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Bridge stirs the waters in Machu Picchu By Dan Collyns BBC News, Peru In the year that Peru is trying to get Machu Picchu voted one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, there are growing tensions over the country's greatest tourist attraction. Machu Picchu is located high in the Andes Mountains A former mayor has built a bridge which creates a new route to the World Heritage site, threatening to bring more tourists and, some say, open up a new route for drug traffickers. The 80-metre long Carilluchayoc bridge, which crosses the Vilcanota river near the base of...

Even after decades of study, Yale University's collection of relics from Machu Picchu continues to reveal new details about life in the Incan city in the clouds. The bones tell stories about the health of the Incan people. The metal tools hint at the society's technological advancement. The artifacts help scientists reconstruct ancient trade routes. Archaeologists say they've even learned that the Incan diet revolved not around the Peruvian staple of potatoes, but was based largely on maize. All this from restudying a collection that's nearly a century old. The government of Peru wants it back, saying it never relinquished...

LIMA, Peru Peru is preparing a lawsuit against Yale University to retrieve artifacts taken nearly a century ago from the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, a government official said Wednesday. Peru has held discussions in recent years with Yale seeking the return of nearly 5,000 artifacts, including ceramics and human bones that explorer Hiram Bingham dug up during three expeditions to Machu Picchu in 1911, 1912 and 1914. "Yale considers the collection university property, given the amount of time it has been there," said Luis Guillermo Lumbreras, chief of Peru's National Institute of Culture, in an interview with The Associated...

The Peruvian authorities have begun to evacuate at least 1,400 people - many of them tourists - stranded at the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu by a mudslide. On Wednesday, the railway line leading up the Andes mountains to Machu Picchu was covered by a mudslide more than three metres (9.8ft) deep. Peruvian officials said the slippage of mud and rocks was caused by snow melting on a nearby mountain peak. A spokeswoman for Peru Rail said no-one was hurt in the incident. The trapped people were being brought to safety by bus. Many of those trapped at the site...

Peruvian family claims Machu Picchu LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Peru's poor Zavaleta family has only one thing to say to the thousands of tourists who trek along the Inca trail to the renowned citadel Machu Picchu every year: "Hey you, get off our land!" The family says it is the lawful owner of a large part of the Machu Picchu sanctuary, Peru's most famous national treasure, and will start proceedings next week to sue the state for recognition of its ownership rights. "The Zavaletas bought the land in 1944 and have title deeds that date from 1898," their lawyer Fausto...

The high-resolution QuickBird satellite images of the tsunami impact on Sri Lanka are just a few of the images on the Digital Globe web site that made me stop and say "Wow!" For example, check out the images on the links below:

Thursday, December 23, 2004 - Page updated at 12:03 A.M. Ancient Peru site older, much larger By Thomas H. Maugh II Los Angeles Times A Peruvian site previously reported as the oldest city in the Americas actually is a much larger complex of as many as 20 cities with huge pyramids and sunken plazas sprawled over three river valleys, researchers report. Construction started about 5,000 years ago — nearly 400 years before the first pyramid was built in Egypt — at a time when most people around the world were simple hunters and gatherers, a team from Northern Illinois University...

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - In the first major Inca find in four decades, Peruvian and British explorers say they have discovered a hidden city, perched on an Andean hilltop, that may have sheltered stalwarts of South America's legendary empire as they made a last stand against Spanish conquerors. Located on a narrow ridge around 11,000 feet up in Peru's windswept, southern Andes, the Inca citadel of Corihuayrachina is a mysterious gathering of religious platforms, funeral towers, and food storehouses. British scholar and guide Peter Frost told a news conference on Monday he first spotted the ruins in the rugged, isolated...

A Frenchman has torn down part of an ancient Inca wall to build a hotel that he ironically wanted to call 'The Archaeologist', in the Peruvian city of Cusco, capital of the Inca empire. The El Comercio newspaper said Joel Raymund was planning to slap up a concrete wall in place of the large, finely cut bricks that had been there since before the 16th century Spanish conquest. Peruvian authorities have halted construction of the hotel. The newspaper reported Mr Raymund has apologised but it is not clear what sanctions he could face. The Inca dynasty ruled over a swathe...

