100th Anniversary of Hiram Bingham's visit to Machu Picchu

Next month when the Lima Temple closes we will make our journey once again to the sacred mountain city of the Inca, Machu Picchu. We visited previously in February of this year with our friends the Cooks  and Miky.

All of us at the entrance to Machu Picchu.  We arrived during the rainy
season but had incredible weather as the clouds were lifting from above the city

There are a number of theories about what role Machu Picchu played in the life of the Inca civilization and the last Emperor Pachacuti who ruled there.  It might have been a royal residence, a resort, a fortress, a prison, a holy site or some combination of the aforementioned. In July of 1911 Hiram Bingham, the first American to visit it, announced to the world he had "discovered" Machu Picchu. Though he is credited with this, several other non native explorers had been there prior to Bingham. The artifacts and treasure removed by Bingham and lodged at Yale University for a hundred years have partially been returned to Peru with a little encouragement from the Obama Administration. The artifacts are now on display in Cusco where they should be.

The Intihuatana Stone determined the solar equinoxes and solstices. 

Recent work done by Dr. Johan Reinhard, an explorer and anthropologist in residence with National Geographic, suggests another theory not totally at odds with the others but emphasizing the religious nature of Machu Picchu.  It is based on the notion of "sacred landscape." Machu Picchu is located in mountainous terrain at about 8,000 feet in elevation surrounded by the Urubamba River. Mountains, rivers, and other natural features of the land were sacred to the Inca and known as huacas. Four adjacent mountains, one in each of the cardinal directions, align the city with this highest and perhaps most important point, the Intihuatana Stone.These stones were to be found throughout Peru before the Spanish came to aid the many cultures and civilizations prior and including the Inca to track the seasons for planting, the expected arrival of the rainy season and for harvesting.

The Temple of the Sun. Windows allow the sun to shine across

the altar stone at both solstices. The heliacal rise of Pleiades was

also observed from one of the windows. 

Machu Picchu escaped destruction by the Conquistadores because it may have been partially abandoned prior to Pizaro's conquest of the Inca.  It is postulated smallpox or typhoid fever wiped out many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas not long after Columbus set foot in the Caribbean. One scholar, Charles Mann, in his book "1491" estimates upwards of 100 million indigenous peoples inhabited the Americas prior to the arrival of the Europeans. The Inca fell to the Spanish due to their weakened state brought about by factionalism, civil war, and the European diseases which arrived well before Pizaro.

The Urubamba River nearly circumnavigates Machu Picchu

Continued studies will be made and theories will be modified as time passes but Machu Picchu will remain a place so incredible words cannot adequately describe its beauty, the skill with which it was built, and its location high in the Andes. Dr. Reinhard fittingly observed Machu Picchu is a place "where reality exceeds expectations."