu
The INCA and their History
At the time of Columbus’ landfall on the New World, the greatest empire on earth was that of the Inca. Called Tawantinsuyu or ‘Land of the Four Quarters,’ it spanned more than 4300 miles along the mountains and coastal deserts of central South America. The vast empire stretched from central Chile to present Ecuador-Colombia border and included most of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, northern Chile and northwestern Argentina (this is a land area equal to the entire portion of the United States from Maine to Florida east of the Appalachians). It exceeded in size any medieval or contemporary European nation and equaled the longitudinal expanse of the Roman Empire. Yet for all its greatness, Tawantinsuyu existed for barely a century.
The origins of the Inca are shrouded in mystery and mythology. According to their own mythology, the Inca began when Manco Capac and his sister, Mama Occlo, rose out of Lake Titicaca, having been created by the Sun and the Moon as divine founders of a chosen people. Manco Capac and his sister then went off with a golden rod to find a suitable location to found a great city. Through a series of adventures, geomantic resonances, and astronomical correspondences, the site of Cuzco was chosen.
Archaeological research, on the other hand, indicates that the pre-imperial Inca were simply one of a number of petty tribes in the south central region of Peru. From roughly 1200 AD to the early 1400’s, the Inca engaged in numerous battles with local rivals, but never achieved supremacy over any of them. Around 1438, however, the Inca emperor Viracocha and his son, Pachakuti, defeated a powerful rival, the Chankas. From this time the empire building era of the Inca began. Other rival tribes around the Cuzco area were soon united and campaigns were launched into the Titicaca basin and beyond. During the ensuing reigns of the emperors Pachakuti, and Topa Inca the Inca armies expanded the frontiers of Tawantinsuyu from southern Columbia to central Chile.
In the few short years before their overthrow by the Spanish in 1532, the Inca developed one of the largest and most sophisticated empires in the entire pre-industrial world. (In discussing Inca achievements, however, it is important to state that they were not the singular invention of a few inspired emperors but rather the ultimate elaboration of numerous pan-Andean institutions.) The Inca accomplished their phenomenal growth through a mixture of diplomacy and warfare, and a sociopolitical management system based on highly effective taxation and the dependable provision of goods and services to the peoples of their realm.
As the Inca began to expand their territories, the first step was to seek alliances with tribes upon the frontiers. Copious gifts of textiles, exotic products from distant regions, and wives to add blood ties to the alliances were offered to the chiefs of these tribes. Quite frequently these gifts were readily accepted (certainly the intimidating specter of the powerful Inca armies assisted in this process), but if certain tribes proved recalcitrant, the Inca simply overwhelmed them with superior military power.
In either case, the tribes were then incorporated into larger administrative units and political provinces. This strategy left Tawantinsuyu with more than 80 political provinces, each with different ethnic and linguistic characteristics. To address these regional differences the Inca imposed there own tongue, Quechua, as the language of the realm and the medium of governmental communication. Additionally, the Inca frequently moved entire populations around their realm, putting loyal groups into troublesome areas, and transferring recalcitrant tribes to loyal areas. These wholesale transfers of people were also used to introduce weavers and farmers, stone workers and artisans into areas where these skills were needed.
Inca statecraft, a system of truly extraordinary efficiency, was founded upon the ancient, pan-Andean concept of reciprocity. Goods and services moved from the local area to regional and state warehouses and were then redistributed back to the populace in several important ways. The state economy was based, not on currency systems, but on extracting taxes in the form of labor. There were three primary forms to this taxation: agricultural levies on local community-managed lands; a labor service required of able-bodied males that provided for monumental construction projects and military campaigns; and the textile production required of women, children and older men. The goods and services gathered in these ways were then divided into three shares. The first third went to support Inti (the Sun god), other gods in the state pantheon, and a wide variety of ceremonial activities. The second portion went to support the Inca emperor and the construction and military projects he initiated. The third portion was redistributed to the common people in the form of food, textiles, lavish festivals, and military protection.
The most visible, and remaining, examples of Inca genius are to be found in their monumental construction projects: in the form of roads, agricultural terraces, and administrative and ceremonial structures. The vast empire was united by an extensive and superbly efficient highway system. Two parallel highways, one along the coast and the other in the high mountains, ran north-south from one end of the empire to the other. Between these two major highways ran dozens of east-west roads linking the coasts, mountains, and jungles. Altogether there were more than 30,000 kilometers of these roads, the majority of which were beautifully paved, well drained, and equipped with storage houses, travelers’ lodges, and military posts. The produce of the empire moved efficiently along these roads, transported by hardy llamas strung together in caravans of a thousand or more animals. Furthermore, along the roads sped the most rapid communication system ever developed in the pre-industrial world; in the form of a constant movement of fleet-footed runners.
To feed the people in their swiftly growing empire, the Inca terraced great areas of mountain land, transported rich soils to the terraces, employed highly sophisticated irrigation systems, and experimented with a variety of crops. These monumental landscaping projects, called andenes in the Quechua language, so impressed the colonial Spanish that they named the Andes mountains after them (recent satellite photography has shown that these Inca terraces covered more land than is currently cultivated in the central Andean nations).
