Machu Picchu, a Royal Estate of the Inca Ruler Pachacuti

Type:

Book

Author:

Antti Korpisaari

Published:

2020

Located in the lower Urubamba Valley of Peru, Machu Picchu is one of the most emblematic archaeological sites of the Americas. It has come to symbolize the Inca Empire, which originated in Cuzco, in the south Peruvian highlands. In the 15th and early 16th centuries AD, the Incas rapidly conquered huge areas, before they succumbed to the Spaniards in the 1530s. Not long after Machu Picchu’s scientific discovery in 1911, rather fanciful interpretations regarding the ancient nature and function of this “lost city of the Incas” began to circulate. Since the 1980s, however, ethnohistorical and archaeological knowledge regarding the site has increased considerably. Scholars now agree: Machu Picchu was no typical Inca settlement, but, rather, a private royal estate of the emperor Pachacuti, probably built around the mid‑fifteenth century AD.

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