Machu picchu before bringham

Machu Picchu before Bingham

Here is Berns’ own sketch of the “Flight of Steps from Putucussi to the ruined towns of the Metalworkers”.

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“In 1551, the Viceroy Mendoza ordered Betanzos to record the history of the Incas.....but the initial eighteen chapters were lost for more than 400 years.”

Archaeologist Paolo Greer looks at the history of Machu Picchu before it was officially‘discovered’ by Hiram Bingham in 1911
In 1471, the year the Conquistador Francisco Pizarro was born, Pachacuti Yupanqui died. Pachacuti was the ninth Inca and Atahualpa’s Great Grandfather. When he was young, Pachacuti was known simply as Cusi Yupanqui. Then, the Inca kingdom was small and their enemies, the Chancas, attacked their home, Cusco. Cusi’s Father, Viracocha, and his six brothers fled, whilehe, the youngest, stayed to successfully defend the city. In the decades that followed, Cusi Yupanqui and his sons, Yamque and Topa,

extended the Inca Empire to include vast territories and numerous civilizations. Cusi became known as “Pachacuti”, “He Who Changes the World”. The “World Changer” confined Cusco’s rivers to stone channels and had his capital completely rebuilt. He created the Incasystem of warehouses and roads, with chasqui messengers to maintain rapid communication. He defined the calendar, festivals, customs and laws for his people to follow and organized a warrior class for the conquests to come. It was Pachacuti who ordered the holiest Inca site, the Sun Temple or Coricancha, to be constructed. For that, he gathered the best goldsmiths and told them to fashion alife-sized figure of a young boy, resembling

Göhring’s 1877 citation: “the forts of Chuquillusca, Torontoy and Picchu”.

the brilliantly shining child he had seen in a vision while protecting Cusco. Pachacuti personally placed the finished statue in an interior room of the Coricancha, where only he, certain lords and special caretakers were allowed to enter to revere the child’s figure, the mostsacred icon in the realm. Like Pachacuti, the golden sculpture was considered a representative of the sun. On the same day that Pachacuti installed the boy’s image in the Sun Temple, he had a sugarloaf shaped stone, an intihuatana or “sun hitch”, placed in the center of the principal plaza of Cusco. The specially carved rock represented the sun, for one and all to worship. Although Pachacuti’svictories stretched throughout the Inca’s known world, his initial invasions were in the Urubamba Valley. It was there that the aged leader had a village built for his panaca or descendant family to care for his tomb and to serve his memory. He called the town Patallacta, “High City”. It is now known as Machu Picchu.

The Inca History is Recorded
Huayna Capac, Pachacuti’s grandson, chose thenewborn Cuxirimay (‘Speaks Good Fortune’) to eventually wed his son, Atahualpa. After Huayna Capac’s death, Cuxirimay was in Atahualpa’s camp when he was captured by Pizarro. She stayed with the imprisoned Inca leader until his execution by the Spaniards. Following Atahualpa’s murder, Cuxirimay became Doña Angelina Yupanqui, and Francisco Pizarro’s mistress. She bore him two sons, Juan and Francisco.When Pizarro was assassinated in 1541, Angelina Yupanqui was nineteen years old. In 1544, Doña Angelina became the wife of Juan de Betanzos, a Quechua interpreter for the Conquistadors. Following the conquest of Perú, Betanzos became the most respected translator for the Viceroyalty. In the same year that he wed Angelina, Betanzos was commissioned to

write the Church’s religious conversionmanuals and Spanish-Quechua dictionaries. In 1551, the Viceroy Mendoza ordered Betanzos to record the history of the Incas. Betanzos’ unique work, Suma y narracion de los Yngas, was finished in 1557. However, all but the initial eighteen chapters were lost for more than 400 years. In 1987, a complete manuscript, with an additional sixty-four chapters, was found in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The...