Machu Picchu - Part 2

A fantastic tourist spot, the site is located 800m above the Urubamba River and rainforest and flanked by snow-capped mountains, Machu Piccu is accessible by the Inca trail which takes 4 days to complete. The site was probably built by Pachacuti Inca as a royal estate and religious retreat in 1460-70 but deserted 80 years later before the onslaught of the Spaniards. A testimony to the engineering abilities of the Andean people, the site was built without mortar. On the right is a photo of an Inca wall.

One of the few round buildings at Machu Picchu is the Torreon. Starting out as a straight rectangular building, its east wall curves into a semicircle with 3 main windows. During the 1980s archaeo-astronomers Dr Ray White and Dr David Dearborn discovered that the northeast window of the temple was centred on the summer solstice sunrise. In fact, on both the winter and summer solstices, sunlight streams throught the opening and illuminates a central altar of natural carved rock. The suspension of a plumbline could have allowed one to get the solstice date by the shadow it cast on the altar. The rising Pleiades could also be seen through the same window. The rising of Collca could be seen from the southeast window. The function of the last window facing northwest is not known.

The famed Intihuatana Stone at Machu Picchu literally translated means the hitching post of the Sun. It is carved from an 80 foot high granite rock. During the winter solstice the symbolic attachment of a line to this stone was supposed to prevent the Sun from disappearing. It has been claimed to be a gnomon that casts shadows allowing one to mark the passage of time. However, measurements of the stone and its orientations and lack of evidence do not show this in any way. Back