History

The Inca culture may have evolved from an alliance of small tribes living in the valley of Cusco around the 12th century, when over the next centuries Cusco evolved from what must have been a small village into one of the great cities of the ancient world. For the first 250 years, the early Incas did not realise any great ambitions of expansion. Both archeological evidence and the writings of contemporary chroniclers agree that the Incas still had not conquered any land further a field than a radius of 50 miles around Cusco by 1420. It wasn’t until the ninth Inca king, Pachacutec, who assumed power in 1438, that Cusco became the centre of a quickly expanding empire. Pachacutec pushed the frontier of the Inca territory outwards, while at the same time, masterminded the design of his imperial city. He canalised the two rivers which run down the Cusco valley and built the centre of the city on the space created between them. In building their capital, they endowed the city with some of its finest structures. The heart of the city was the Huacaypata, it was the main square of Inca Cusco, it was located in the same place as the modern city square but was twice the size. A gravel covered plaza was surrounded by the palaces of past inca kings. Four main roads, finely paved, left the square to the four corners of the empire. It was a city of such engineering excellence and beauty, that it would leave the first Spaniards who saw it breathless. By the time the first Spanish ships arrived on Peru's coast in the 1520’s, Cusco was a thriving capital. Nobles and conquered chieftains lived within the city walls, servants and artisans on its outskirts, while subjects from all over the empire made official pilgrimages. Francisco Pizarro led his conquering army into Cusco on the 15th of November, 1533. Although astonished by its beauty, the like of which had never before seen during their travels in the new world, they wasted no time in looting its treasures. Now a spanish colony, the city was divided up amongst 88 men of Pizarro’s expedition. For a few years the remaining Incas led by the last king, Manco, put up some resistance, but that came to an end after an illfated attack on the city in 1536. Cusco never again came under such native threat and the city lived in relative peace, ravaged only by the great earthquake of 1650. After this dramatic tremor, remarkably illustrated on a huge canvas in the Cathedral, Bishop Mollinedo was largely responsible for the recontruction of the city, and his influence is also associated with Cuzco’s most creative years of art. The Cusqueño school of painting, which emerged from his patronage, flourished for the next two hundred years. Much of its finer work, produced by native quechua and mestizo artists such as Diego Quispe, Juan Espinosa, Fabian Ruiz and Antonio Sinchi Roca is still exhibited in museums and churches around the city. Modern day Cusco, at an altitude of 3300m, is Perus fourth largest city, with a growing population of 450,000. Its main income is tourism, with thousands of visitors each year, staying in the city and travelling to Machu Picchu. Although the surrounding regions create much more income from mining and agriculture.

After 500 years of isolation, the Inca city of Machu Picchu was rediscovered by American explorer Hiram Bingham on the 24th of July 1911. He had spent many months researching Inca history in Lima and Cusco, also exploring other parts of the country. Surprisingly, his expedition to Machu Picchu was relatively short, travelling along a recently opened dirt track following the banks of the Urubamba river. He reached the faming hamlet of Mandor, where locals told him of an ancient town at the top of a nearby mountain called “Machu Picchu” or “Old Mountain”. The next day he climbed the steep forested slopes of the mountain and to his surprise found two families still farming the ancient terraces of the Incas. A young boy showed Bingham further into the ruins where he found the unmistakable architecture of Inca temples and palaces covered by the dense vegetation. One of the first examples he saw was what we now know as the Royal Tomb and the Sun Temple. Although to be strictly honest, Bingham may not have been the first explorer to revisit the ruins in modern times. In 1865, the name Machu Picchu appeared on a map drawn by the Italian explorer Antonio Raimondi, and ten years later, the French explorers, Charles Wiener wrote of rumours of an ancient city at Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu. Also, a local adventurer called Agustin Lizarraga may have visited Machu Picchu several times at the turn of the century and is said to have etched the date “14th of July 1901” on the wall of the Royal Tomb. After the initial discovery on 1911, Bingham returned for the following four years to clear and excavate the site, and it was then, that a lot of damage was done as they used brutal methods of slash and burn to clear the trees. Also uncontrolled grave robbing by uneducated locals was promoted by Bingham as he offered rewards for anyone who bought him an Inca mummy. All the artifacts found during this initial period were taken to the US for study and sadly have never been returned, they are now in the Peabody Museum of Yale University.

By studying the architecture and artifacts found, we can safely say that Machu Picchu was built around 1430 by the Incas. Although construction must have taken several decades considering not only Machu Picchu, but also the other Inca satellite villages in the area and the network of roads and bridges that connected them. It is also accepted that it only occupied a brief time in history because it had almost certainly been abandoned and forgotten by the time the Spanish arrived in Cusco in 1532, as no mention is made of Machu Picchu in any Spanish chronicle or diary.

So why had such a fine city been abandoned? Perhaps its inhabitants had rebelled against the Inca establishment in Cusco, the rebellion would have been crushed and the inhabitants killed or banished to other extremes of the Empire. Alternatively, there are signs of an unfinished water channel going to the city, possibly suggesting a water shortage, recent investigations on layers of a nearby glacier shows that the area suffered a severe drought around the time of its abandonment. With this time-gap separating us from the truth of what Machu Picchu’s function was, many theories have been put forward on why it was built. Bingham first thought that it was Vilcabamba, the last town occupied by the Incas for fifty years in the fight against the Spanish. But descriptions of Vilcabamba in the Spanish chronicles do not match in any way the topography or architecture of Machu Picchu. Bingham later suggested it was a religious sanctuary habitated by Inca priestesses, but Bingham was misled by his medical adviser who said that the majority of human remains found during preliminary excavations were female, but this has recently been disproved and now the “convent theory” of Bingham has gone out of fashion. Ancient text uncovered by RH Rowe in the 1980’s suggests that Machu Picchu was built as a private estate for the Inca King Pachacuti, this seems to fit nicely with history because upon the kings death, his palace would have been abandoned according Inca tradition. Others have suggested that it may have been a frontier town on the edge of the Inca Empire; its high strategic position may have been a defence against hostile tribes coming up from the Amazon jungle. The city would have also been an important source of fruit, maize and coca, products that do not grow in the higher altitudes of Cusco. But there are also an extraordinary number of temples in the city, suggesting a strong religious significance; perhaps it was the capital of a province, completing several functions for its population including regional government, religious shrine and royal residence for the visiting Inca monarch from Cusco. But to make a decision, it is important to recognize the true character of the Machu Picchu region in Inca times. Today it is an isolated, tranquil, natural paradise away from the distractions and stress of modern life, which leads many visitors to the conclusion that it was a utopian “Shangri-La”, similar to the peaceful convent described by Bingham. But the truth was far from this isolated paradise – Machu Picchu was not a city which stood alone. It was the largest complex, or perhaps capital, of an entire province containing many settlements connected by a network of roads and bridges. This was a busy region, of hardworking farmers and vibrant social activity involving the whole range of Inca society. From the mountaintop lookout towers, the valley floors would have appeared as ordered green fields of maize and soft fruit. The paths would have been busy with travellers, messengers and llamas-trails carrying the products to market. It is not just the city of Machu Picchu the history forgot, but the whole of the Machu Picchu region.