The Incan stonework is famous for it’s large stones (some over 100 tons) that fit so precisely together that “not even a knife could be inserted between the joints.”
How the Incans were able to transport these massive building blocks and handled is something we don’t quite understand today. What we do know is that the cutting marks on some of the stone blocks are very similar to those found on the pyramidion of the unfinished obelisk in Egypt.
The gorgeous circular terraced bowl of Moray are thought to be an experimental agricultural nursery for the Incas, with different micro-climates allowing for different varieties of corn to be planted at deeper levels of the circular bowl. Others, both locals and foreign spiritually-minded, feel such a technical explanation fails to match the obvious effort, aesthetics and position the amazing circular site took.
Whether a testing ground or an energetic site or somewhere in the middle, the site has an undeniable beauty, power and mystical feeling, like an agricultural amphitheatre.
Portrait of Túpac Amaru, the last Sapa Inca. In 1533, after the death of Atahualpa, Atahualpa’s brother, Manco Inca Yupanqui, was crowned Emperor by the Spaniards. In 1536, he revolted, gathered troops, and marched on the city of Cuzco and besieged it. The revolt was only partially successful, and he fled to the remote city of Vilcabamba where he continued to rule as Sapa Inca of a “post-Inca” or “neo-Inca” state. He was succeeded by his three sons, of whom Túpac Amaru was the last. Túpac Amaru was captured and executed by the Spanish in 1572, bringing the Inca Empire to a permanent end.
Unlike a number of the elaborate metropolis’ and statuary left behind by the Incan people the rings at Moray are relatively simple but may have actually been an ingenious series of test beds. Descending in grass-covered, terraced rings, the rings of rings vary in size with the largest ending in a depth of 30 meters (98 feet) deep and 220 meters (722 feet) wide. Studies have shown that many of the terraces contain soil that must have been imported from other parts of the region. The temperature at the top of the pits varies from that at the bottom of the ringed pits by as much as 15 degrees Celsius , creating a series of micro-climates that not coincidentally match many of the varied climate conditions among the Incan empire. It is now believed that the rings were used as a test bed to see what crops could grow where. This proto-America’s-Test-Kitchen is yet another example of the Incan ingenuity that makes them one of the most remarkable of declined societies in the planet’s history.
The Incan archaeological site of Machu Picchu, Peru.
Designated a World Heritage Site in 1983, UNESCO describes the site as “an absolute masterpiece of architecture and a unique testimony to the Inca civilization”. Situated in an astoundingly beautiful setting, located on the center of a tropical mountain forest, Machu Picchu stands 2,430m above sea-level. it is located on the eastern slopes of the Andes, also encompassing the upper Amazon basin. Majority of archaeologists believe that Machu Pcchu was built for Incan emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472), and abandoned a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest.
“Shaken, scorched and boiled in its own juices, this 4000-year-old human brain has been through a lot.
It may look like nothing more than a bit of burnt log, but it is one of the oldest brains ever found. Its discovery, and the story now being pieced together of its owner’s last hours, offers the tantalising prospect that archaeological remains could harbour more ancient brain specimens than thought. If that’s the case, it potentially opens the way to studying the health of the brain in prehistoric times.
Brain tissue is rich in enzymes that cause cells to break down rapidly after death, but this process can be halted if conditions are right. For instance, brain tissue has been found in the perfectly preserved body of an Inca child sacrificed 500 years ago. In this case, death occurred at the top of an Andean mountain where the body swiftly froze, preserving the brain.
However, Seyitömer Höyük – the Bronze Age settlement in western Turkey where this brain was found – is not in the mountains. So how did brain tissue survive in four skeletons dug up there between 2006 and 2011?
Meriç Altinoz at Haliç University in Istanbul, Turkey, who together with colleagues has been analysing the find, says the clues are in the ground. The skeletons were found burnt in a layer of sediment that also contained charred wooden objects. Given that the region is tectonically active, Altinoz speculates that an earthquake flattened the settlement and buried the people before fire spread through the rubble” (read more).
There used to be hundreds of such bridges, scattered across the former Incan Empire. By some estimates there were as many as 200 of them, braided from nothing more than twisted mountain grass and other vegetation, with cables sometimes as thick as a human torso. These lasted for centuries, but as they wore out one by one, Spanish and later Peruvian bridges slowly replaced them.Today, there is just one Incan grass bridge left, the keshwa chaca, a sagging 90-foot span that stretches between two sides of a steep gorge, near Huinchiri, Peru. According to locals, it has been there for at least 500 years. Since the Incan Empire fell 441 years ago, they can’t be that far off.