Speaker 1: Imagine standing on a sheer, jagged ridge of rock. You
Speaker 1: are like sixteen hundred feet in the air. Right, you
Speaker 1: look to your left and there is this terrifying vertical
Speaker 1: drop straight down into a river valley.
Speaker 2: And if you look to your right, it's well, it's
Speaker 2: it's another sheer.
Speaker 1: Drop exactly, and swirling all around you is this thick,
Speaker 1: blinding white miss.
Speaker 2: Their lungs are just burning because the air is so
Speaker 2: thin up there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the humidity of the jungle is completely suffocating. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine someone hands you a piece of granite that weighs
Speaker 1: like twenty tons, a literal boulder, right, and they tell
Speaker 1: you to carve it into a perfect geometric puzzle piece.
Speaker 2: Oh, and you can't use iron tools, and.
Speaker 1: You definitely don't have a wheel to move it, and you.
Speaker 2: Can't use mortar to hold it in place. You basically
Speaker 2: just have to figure it out using the rocks lying
Speaker 2: around on the ground.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like a punishment from ancient mythology,
Speaker 1: you know, pushing the boulder up the hill, only to
Speaker 1: realize the hill is a cliff and you don't even
Speaker 1: have a cart. It totally sounds completely impossible. But that
Speaker 1: scenario isn't a myth, it is a physical reality that
Speaker 1: still stands today. Welcome to the Deep Dive. I'm so
Speaker 1: thrilled you are joining us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Today's mission is to unpack a five hundred year old
Speaker 1: riddle hidden high up in the Peruvian Andes. We are,
Speaker 1: of course talking about Machu.
Speaker 2: Picha, such an incredible topic and our road.
Speaker 1: Map for this exploration is the incredibly detailed transcript from
Speaker 1: the comprehensive History Channel documentary Mysteries of Machu Picchu Revealed.
Speaker 2: It is a really remarkable piece of source material. We
Speaker 2: have a mountain of information to unpack today, literally and figuratively.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, the mission for us and for you listening right
Speaker 1: now is to strip away centuries of accumulated myth. We
Speaker 1: are going to tear down those romanticized Hollywood style adventurer.
Speaker 2: Tales right the Indiana Jones stuff exactly.
Speaker 1: We want to reveal the true identity, the actual purpose,
Speaker 1: and the sheer engineering genius behind this lost city of Stone. So,
Speaker 1: if you are the kind of person who loves connecting
Speaker 1: ancient mysteries to modern SCIGNCE forensics, while this deep dive
Speaker 1: is custom built for you, because.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the real history is far, far more fascinating than
Speaker 2: the legend.
Speaker 1: Oh totally.
Speaker 2: And you know, the most intriguing part of this documentary
Speaker 2: transcript isn't merely the visual spectacle of what the Inca built.
Speaker 2: I mean, we all know they built a beautiful city
Speaker 2: in the clouds.
Speaker 1: Right, we have all seen the postcard photos exactly.
Speaker 2: The real narrative tension comes from observing how modern science
Speaker 2: had to painstakingly dismantle eighty years of deeply flawed historical
Speaker 2: assumptions to finally understand the why of Machu Picchu it is.
Speaker 2: It's really a story of forensic correction.
Speaker 1: Let's jump right into the sheer impossibility of this place.
Speaker 1: We are talking about an entire city made of stone,
Speaker 1: perched on a precipice. It just defies gravity.
Speaker 2: It completely defies standard architectural logic.
Speaker 1: And for four hundred years it managed to hide completely
Speaker 1: from the outside world. How does a society without wheels
Speaker 1: or iron manage something of this magnitude.
Speaker 2: Well, to even begin grasping the mechanics of Machu Pichu,
Speaker 2: we really have to zoom out. We have to look
Speaker 2: at the staggering logistical power of the civilization that built it.
Speaker 1: Okay, set the stage for us.
Speaker 2: So we often hear about the Aztecs in Mexico, but
Speaker 2: the Inca Empire, prior to the arrival of the Spanish,
Speaker 2: was arguably the most powerful, highly structured society in the
Speaker 2: entire New World.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They controlled a territory that stretched from modern day
Speaker 2: Columbia all the way down to Chile.
Speaker 1: That is a massive footprint. I mean thousands of miles
Speaker 1: of the most unforgiving terrain on the.
Speaker 2: Plant an absolutely brutal terrain.
Speaker 1: You have the towering Andes Mountains, the arid coastal deserts,
Speaker 1: the dense Amazonian jungles. Managing a population across that geography
Speaker 1: seems like an administrative nightmare today, let alone in the
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred.
Speaker 2: It was an administrative triumph, honestly, and their Golden Age,
Speaker 2: the era of their greatest expansion, really began around fourteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight under a leader named Pachacuti.
