Why have I embraced the imagery of Macchu Picchu in my
adventure-themed exploratory blog on the semiotics of communication?
Machu Picchu is one of several pre-Columbian civilizations in
the Americas that has always fascinated me.
Known as the “Lost City of the Incas,” it is a beautiful & serene
city isolated in the midst of the Urubamba jungle in the Peruvian Andes and
situated atop a mountain at 8,000 feet elevation. It was erected sometime in the 13th or 14th century and not discovered by outsiders until 1911 when the
explorer Hiram Bingham stumbled across it.
This world-renowned archaeological site unveils a surprising
urban center which demonstrate some incredible technological advancements. A few of them include:
- The use of “dry stone” construction techniques of polished polygonal stones of varying shapes, thereby requiring no mortar whatsoever (and quite unlike its Incan counterparts around the surrounding countryside). Carved out of granite, these tightly-fitted and uniquely-shaped stones are precise enough that in many places a knife blade can’t even penetrate the cracks between them, and this enables its buildings to withstand the area’s frequent earthquakes with little to no repairs required.
- Most visible from photos is the terraced agriculture, but a vital element of the complex ramps & terraces seen there is an advanced irrigation system of rock channel aqueducts which provided water not only to the farming terraces but also for drinking, bathing, and even scenic display (fountains). Even more amazingly, not only is the system still functional today, but it is ecologically conservative and self-sustaining.
- The complex also functioned as an astronomical observatory, the centerpiece of which was a giant rock carved out of the mountain itself called the Intihuatana Stone, whose four corners pointed directly north, south east, and west. In addition to its religious symbolism, the stone was designed to align with various geographic features of the surrounding landscape as well as constellations and astronomical events, thereby indicating solstices and equinoxes which told the Inca when to plant and governed their calendar.
- And on top of that, the use of natural raw material which was entirely appropriate to the surroundings and the low-impact sustainable design which provides a secure habitat for several endangered species led UNESCO to claim that the site is “one of the world’s greatest examples of a productive man-land relationship.”
And all of this was accomplished without a written language and without the use of the wheel (neither had been invented there)! Macchu Picchu is an engineering marvel even by today’s standards. As Angela Harris puts it,
“Even with today's technology, building a city of this magnitude with an irrigation system in the heart of a jungle, completely isolated, on a mountaintop, in an earthquake zone, with massive granite stones would be an engineering feat indeed.”
And
yet, when it was finally discovered 500-600 years after its development, none
of its original occupants remained. But
unlike its pre-Columbian counterparts through the New World, the inhabitants
were gone a few years before the
Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1532. No
one knows exactly what happened to them, though plagues, internal civil unrest,
solar/celestial events, and agricultural migrations have all been suggested as
possible explanations for their demise.
A very plausible explanation supported by the evidence is that of
archaeologist Gary Ziegler, who attributes the demise of the Inca Empire to a
smallpox epidemic which killed its ruler and 2/3 of the population (sadly, it
was imported by European explorers to Panama); this, in turn, led to a
devastating civil war over Inca secession, with Machu Picchu eventually being
abandoned due to the high cost of maintenance with epidemic and war depleting
the male population.
For me, Macchu Picchu represents a civilization (and in
particular a sub-culture of that civilization) whose technological innovation
was far advanced and unrivaled, and yet one which failed to discern the
circumstances which would eventually bring about their own disappearance. They could read the stars and the seasons and
build complex structures & systems which would outlast those of most other
civilizations, but they apparently missed the signs that spelled the end of
life as they knew it. Nothing lasts
forever, but for all their incredible technological innovation, one would think
the civilization should have at least endured a single millennium.
David J. Swisher
For More Information:
Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu (UNESCO
World Heritage Centre)
What Is Machu
Picchu? by
Angela Harris
Middle Ages
Technologies: The Inca City Machu Picchu by
Timothy Allman
Machu Picchu Abandoned: How they kept the
secret. by Gary Ziegler
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