15. Machu Picchu: The “Lost City” of the Incas built as a refuge in the Andes Mountains
The Inca town known as Machu Picchu was built sometime around 1450. For centuries it remained hidden in the Andes Mountains until in 1911 Hiram Bingham rediscovered it. Bingham believed he had found the lost Inca city of Vilcabamba. Machu Picchu, however, was no city but actually quite a small settlement that was home to no more than 1000 people. Its original name is lost. Instead, it takes its modern name from one of the nearby peaks that surround it.
The town was built on a plateau, radiating outwards from a central plaza into a temple district, high-class residential area and terminating at the homes of its ordinary citizens on the outer edges. All these buildings were constructed with such precision that not even a razor blade could be fitted between the blocks of stone. The residents also cut stairways so they could travel up and down the ridge, as well as carving pools and water channels from the rocks.
Quite why the Incas chose to build a town in such a remote and inhospitable region is unknown. For Macchu Picchu is well away from other Inca towns and probably wasn’t even on the main Inca courier route, meaning it probably communicated with the rest of the empire using smoke signals. Although stone for the buildings was plentiful, farmland was limited, leading the town’s occupants to grow their crops on terraces. It is possible that the town was a fortress or refuge. Surrounded on three sides by mountains, the town’s only access point was from the south, defended by a massive stone wall and entered by a single gate.
No town matching Macchu Picchu’s location and description matches any of the Inca settlements conquered by the Spanish in 1572. It seems that the European conquers missed Machu Picchu altogether. This explains why the city is so well preserved, showing none of the signs of the destruction and devastation that usually accompanied conquest. However, if the town wasn’t conquered, what happened to the people. It seems that at some stage, they simply up and left. However, when they abandoned this nameless mystery of a town, no one knows.