Day 239: Machu Picchu (24/09/2011)

Machu Picchu was the inspiration for Indiana Jones – apparently.

Or ‘In Diana Jones’ as one nameless person preferred to tell it - Sharif, in fact.

I don’t know what he was talking about but whatever it was, it sounds anatomically impossible.

Contrary to earlier posts, Machu Picchu was not the epicentre of the Inca chocolate industry. That was supposed to be a joke – but looking back at it, perhaps it lacked some of the vital ingredients – like being funny.

In fact it is thought that MP is the remains of a small town, constructed at the head of the Sacred Valley to act as an early warning system for the Imperial capital at Cusco. Maybe they made chocolate there but it seems unlikely.

The famous plateau is estimated to have been home to only five hundred people and much of the steep sided approaches were lined with terraces to grow food and to prevent erosion. There are some clever things there, suggesting that the Incas were a resourceful bunch, even if they lived without a written language and never came by the wheel.

They had a pretty good understanding of astronomy and coordinated much of their construction around their studies of the sky. The Sun was all important and they could measure the passing of the seasons more accurately that the Europeans managed for another three hundred years after the fall of the empire.

MP was discovered by a Yale archaeologist who was looking for something entirely different. Alerted to its existence by the locals, as he was passing through the steep ravine that lies beneath it, he had to treble his incentive to persuade a guide to show him the site which sits atop an almost impregnable series of plummeting cliff faces.

In the end, he parted with a single US dollar, to discover what is now regarded as one of the modern wonders of the world.

By agreement with the government, he 'borrowed' the artefacts he found for eighteen months and Yale has yet to return them.

But, honestly?

The towering rock faces that guard it, the amazing backdrop when you reach it, the unguarded vertical drops where the terracing ends – it is all breath taking and worthy of high praise.

But MP is essentially a 15^th century stone built village that just happens to have some amazing views. Don’t come expecting to see anything on the scale of the pyramids or Angkor Wat, either in terms of age or size as you will be disappointed.

What is thought provoking is how they got all the building materials up there including some rather big rocks.

And whether MP’s fabled Inca gold is out in the jungle, still to be found.