Ruins of Machu Picchu
The ruins of Machu Picchu, rediscovered in 1911
by Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham, are one of the most beautiful
and enigmatic ancient sites in the world. While the Inca people
certainly used the Andean mountain top (9060 feet elevation),
erecting many hundreds of stone structures from the early 1400's,
legends and myths indicate that Machu Picchu (meaning 'Old Peak' in
the Quechua language) was revered as a sacred place from a far
earlier time. Whatever its origins, the Inca turned the site into a
small (5 square miles) but extraordinary city. Invisible from below
and completely self-contained, surrounded by agricultural terraces
sufficient to feed the population, and watered by natural springs,
Machu Picchu seems to have been utilized by the Inca as a secret
ceremonial city. Two thousand feet above the rumbling Urubamba
river, the cloud shrouded ruins have palaces, baths, temples,
storage rooms and some 150 houses, all in a remarkable state of
preservation. These structures, carved from the gray granite of the
mountain top are wonders of both architectural and aesthetic
genius. Many of the building blocks weigh 50 tons or more yet are
so precisely sculpted and fitted together with such exactitude that
the mortarless joints will not permit the insertion of even a thin
knife blade. Little is known of the social or religious use of the
site during Inca times. The skeletal remains of ten females to one
male had led to the casual assumption that the site may have been a
sanctuary for the training of priestesses and /or brides for the
Inca nobility. However, subsequent osteological examination of the
bones revealed an equal number of male bones, thereby indicating
that Machu Picchu was not exclusively a temple or dwelling place of
women.
One of Machu Picchu's primary
functions was that of astronomical observatory. The Intihuatana
stone (meaning 'Hitching Post of the Sun') has been shown to be a
precise indicator of the date of the two equinoxes and other
significant celestial periods. The Intihuatana (also called the
Saywa or Sukhanka stone) is designed to hitch the sun at the two
equinoxes, not at the solstice (as is stated in some tourist
literature and new-age books). At midday on March 21st and
September 21st, the sun stands almost directly above the pillar,
creating no shadow at all. At this precise moment the sun "sits
with all his might upon the pillar" and is for a moment "tied" to
the rock. At these periods, the Incas held ceremonies at the stone
in which they "tied the sun" to halt its northward movement in the
sky. There is also an Intihuatana alignment with the December
solstice (the summer solstice of the southern hemisphere), when at
sunset the sun sinks behind Pumasillo (the Puma's claw), the most
sacred mountain of the western Vilcabamba range, but the shrine
itself is primarily equinoctial.
Shamanic legends say that when
sensitive persons touch their foreheads to the stone, the
Intihuatana opens one's vision to the spirit world (the author had
such an experience, which is described in detail in Chapter one of
Places of Peace and Power, on the web site,
www.sacredsites.com). Intihuatana stones were the supremely sacred
objects of the Inca people and were systematically searched for and
destroyed by the Spaniards. When the Intihuatana stone was broken
at an Inca shrine, the Inca believed that the deities of the place
died or departed. The Spaniards never found Machu Picchu, even
though they suspected its existence, thus the Intihuatana stone and
its resident spirits remain in their original position. The
mountain top sanctuary fell into disuse and was abandoned some
forty years after the Spanish took Cuzco in 1533. Supply lines
linking the many Inca social centers were disrupted and the great
empire came to an end. The photograph shows the ruins of Machu
Picchu in the foreground with the sacred peak of Wayna Picchu
towering behind. Partway down the northern side of Wayna Picchu is
the so-called "Temple of the Moon" inside a cavern. As with the
ruins of Machu Picchu, there is no archaeological or iconographical
evidence to substantiate the 'new-age' assumption that this cave
was a goddess site.
The Intihuatana stone, Machu Picchu
Ruins of Machu Picchu, Peru
Road from Aguas Calientes up to Machu
Picchu, Peru
Detail of stone work at Machu
Picchu