COIMBATORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

(AUTONOMOUS INSTITUTION)
 NAME: ARVINDH S

REG. NO: 057

DOMAIN: ECE

BATCH: 2020-2024

CLASS: SEC-2

MOBILE NO: 9025008820

E-MAIL: [email protected]

TITLE: MACHU PICCHU

 Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel, located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru in the Machupicchu

District within Urubamba Province above the Sacred Valley, which is 80 kilometres northwest of Cuzco, on a 2,430-

metre mountain ridge.

 The Urubamba River flows past it, cutting through the Cordillera and creating a canyon with a tropical mountain

climate.

 Its official name is Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu and was declared a Peruvian Historic Sanctuary in 1981 and a

UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.

 In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide internet poll.
HISTORY

 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.

 By 1976, 30% of Machu Picchu had been restored and restoration continues.

 In the Quechua language, machu means "old" or "old person", while picchu means either "portion of coca being chewed" or

"pyramid, pointed multi-sided solid; cone” and because of this, the name of the site is sometimes interpreted as "old

mountain”
DAILY LIFE IN MACHU PICCHU

During its use as a royal estate, it is estimated that about 750 people lived there, with most serving as support staff who lived there

permanently.

Though the estate belonged to Pachacutec, religious specialists and temporary specialized workers lived there as well, most likely for the

ruler's well-being and enjoyment.

During the harsher season, staff dropped down to around a hundred servants and a few religious specialists focused on maintenance alone.

Animals are also suspected to have migrated to Machu Picchu as there were several bones found that were not native to the area like that of

llamas and alpacas which live at altitudes of 4,000 metres rather than the 2,400 metres elevation of Machu Picchu and were mostly brought in

from the Puna region for meat consumption and for their pelts.
AGRICULTURE

 Much of the farming done at Machu Picchu was done on its hundreds of man-made terraces which were a work of

considerable engineering, built to ensure good drainage and soil fertility while also protecting the mountain itself from erosion

and landslides.

 However, the terraces were not perfect, as studies of the land show that there were landslides that happened during the

construction of Machu Picchu.

 Still visible are places where the terraces were shifted by landslides and then stabilized by the Inca as they continued to build

around the area.

 However, it has been found that the terrace farming area makes up only about 4.9 ha (12 acres) of land, and a study of the soil

around the terraces showed that what was grown there was mostly corn and potatoes, which was not enough to support the

750+ people living at Machu Picchu.

 This explains why when studies were done on the food that the Inca ate at Machu valleys and farther afield.
GEOGRAPHY

Machu Picchu lies in the southern hemisphere, 13.164 degrees south of the equator, 80 kilometres northwest of Cusco,

on the crest of the mountain Machu Picchu, located about 2,430 metres above mean sea level, over 1,000 metres lower

than Cusco, which has an elevation of 3,400 metres. As such, it had a milder climate than the Inca capital.

It is one of the most important archaeological sites in South America, one of the most visited tourist attractions in Latin

America and the most visited in Peru.

Machu Picchu features wet humid summers and dry frosty winters, with the majority of the annual rain falling from

October through to March.

 Machu Picchu is situated above a bow of the Urubamba River, which surrounds the site on three sides, where cliffs drop

vertically for 450 metres to the river at their base. .

 The location of the city was a military secret, and its deep precipices and steep mountains provided natural defences and the

city itself sat in a saddle between the two mountains Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu, with a commanding view down two

valleys and a nearly impassable mountain at its back.

 It has a water supply from springs that cannot be blocked easily and is subject to morning mists rising from the river.
LAYOUT

 The site is roughly divided into an urban sector and an agricultural sector, and into an upper town consisting of temples and a

lower town consisting of warehouses and the architecture is adapted to the mountains.

 Approximately 200 buildings are arranged on wide parallel terraces around an east–west central square.

 The various compounds, called kanchas, are long and narrow in order to exploit the terrain.

 Sophisticated channelling systems provided irrigation for the fields.

 Stone stairways set in the walls allowed access to the different levels across the site.

 The eastern section of the city was probably residential and the western section, separated by the square, was for religious and

ceremonial purposes.

 The western section contains the Torreon, the massive tower which may have been used as an observatory.

 Located in the first zone are the primary archaeological treasures: the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun and the Room of the

Three Windows.
LAYOUT

These were dedicated to Inti, their sun god and greatest deity .

The Popular District, or Residential District, is the place where the lower-class people lived. It includes storage buildings and

simple houses.

The royalty area, a sector for the nobility, is a group of houses located in rows over a slope; the residence of the amautas

(wise persons) was characterized by its reddish walls, and the zone of the nustas (princesses) had trapezoid-shaped rooms.

The Monumental Mausoleum is a carved statue with a vaulted interior and carved drawings and it was used for rites or

sacrifices.

The Guardhouse is a three-sided building, with one of its long sides opening onto the Terrace of the Ceremonial Rock.

The three-sided style of Inca architecture is known as the wayrona style.

The central buildings use the classical Inca architectural style of polished dry-stone walls of regular shape.

The Incas were masters of this technique, called ashlar, in which blocks of stone are cut to fit together tightly without mortar.

The site itself may have been intentionally built on fault lines to afford better drainage and a ready supply of fractured stone.

The section of the mountain where Machu Picchu was built provided various challenges that the Incas solved with local materials.

One issue was the seismic activity due to two fault lines and it made mortar and similar building methods nearly useless.
CONSTRUCTION

Instead, the Inca mined stones from the quarry at the site, lined them up and shaped them to fit together perfectly, stabilizing the

structures.

Inca walls have many stabilizing features: doors and windows are trapezoidal, narrowing from bottom to top; corners usually are

rounded; inside corners often incline slightly into the rooms, and outside corners were often tied together by "L"-shaped blocks; walls

are offset slightly from row to row rather than rising straight from bottom to top.

Heavy rainfall required terraces and stone chips to drain rain water and prevent mudslides, landslides, erosion, and flooding.

Terraces were layered with stone chips, sand, dirt, and topsoil, to absorb water and prevent it from running down the mountain. Similar

layering protected the large city centre from flooding.

Machu Picchu is both a cultural and natural UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Since its discovery in 1911, growing numbers of tourists have visited the site each year, including 1,411,279 in 2017.

As Peru's most visited tourist attraction and major revenue generator, it is continually exposed to economic and commercial forces.

In the late 1990s, the Peruvian government granted concessions to allow the construction of a cable car and a luxury hotel, including a

tourist complex with boutiques and restaurants and a bridge to the site.

Many people protested the plans, including Peruvians and foreign scientists, saying that more visitors would pose a physical burden on

the ruins.
TOURISM

In 2018, plans were restarted to again construct a cable car to encourage Peruvians to visit Machu Picchu and boost domestic tourism.

UNESCO is considering putting Machu Picchu on its List of World Heritage in Danger.

During the 1980s a large rock from Machu Picchu's central plaza was moved to a different location to create a helicopter landing zone

but in the 1990s, the government prohibited helicopter landings.

In 2006, a Cusco-based company, Helicusco, sought approval for tourist flights over Machu Picchu.

UNESCO received criticism for allowing tourists at the location given high risks of landslides, earthquakes and injury due to decaying

structures.
PANORAMIC VIEWS
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