Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of PeruBingham, Hiram
History
Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru
Bingham, Hiram
Incas; Peru -- Antiquities; Peru -- Description and travel
A little farther up the stream one passes through a massive
megalithic gateway and finds one's self in the presence of the
astounding gray-blue Cyclopean walls of Sacsahuaman, described in
"Across South America." Here the ancient builders constructed three
great terraces, which extend one above another for a third of a mile
across the hill between two deep gulches. The lowest terrace of the
"fortress" is faced with colossal boulders, many of which weigh ten
tons and some weigh more than twenty tons, yet all are fitted together
with the utmost precision. I have visited Sacsahuaman repeatedly. Each
time it invariably overwhelms and astounds. To a superstitious Indian
who sees these walls for the first time, they must seem to have been
built by gods.
About a mile northeast of Sacsahuaman are several small artificial
hills, partly covered with vegetation, which seem to be composed
entirely of gray-blue rock chips--chips from the great limestone blocks
quarried here for the "fortress" and later conveyed with the utmost
pains down to Sacsahuaman. They represent the labor of countless
thousands of quarrymen. Even in modern times, with steam drills,
explosives, steel tools, and light railways, these hills would
be noteworthy, but when one pauses to consider that none of these
mechanical devices were known to the ancient stonemasons and that
these mountains of stone chips were made with stone tools and were all
carried from the quarries by hand, it fairly staggers the imagination.
The ruins of Sacsahuaman represent not only an incredible amount of
human labor, but also a very remarkable governmental organization. That
thousands of people could have been spared from agricultural
pursuits for so long a time as was necessary to extract the blocks
from the quarries, hew them to the required shapes, transport them
several miles over rough country, and bond them together in such an
intricate manner, means that the leaders had the brains and ability
to organize and arrange the affairs of a very large population. Such
a folk could hardly have spent much time in drilling or preparing for
warfare. Their building operations required infinite pains, endless
time, and devoted skill. Such qualities could hardly have been called
forth, even by powerful monarchs, had not the results been pleasing
to the great majority of their people, people who were primarily
agriculturists. They had learned to avert hunger and famine by relying
on carefully built, stone-faced terraces, which would prevent their
fields being carried off and spread over the plains of the Amazon. It
seems to me possible that Sacsahuaman was built in accordance with
their desires to please their gods. Is it not reasonable to suppose
that a people to whom stone-faced terraces meant so much in the way
of life-giving food should have sometimes built massive terraces of
Cyclopean character, like Sacsahuaman, as an offering to the deity
who first taught them terrace construction? This seems to me a more
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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