'Lost city of the Incas' was not a true city

Discovery ^ | Jun 8, 2009 | Rossella Lorenzi

[decimon]

Machu Picchu, the "lost city of the Incas," was not a true city but rather a pilgrimage center symbolically connected to the Andean vision of the cosmos, an Italian study has concluded.

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The Inca, who ruled the largest empire on Earth by the time their last emperor, Atahualpa, was garroted by Spanish conquistadors in 1533, believed that the sun god was their ancestor.

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"Any interpretation is doomed to remain speculative. Machu Picchu remains a mystery. We do not know for sure what the Inca called it, we do not know when and why it was constructed, or why it was abandoned," Magli said.

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[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Machu Picchu, the "lost city of the Incas," was not a true city but rather a pilgrimage center symbolically connected to the Andean vision of the cosmos, an Italian study has concluded.

Or not.

[decimon]

Or not.

Magli: "Any interpretation is doomed to remain speculative."

They know they're just taking their best guess. But the research builds to, hopefully, better guesses.

[TWfromTEXAS]

I too wonder about those mountain beacons. I think those guys must spend a month there once in their army carrier, what I want to know is how the heck they got all that damn wood up there!

[xcamel]

Bless you..

[bert]

......what I want to know is how the heck they got all that damn wood up there!.....

Enter Tony Hillerman who writes outstanding mystery stories featuring Lt Joe Leaphorn of the Navaho Tribal Police.

In one of his great stories, Lt Leaphorn and his sidekick Sgt Jim Chee solve a murder involving a dead Indian, Hopi as I recall who was dead in the trail. The trail led far far away as in many many miles to the mountains. The victim was involved in a secret society that retraced the steps of ancient ancestors who walked those miles and then returned carrying the logs for their Kiva.

There are also many magnificent structures of the Anasazi that involve similar log carrying efforts.

[Tainan]

Not really a 'pilgrimage center'...more of a Party Town kinda place.

[wildbill]

“Any interpretation is doomed to remain speculative. Machu Picchu remains a mystery. We do not know for sure what the Inca called it, we do not know when and why it was constructed, or why it was abandoned,” Magli said.”

Translation: I don’t know s-— but it is publish or perish time and I needed something in a journal.

[decimon]

Translation: I don’t know s-— but it is publish or perish time and I needed something in a journal.

That may well be if they suffer that syndrome over there.