The Inca City of Machu Picchu

The Wonders of World

The Incas of Peru have long held a mystical charm for people of the western world.


An international team of explorers found an Incan city lost for centuries in the Peruvian jungles in spite of being within sight of the significant religious region at Machu Picchu which is located between three sacred mountains in the Andes and is South America's famous archaeological site. The team discovered the ruins at Llactapata 50 miles northwest of the ancient Incan capital, Cusco. Another lost Incan town at Cota Coca, about 60 miles west of Cusco was also found.


Inca, also spelled as Inka was known as Tiwantinsuya. The Incans called their kingdom the 'Land of the Four Quarters' or the Tahuantinsuyu Empire. It stretched north to south some 2,500 miles along the high mountainous Andean range from Colombia to Chile and reached west to east from the dry coastal desert called Atacama to the steamy Amazonian rain forest. No one really knows where the Incas came from except for the historic record left in stone for archaeologists to reveal the facts through the centuries that followed.


Archaeological evidences of ritual sacrifices have also been found to this day.
Cusco was the center of the Inca Empire, with its advanced hydraulic engineering, agricultural techniques, marvelous architecture, textiles, ceramics and ironworks.


They were famous for mining large amounts of gold.
The Incas had an incredible system of roads. One road ran almost the entire length of the South American Pacific coast!


However, the Incas vacated their towns and cities and retreated from the treasure-hunting Spanish invaders after the Conquistadors captured and executed the last Incan leader, Tupac Amaru, in 1572.The Incas established a totalitarian state within this area that enabled the tribal ruler and a small number of nobles to control the population. The wealth and sophistication of the celebrated Inca people attracted many anthropologists and archaeologists to the Andean States in a pursuit to understand the Inca's advanced ways and what led to their ultimate demise

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