In their administrative and even more so, their ceremonial centers, the Inca most clearly displayed their brilliance with design and construction. Great surviving centers such as Pisac, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu, and Cuzco, the Inca capital, are well known examples. In these places the Inca fashioned monumental architecture equal in beauty to any culture of the old world. Massive, multi-sided blocks were precisely fitted together in interlocking patterns in order to withstand the disastrous effects of earth quakes (in an earthquake, the stones on Inca terrace walls lock together, allowing the entire wall to simultaneously flex and cohere). Both secular and sacred architecture had spacious windows, niches for idols, and other purely artistic sculptural elaborations. Splashing fountains abounded and masterpieces of hydraulic engineering brought fresh water into buildings, while other channels removed wastes.
The Incas never used the wheel in any practical manner. Its use in toys demonstrates that the principle was well-known to them, although it was not applied in their engineering. The lack of strong draft animals, as well as steep terrain and dense vegetation issues, may have rendered the wheel impractical. How they moved and placed the enormous blocks of stones remains a mystery, although the general belief is that they used hundreds of men to push the stones up inclined planes. A few of the stones still have knobs on them that could have been used to lever them into position.
It must be noted, however, that the places mentioned above, Pisac, Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu in particular, are known to have been ceremonial sites many centuries and even millennia before the Inca developed and, furthermore, already had existing structures that were used for astronomical observations and ceremonial functions. Many contemporary people writing and speaking about the Inca are not well enough educated to know this matter yet, none the less, it is archaeological fact.
The name of the archaeological site Machu Picchu is sometimes misspelled as machu pichu, macchu picchu, machu piccu, machupicchu, macu picchu, macho picchu, machu piccho, machu picch, macha picchu, machu piccuh, mach picchu. The correct spelling is Machu Picchu.
lost city
I’m a frustrated archaeologist and I really dream that someday I will be able to discover lost cities like this. So let’s get a deeper look from the secrets within the black owl…
The city of Tanis is relatively unknown among Egypt’s wealth of historical sites, though it yielded one of the greatest archeological troves ever found. Once the capital of all Egypt, Tanis’s royal tombs have yielded artifacts on par with the treasures of Tutankhamun.
The treasures found in the “lost city” of Tanis rival those of King Tut’s. Yet for more than six decades the riches from its rulers’ tombs have remained largely unknown.
Many who know of Tanis at all remember the city as portrayed in the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the famous film the city was buried by a catastrophic ancient sandstorm and rediscovered by Nazis searching for the Ark of the Covenant.
In reality, the Ark was never hidden in Tanis, the sandstorm didn’t happen, and the Nazis never battled Indiana Jones in the site’s ruins. But the true tale of Tanis is also fit for the silver screen.
A City Vanishes
Tanis was known by many names. Ancient Egyptians called it Djanet, and the Old Testament refers to the site as Zoan. Today it’s called Sân el-Hagar.
The site, in the Nile Delta northeast of Cairo, was capital of the 21st and 22nd dynasties, during the reign of the Tanite kings in Egypt’s Third Intermediate period.
The city’s advantageous location enabled it to become a wealthy commercial center long before the rise of Alexandria. But political fortunes shifted, and so did the river’s waters—and in recent centuries the Tanis site had became a silted plain with some hill-like mounds thought to be of little interest.
It was known that the ancient city was hidden somewhere in the area, but not where.
“People kept trying to identify different places with it,” said Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at American University in Cairo and a National Geographic Society grantee.
Egypt’s “intermediate periods” were times of weak central government when power was divided and sometimes passed out of Egyptian hands. During this time the rulers of Tanis were of Libyan decent, not scions of traditional Egyptian families. That distinction may have contributed to the city’s disappearance in later years.
“It’s not like the Valley of the Kings, where everyone knew they’d been burying [pharaohs] for ten generations or so,” said David Silverman, an Egyptologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Lost, Then Found
In 1939 a French archaeologist named Pierre Montet brought Tanis into the 20th century after nearly a dozen years of excavations. He unearthed a royal tomb complex that included three intact and undisturbed burial chambers—a rare and marvelous find.
The tombs held dazzling funereal treasures such as golden masks, coffins of silver, and elaborate sarcophagi. Other precious items included bracelets, necklaces, pendants, tableware, and amulets.
Statues, vases, and jars also filled the tombs, all part of an array that still bears witness, after thousands of years, to the power and wealth of Tanis’s rulers.
One of the kings, Sheshonq II, was unknown before Montet discovered his burial chamber. But he wore elaborate jewelry that once adorned the more famous Sheshonq I, who is mentioned in the Bible.
“That shows you that [the kings of Tanis] were very important at least during that time period,” Silverman said of the biblical reference.
Tanis was found largely as it was abandoned, so the city is home to many archaeological treasures in addition to the tombs. Temples, including a Temple of Amun and a Temple of Horus, have been found. Even urban districts of the ancient city remain, and the site continues to host archaeological expeditions in search of more finds.
With so much to discover, how did Montet succeed so spectacularly where others had failed?
“It takes somebody who is really persevering to conquer the odds,” Silverman said. “Pierre Montet worked very, very hard to finally discover what is referred to in the Bible—what was known from contemporary history but had been lost.”
But if Montet’s achievements were extraordinary, his timing was atrocious. His discovery of Tanis was completely overshadowed by the nearly simultaneous eruption of World War II.
Even today, few know the tale of the treasures Montet discovered. And though the objects reside in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, they draw far fewer visitors than their more famous counterparts.
“Had the Second World War not intervened, the royal burials of Tanis would have been as well, if not better, known that the tomb of Tutankhamun,” Ikram notes.
black owl 