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ILE Tours Peru
Peru Travel Corporation
Amazon River DOLPHIN Tours Sandoval Lake tours Sipan Chanchan Machu Picchu Tours Rediscover Machu Picchu! 100 Year Celebration 1911-2011
On July 24, 1911 Professor Hiram Bingham made public for the world the Quechua citadel of Machu Picchu, one of the most significant archaeological finds in the history of the Americas.  Machu Picchu General InformationMachu Picchu was constructed around 1460, at the height of the Inca Empire. It was abandoned less than 100 years later. It is likely that most of its inhabitants were wiped out by smallpox before the Spanish conquistadores arrived in the area and there is no record of their having known of the remote city. Hiram Bingham, the credited discoverer of the site, along with several others, originally hypothesized that the citadel was the traditional birthplace of the Inca of the "Virgins of the Suns". Another theory maintains that Machu Picchu was an Inca "llacta", a settlement built to control the economy of these conquered regions. Yet another asserts that it may have been built as a prison for a select few who had committed heinous crimes against Inca society. Research conducted by scholars, such as John Rowe and Richard Burger, has convinced most archaeologists that rather than a defensive retreat, Machu Picchu was an estate of the Inca emperor, Pachacutek. In addition, Johan Reinhard presented evidence that the site was selected because of its position relative to sacred landscape features—such as its mountains, which are purported to be in alignment with key astronomical events that would have been important to the Incas.  |
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