Summer 1911. A historian from Yale University (USA), Hiram Bingham, surprises the world with the (supposed) discovery of what we know as Machu Picchu, a huge architectural complex located about 120 km north of Cuzco, between the peaks of Huayna Picchu, a young hill, and Machu Picchu, an old hill.
The height at which these buildings are located in the Andean mountain range, 2,400 m, is not very considerable, but the difficult access and the fact that it is totally invisible from the base meant that the place went completely unnoticed by the Spanish conquerors.
Bingham’s find took place in the golden age of archaeology. This was an activity as romantic as it was scientific, and the American did not hesitate to baptize his discovery with the mysterious name of “the lost city of the Incas”. He did not have any training as an archaeologist, but he proclaimed himself as the great world authority on that site.
He published what would be the reference texts on the subject for almost the entire 20th century, with which his theories were the only answers to the big question: what did Machu Picchu house? He proposed three theses, all loaded with grandiloquence: one of the places of origin of the Incas, the last fortress of this town before succumbing to the Spanish, or a religious complex inhabited by the Virgins of the Sun.
Few archaeologists tried to verify at the time if what Bingham had written was true: the beauty of Machu Picchu soon turned it into a huge attraction for tourists in search of mystical experiences, with which the place lost interest for scientists, who preferred to dedicate themselves to to study other less crowded Andean locations.
But everything would change years later. The material that Bingham brought to Yale University from Machu Picchu has been gradually unpacked and revised. And Bingham’s theories about what might have harbored that place in the mountains have become little more than dead paper.
First: the ceramics and other remains found in the complex date from the 15th century, so it is most likely that it was built during that period and, therefore, it is unlikely that Machu Picchu was one of the original nuclei of the Incas.
Second: the last Inca resistance, according to the chronicles of the conquerors, was located in the Vilcabamba area, in a lush valley with tropical vegetation, a description that does not match the peaks of Machu Picchu.
And third: a new analysis of the bones found in the tombs has shown that almost equal numbers of men lived there as women. Bingham had stipulated that the place could be a temple of the virgins of the Sun because he believed most of the skeletons were female.
With Bingham’s hypotheses discarded, what was Machu Picchu then? The option with the most prestige is that it was one of the fortresses that the Sapa Inca had erected for themselves (“sole lord”, the sovereign). It is believed that each new ruler raised his own and that Machu Picchu would be the location chosen by Pachacuti, the great conqueror, as a resting place for his family and nobility.
The 200 stone constructions thus made up a citadel, rather than a city, permanently inhabited by some 300 people and with a peak of 1,000 inhabitants when the entire imperial entourage moved there.
The austerity and uniformity of the Inca architecture represent a great obstacle when it comes to finding out what was the use of each of the buildings of Machu Picchu. There is a certain consensus, however, in delimiting the temples and the residences of the nobles to perfectly carved stone constructions, while those of adobe and those with irregular masonry are identified as houses of servants and peasants.
In any case, according to more or less reliable theories, over the years archaeologists have been baptizing and assigning uses to various of the citadel’s constructions.
This text is part of an article published in number 424 of the Historia y Vida magazine. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
