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Machu Picchu:
Facts & History
Owen Jarus, LiveScience
Contributor
Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Incan site located on a ridge between the Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu mountains in Peru. It sits 7,970 feet (2,430 meters) above sea level on the eastern slope of the Andes and overlooks the Urubamba River hundreds of feet below.
Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Incan site located on a ridge between the Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu mountains in Peru. It sits 7,970 feet (2,430 meters) above sea level on the eastern slope of the Andes and overlooks the Urubamba River hundreds of feet below.
The site’s excellent preservation, the quality of its
architecture, and the breathtaking mountain vista it occupies has made Machu
Picchu one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world today. The site
covers 80,000 acres (32,500 hectares). Terraced fields on the edge of the site
were once used for growing crops, likely maize and potatoes.
In 1911, explorer Hiram Bingham III,
a professor at Yale University, visited the site and published its existence
for the first time. He found it covered with vegetation, much of which has now
been removed. The buildings were made without mortar (typical of the Inca),
their granite stones quarried and precisely cut.
When Bingham discovered the site he
was actually searching for Vilcabamba, the last capital of the Inca before
their final defeat at the hands of the Spanish in 1572.
The explorer found Machu Picchu largely intact, having
apparently never been visited by the Spanish conquistadors. In fact, the only
reference to the site at all in Spanish documents is a mention of the word
“Picchu” in a 1568 document, the text implying that it belonged to the Incan
emperor.
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| Hiram Bingham III in 1912 |
