Ghosts of Machu Picchu Page #5

---

that they go to bed at night.

That's a very powerful thing.

It's a message

of conquest and of possession,

that they own that land, and they control

the people who live within it.

So Machu Picchu

was a formidable symbol of Inca power,

a spectacular boast by Pachacuti,

not just of their engineering prowess,

but of their paramount link

to the sacred mountains and rivers.

Still, if this place played such

a critical role in demonstrating

the religious

and military power of the Inca,

why didn't the Spanish deface it

as they did to other sacred Inca sites?

And why isn't it ever

described in any Spanish accounts?

Part of the answer lies in the Corpus

Christi procession back in Cusco...

the annual festival that is

a Christian revision of an Inca ritual.

In that ritual, the Inca carried

mummies instead of saints...

especially the mummies of their kings.

When Pachacuti died in 1471,

he wasn't buried; he was mummified.

The exact process is unknown.

One theory suggests his body would

have been gradually freeze-dried:

left out in the searing sun by day,

and, alternately, frozen at night.

Through this repeated heating,

freezing and thawing, the corpse would

have become completely desiccated.

Curiously,

this is similar to how the local

Quetchua people preserve llama meat.

The result is jerky, which is one of

the few Quetchua words used in English.

Once preserved,

Pachacuti would not have been entombed.

Instead, he would have

continued to play an active role

in the politics

and rituals of the Inca world.

Drawings made by the Incan artist,

Guaman Poma, confirm

the use of mummies in this way.

We don't actually

have a mummy of an Inca emperor,

but we have descriptions of them

and5 we know that they were taken out

during major festivals and paraded.

We know that they had attendants

who would shoo away the flies

and give offerings every day, food

offerings, and drink to the mummies.

In other words, they were worshipped

and believed to still

play a role in the community.

Care and handling of the mummy would

have fallen to a group of family members

called the panaca who also took control

of all the king's royal estates.

But, over time, even Pachacuti's

panaca could have run short of resources.

Work at Machu Picchu may have slowed,

then stopped altogether.

The descendants of Pachacuti

had more pressing concerns.

Even before the Spanish Conquest,

small pox came.

It was followed by a bloody

civil war that left the Inca Empire

weakened and fragmented.

Barely 60 years after Pachacuti died,

the Inca Empire finally

collapsed under the Spanish invasion.

When the royal families were,

had lost their power,

they were disorganized.

There was civil war.

There was massive destruction of sites.

And the people at Machu Picchu

probably at some point just said,

Well nobody is coming to visit,

and the site really had

no reason to exist at that point.

By then, it is likely that all

but the loyal servants

had forgotten Machu Picchu.

And, after time,

even they probably just drifted away.

So the Spanish probably never heard

about Machu Picchu and more importantly,

never found it.

It was, for us, the luckiest mistake.

It meant that Machu Picchu

was left untouched

one of the only major Inca

sites to remain in tact.

While it still poses

confounding mysteries,

it also holds great promise

as new technologies

and finds allow us to come to terms

with the ghosts of Machu Picchu.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes