The Inca religion combined features of animism, fetishism, and the worship of nature gods. The pantheon was headed by Inti, the sun god, and included also Viracocha, a creator god and culture hero, and Apu Illapu, the rain god.
Generally, all historians agree when said that Machu Picchu was used as housing for the Inca aristocracy after the Spanish conquest of in 1532. After Tupac Amaru, the last rebel Inca, was captured, Machu Picchu was abandoned as there was no reason to stay there.
Structures at Machu Picchu were built with a technique called &ldquo ashlar.” Stones are cut to fit together without mortar. Remarkably, not even a piece of paper can fit in between two stones. The citadel has two parts: Hanan and Urin according with the Inca tradition.
The Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations ate simple food. Corn (maize) was the central food in their diet, along with vegetables such as beans and squash. Potatoes and a tiny grain called quinoa were commonly grown by the Incas.
Machu Picchu is believed to have been built by Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, the ninth ruler of the Inca, in the mid-1400s. An empire builder, Pachacuti initiated a series of conquests that would eventually see the Inca grow into a South American realm that stretched from Ecuador to Chile.
One of the reasons Inca architecture was successful was the organization of its society and labor. Through ayllus and mita labor or tribute they were able to organize their manpower in extraordinary numbers necessary to build such labor intensive monuments.
Although the Incas were very advanced and did in fact know about the concept of the wheel, they never developed it in practice. This was quite simply because their empire spanned the world's second highest mountain range, where there were more straightforward methods to carry goods than using the inca wheel.
The Incas, an American Indian people, were originally a small tribe in the southern highlands of Peru. In less than a century, during the 1400s, they built one of the largest, most tightly controlled empires the world has ever known. Their skill in government was matched by their feats of engineering.
The Incas played a game called Tlachti which is a mixture of soccer, kickball and basketball. The game consists of trying to smack a leather ball through a hoop 27 feet high using body parts like the upper parts of the arm, hip and thigh.
Inca roads were built without the benefit of sophisticated surveying equipment using only wooden, stone, and bronze tools. As they were built in different geographical zones using local populations, the roads are, consequently, not uniform in construction design or materials.
They also invented a flute, a drum, the famous Inca panpipe (a collection of hollow tubes of various lengths stuck together), terrace farming, freeze dried foods, aqueducts, strange and scary art, a central government, a unified language, woven colorful textiles, gold and silver jewelry and statues, specialized
Because of the rugged and inconsistent terrain of the Andes the Incas created agricultural terraces to maximize their use of fertile land. They were highly successful and allowed its agricultural production to be maximized. Andean staples such as corn, potatoes and quinoa fed most of the Inca population.
The Inca Empire built a huge civilization in the Andes mountains of South America. Some of their most impressive inventions were roads and bridges, including suspension bridges, and their communication system called quipu, a system of strings and knots that recorded information.
The “most unusual aspect of the Inca economy was the lack of a market system and money,” wrote McEwan. With only a few exceptions, there were no traders in the Inca Empire.
The Inca built the water supply canal on a relatively steady grade, depending on gravity flow to carry the water from the spring to the city center. The Inca supply canal flowed gently into Machu Picchu at an engineered grade on a carefully built terraced right-of-way.
They had also to secure the supply of enough food and water as it's believed that the priest, the virgins, and the Inca spent their time there. Another reason that gives Machu Picchu the category of a Wonder of the World is that it remained for almost 500 years as a lost city.
5) Machu Picchu Was Built to Honor a Sacred LandscapeReinhard also pointed out that the rising and setting of the sun, when viewed from specific locations within Machu Picchu, aligns neatly with religiously significant mountains during the solstices and equinoxes. The Inca believed the sun to be their divine ancestor.
More than 7,000 feet above sea level in the Andes Mountains, Machu Picchu is the most visited tourist destination in Peru. A symbol of the Incan Empire and built around 1450AD, Machu Picchu was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 and was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007.
Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of how they originally appeared.
Inca builders chipped and chiseled stones to construct their citadel of Machu Picchu from a 250- million-year-old granite quarry. The report, which appears in the book “Geology in the Conservation of Machu Picchu,” states that the rocks were formed some five to ten miles within the Earth's crust.
Inclined planes, rope fashioned from the fourcroya andina plant, and gravity helped transportation crews move the stones. They moved the massive blocks across several kilometers of valley, through a shallow river, and up the mountain face to 2,400 meters (7,875 feet) above sea level, where their buildings still stand.
The Inca army (Quechua: Inka Awqaqkuna) was the multi-ethnic armed forces used by the Tawantin Suyu to expand its empire and defend the sovereignty of the Sapa Inca in its territory.
The Inca did not practice medicine as we think of it today, but rather incorporated a blend of culture, religion, and knowledge on herbs and minerals.
Inca surgeons in ancient Peru commonly and successfully removed small portions of patients' skulls to treat head injuries, according to a new study. The surgical procedure—known as trepanation—was most often performed on adult men, likely to treat injuries suffered during combat, researchers say.
The Incas were a very religious people; their religious beliefs were deeply embedded in their lives, everything they did had a religious meaning. They were tolerant of the beliefs of the people they conquered as long as they venerated Inca deities above all their gods, they even incorporated gods from other cultures.
Math is regarded as a universal language. The Incas utilized a device known as the yupana, a Fibonacci number, grid based, calculator capable of computing complex mathematical equations. Such devices were used by the Inca to conduct tribute, taxes, accounting, and trade.
The Inca had 7 main types of weapons. These weapons included the bronze or bone-tipped spears, clubs, bows and arrows, dart throwers, two-handed wooden swords with serrated edges, wooden slings and stones, and stone or copper headed battleaxes.
Advances in medicineInca surgeons apparently performed amputations for medical purposes, and their patients survived in good health. They were skilled in medicine; the Incas performed a type of skull surgery that released pressure and pain from wounds.
We know, for instance, that a civilization called the Wari ruled much of present-day Peru toward the end of the first millennium (the exact dates vary), or about 500 years before the rise of the Inca. Their capital, Hurai, had an estimated 40,000 people at its peak.