Speaker 1: The source material calls Pachacuti a brilliant warrior and leader.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just a king, right.
Speaker 2: No, far more than that. He centralized control over religion, art,
Speaker 2: and government. He was the ultimate architect of the empire.
Speaker 1: So he was a revolutionary builder exactly.
Speaker 2: Batchkuti initiated massive construction projects across the continent, whole cities, sprawling,
Speaker 2: agricultural estates, grand temples. But the true backbone of his
Speaker 2: power was an infrastructure network that is just difficult to comprehend.
Speaker 2: What kind of infrastructure the INCA engineered and maintained roughly
Speaker 2: fourteen thousand miles of paved roads.
Speaker 1: Wait, I need to pause on the mechanics of that
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand miles of roads through the Andes Mountain yep.
Speaker 2: Fourteen thousand miles.
Speaker 1: And again, this is a society without the wheel. They
Speaker 1: aren't driving carts, they aren't pulling wagons. What is the
Speaker 1: physical mechanism of using fourteen thousand miles of mountain highways
Speaker 1: if you don't have wheels?
Speaker 2: Well, Kenneth Wright, who is a civil engineering expert in
Speaker 2: the documentary, he really sheds light on this. Those words
Speaker 2: weren't designed for leisurely travel or wheeled carts.
Speaker 1: What were they for them?
Speaker 2: They were resigned for the rapid projection of state power.
Speaker 2: The network was built with a system of relay stations
Speaker 2: called tampus, spaced about a day's walk apart, and they
Speaker 2: had this messenger system of runners, the Chaskes, who could
Speaker 2: transmit information across the empire at incredible speeds. But more importantly,
Speaker 2: the roads were wide and stable enough to rapidly move
Speaker 2: massive groups of troops from one sector of the empire
Speaker 2: to another.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So it's basically the ultimate flex of administrative muscle. Precisely,
Speaker 1: it's the emperor saying, I can march an army to
Speaker 1: your doorstep across a mountain range before you even have
Speaker 1: time to organize a defense.
Speaker 2: It was a highly centralized government controlling a vast, highly
Speaker 2: diverse population through sheer logistical securiority. By standardizing the road network,
Speaker 2: Pachacuti essentially shrank the geography of the Andes. It was
Speaker 2: an empire operating at the absolute peak of its capacity.
Speaker 1: And then we hit the year fifteen thirty two. Enter
Speaker 1: Francisco Bizar, the turning point. A Spanish conquistador lands in
Speaker 1: Peru with just one hundred and eighty.
Speaker 2: Men, tiny, tiny fraction of a force compared to the
Speaker 2: Inca armies.
Speaker 1: That's what I find so jarring, one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: guys against an empire that spans a continent. How does
Speaker 1: a tiny band of foreigners even register as a legitimate
Speaker 1: threat to a society that can coordinate fourteen thousand miles
Speaker 1: of mountain logistics.
Speaker 2: Pizarro was driven by a hyper focused motivation. He was
Speaker 2: lured by something the Inca possessed, an absolute abundance, and
Speaker 2: this element represents a fundamental, fatal clash of values between
Speaker 2: the two cultures.
Speaker 1: You're talking about gold, gold. The documentary highlights this profound misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: So beautifully. To the Inca, gold had zero economic value.
Speaker 2: Right correct, none whatsoever.
Speaker 1: It was entirely sacred. They believed it represented their principal
Speaker 1: God into the sun. They literally called gold the sweat
Speaker 1: of the sun.
Speaker 2: It was purely a spiritual material. They crafted ceremonial knives
Speaker 2: from it, beautiful masks, and they even sheeted the walls
Speaker 2: of their main temples in brilliant solid gold.
Speaker 1: While the Inca saw the spiritual manifestation of their day,
Speaker 1: the Spanish saw cold, hard currency.
Speaker 2: Exactly, they saw a vast, unimaginable wealth, political power back
Speaker 2: in Europe, and basically the entire justification for crossing a
Speaker 2: deadly ocean.
Speaker 1: It's a complete disconnect, this.
Speaker 2: Complete disconnect in how these two cultures valued a yellow
Speaker 2: metal sealed the fate of the Inca Empire. Pizarro hears
Speaker 2: stories of the Incan emperor Ottawalpa eating from golden plates
Speaker 2: and drinking from golden goblets, and he immediately sets out
Speaker 2: to intercept him.
Speaker 1: And he finds Ottawalpa at a town called Kaja Marca,
Speaker 1: which is about three hundred and fifty miles inland from
Speaker 1: where Pizarro landed. Ottawaalpa is camped there with a massive army,
Speaker 1: and the confrontation that follows is just a masterclass in
Speaker 1: brutal deception.
