The dream destination of millions of people across the world, Machu Picchu is one of the seven wonders of the world. It is located in the Cusco Region of Peru’s Machupicchu District. According to the majority of archaeologists, the Inca emperor Pachacuti built Machu Picchu as an estate around the year 1450. The site developed as a city but was abandoned a century later during the Spanish Conquest. The site remained largely unknown to the rest of the world until its discovery by the American explorer Hiram Bingham. A new theory suggests that Machu Pichu could have been the end stage of an ancient pilgrimage route of the Inca people.
Machu Picchu is a great representation of the Incan way of life. The positions of important structures in Machu Pichu were strongly influenced by the location of nearby mountains regarded as holy by the Inca people. No mortar was used to build the structures in Machu Picchu. The stones were cut and wedged in a manner that even a credit card would not go through the joints. While it definitely improved the aesthetic value of the buildings, it also protected from earthquakes. The stones would ‘dance’ if there were earthquakes and then fall back into place once the tremors subsided. An engineering mavel, a lot of sophisticated civil engineering work had to be done underground to establish Machu Pichu as a city in a notch between two mountain peaks. Most of this is invisible to the visitor’s eye.