But then, the blocks that Wallace T. Wallington moves around near his home in a rural Flint area have weighed up to nearly 10 tons. And by himself, he moves these behemoth playthings, not with cranes and cables, but with wooden levers. "It's more technique than it is technology," Wallington says. "I think the ancient Egyptians and Britons knew this." Last October, a production crew from Discovery Channel in Canada came to Wallington's home to record him as he raised a 16-foot, rectangular, concrete block that weighed 19,200 pounds and set it into a hole. That taping was made into...

Machete-wielding team discover Inca fastness lost for four centuries By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 06/06/2002) One of the last Inca strongholds against the conquering Spanish has been uncovered in cloud-forest by a British and American expedition investigating a rumour of lost ruins, the Royal Geographical Society will announce today. Called Cota Coca, after the coca grown there, the site is more than 6,000ft up in a valley near the junction of the Yanama and Blanco rivers in Vilcabamba, one of the least understood and most significant areas in the history of the Incas, rulers of the last great empire...

Archaeologists, while clearing away weeds from Peru's Machu Picchu, uncovered more of the ancient site, including a rubbish dump. Machu Picchu Rubbish Dump Found June 10 — Archeologists doing maintenance at the famous Inca citadel of Machu Picchu have found new stone terraces, water channels, a rubbish dump and a wall dividing the site's urban sector from its temples, an official said on Friday. "We were clearing away weeds when we were surprised to discover new stone structures, including a wall 6.8 meters (22 feet) high with fine masonry which separates the urban from the sacred zone," Fernando Astete, administrator...

Magnificent seven that keep mere mortals wondering By Christopher Howse (Filed: 03/04/2004) Only one person out of more than 600 polled could name all Seven Wonders of the World, according to a survey published today. That person's identity is unknown, since the survey was done scientifically by ICM, guaranteeing anonymity. Perhaps it was you. If not, and you want to try getting all seven, look away from this page now. How did you score? If you could name three, you were doing well. Only one person in 10 managed that. Four or more Wonders were named by only a tiny...

Pre-Inca Ruins Emerging From Peru's Cloud Forests John Roach for National Geographic News September 16, 2004 On the eastern slope of the Andes mountains in northern Peru, forests cloak the ruins of a pre-Inca civilization, the size and scope of which explorers and archaeologists are only now beginning to understand. Known as the Chachapoya, the civilization covered an estimated 25,000 square miles (65,000 square kilometers). The Chachapoya, distinguished by fair skin and great height, lived primarily on ridges and mountaintops in circular stone houses. Sean Savoy, leader of the Gran Saposoa-El Dorado IV Expedition (July-August 2004), points out a stone...

Machu Picchu Comes to L.A. Largest U.S. Exhibition of Inca Treasures Makes Only West Coast Stop at Natural History Museum (http://www.nhm.org/) . June 22 to September 7, 2003. This is the first stop on the exhibition’s national tour, after its debut at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Following the Los Angeles presentation, the exhibit will travel to Pittsburgh, Denver, Houston and Chicago. The enduring allure of Machu Picchu, the 15th-century Incan ruins nestled into Peru's Andes Mountains, is its mystery. Why and how did the Incas build such an impressive estate -- a five-acre city, really, with 150...

Mar. 19, 01:00 EDT Ancient Inca town called `unparalleled' archeological find 100 structures uncovered at site high in Andes Craig Mauro ASSOCIATED PRESS LIMA, Peru — Explorers have found the extensive ruins of an Inca town, complete with human remains, sprawled spectacularly across a mountain in southern Peru, the expedition leaders said yesterday. The ancient settlement clings to the slopes of a rugged peak in a region of the Andes Mountains where the Incas hid after the Spanish conquest. It consists of more than 100 structures, including a ridge-top truncated pyramid, ceremonial platforms and an 8-kilometre-long irrigation channel. British author...