The unspoken reason why the incas built Machu Picchu in a place so little accessible

Peru begins to build an airport in Machu Picchu, despite the críticasLimitan the access of tourists to the finer points of Machu PicchuLos tiny "enemies" that

The unspoken reason why the incas built Machu Picchu in a place so little accessible
Peru begins to build an airport in Machu Picchu, despite the críticasLimitan the access of tourists to the finer points of Machu PicchuLos tiny "enemies" that eat the Sacred Rock of Machu Picchu

In the middle of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, Machu Picchu is nestled among the Andes mountains at a height of 2,430 metres above sea level . Built more than five centuries ago and "discovered", your location , so little accessible, always has intrigued to the researchers.

The reason might be under the ground, according to the website "IFLSience" following the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America this week in the city of Arizona (united States).

"The location of Machu Picchu is not a coincidence," said the geologist brazilian Rualdo Menegat . According to Menegat, of the Federal University of Rio Grande of the South, they would have proved impossible for the incas to build such an infrastructure in the highlands of the Eastern Cordillera (The Andes), at 2,400 meters above sea level, if the substrate had not been fractured. That is, chose the enclave for geological faults .

Several techniques such as satellite image analysis and geoarqueológico have revealed incidios of the city of Machu Picchu is built on the intersection of a network of different fractures and faults ; some existing ones from 8 million years ago, when you formed the mountains of the central Andes.

go in direction northeast-southwest and others tend to go from northwest to southeast, forming an X in the center of which is Machu Picchu. The analysis of Menegat show that the urban sectors of the sacred citadel, as well as the agricultural fields that surround it, were built according to the orientation of these faults in X.

These failures provided the incas large amounts of fractured rocks, after the earthquakes. "In Machu Picchu, the rocks were so fragmented that it was possible to build cities on high levels of survey", the study indicates. It was also a strategic question for and safeguarded from the potential geological hazards –Peru is a region of seismic active; a magnet for earthquakes, landslides, avalanches...– and the inhospitable conditions of the Andes .

in Addition, according to Menegat, facilitated the work of the incas, since the stones were already weakened and it was easier to tallarlas. As we are reminded by the author of the article in "IFLSience", the perfect union of the stones by masonry prevents the introduction of, for example, a credit card between them. This prevents that, in the event of an earthquake, the stones –many of them "carved" initially by the movements of tectonic– move from their original location.

in Addition, such failures could have had another role: channeling meltwater , and the rainfall typical of the region towards the citadel and so to a step, to devote less effort to build channels that drenaran that place.

Date Of Update: 27 September 2019, 02:04