Speaker 2: In November fifteen thirty two, Pizarro extends an invitation to
Speaker 2: Ottawalpa for a feast in his.
Speaker 1: Honor, and the emperor just goes.
Speaker 2: The Emperor, perhaps curious about these strange men and completely
Speaker 2: confident in the size of his own forces, agrees. He
Speaker 2: arrives in the town square with his Royal entrae entirely.
Speaker 1: Unarmed, unarmed oh man Yeah.
Speaker 2: Expecting a diplomatic or ceremonial meeting.
Speaker 1: He walks right into a confined courtyard. It's a literal
Speaker 1: kill box.
Speaker 2: It was. The Spaniards had hidden themselves in the buildings
Speaker 2: surrounding the square. At a signal. They sprang the trap
Speaker 2: just an absolute ambush. They unleashed rudimentary firearms horses which
Speaker 2: the Inca had never seen before and found absolutely terrifying,
Speaker 2: and steal swords. They slaughtered the unarmed attendants and captured
Speaker 2: the emperor alive.
Speaker 1: Think about the psychological shock for Atahuapa. He is a
Speaker 1: god king. His feet aren't even supposed touch the ground, right,
Speaker 1: and suddenly he is locked in a room by these
Speaker 1: violent aliens. But he quickly assesses his captors and realizes
Speaker 1: exactly what they want he does.
Speaker 2: He offers Pizarro a ransom for his life.
Speaker 1: And the documentary describes a staggering visual here at Ahuapa
Speaker 1: promises to fill the room. He is imprisoned in a
Speaker 1: room roughly twenty two feet by seventeen feet with gold.
Speaker 2: Up to a line as high as he can reach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he promises to fill two smaller rooms with summer.
Speaker 2: It is an offer that simply did not compute in
Speaker 2: the European mind. The sheer volume of precious metal he
Speaker 2: was proposing was just unfathorable.
Speaker 1: I tried to put this into a modern perspective. It's
Speaker 1: like a tech billionaire being taken hostage and the bias freedom.
Speaker 1: He tells his kidnappers, I will literally empty Fort Knox
Speaker 1: for you, every gold bar, every coin. I will have
Speaker 1: it delivered to this warehouse.
Speaker 2: That's a great analogy.
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing is the Inca actually deliver the
Speaker 1: gold pours in from their capital, Cusco and from temples
Speaker 1: across the empire. Porters carried over those fourteen thousand miles
Speaker 1: of roads. Atawaalpa literally fulfills the ransom.
Speaker 2: But the tragedy of the conquest is that no amount
Speaker 2: of gold could quench the Spaniard's thirst or secure the
Speaker 2: emperor's safety.
Speaker 1: Of course not.
Speaker 2: Pizarro recognized that as long as Adawalpa lived, he was
Speaker 2: a rallying point for a massive, organized resistance. So despite
Speaker 2: the rooms being filled, Pizarro arranged a mock trial and
Speaker 2: executed Adawalpa.
Speaker 1: And then a full scale, bl bloody war erupted.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: I always struggle with this part of the history. Sitting
Speaker 1: here centuries later. It's so easy to look back and think,
Speaker 1: how could the Inca be so naive? Why walk into
Speaker 1: that courtyard, Why trust them enough to pay the ransom.
Speaker 2: It's a common reaction, but I have.
Speaker 1: To imagine this was just an unprecedented scenario for them.
Speaker 1: How could they possibly anticipate Pizarro's tactics when the very
Speaker 1: concept of warfare and diplomacy was so radically different.
Speaker 2: That is the essential context. We cannot project modern globalized
Speaker 2: cynicism onto a sixteenth century indigenous empire encountering Europeans for
Speaker 2: the very first time. The Spanish operated entirely outside the
Speaker 2: Inca paradigm of honorable warfare. But it is vital to
Speaker 2: understand that Pizarro's deceit and steal swords were really only
Speaker 2: a fraction of the devastating force that toppled the empire.
Speaker 2: The logistics of the collapse point to a perfect storm.
Speaker 2: What do you mean the invisible weapons were the true conqueror?
Speaker 1: I mean the diseases.
Speaker 2: Yes, the source material makes it clear that the Inca
Speaker 2: were all reeling from a bitter internal civil war just
Speaker 2: before Bizarro arrived. But the final crushing blow was a
Speaker 2: massive smallpox epidemic. Oh wow, the Spanish inadvertently introduced a
Speaker 2: virus to a population with zero inherited immunity. The mechanics
Speaker 2: of a virgin soil epidemic are just horrifying.
Speaker 1: Because it's spread so fast.
Speaker 2: The disease swept through the population via that incredibly efficient
Speaker 2: road network we talked about, traveling way faster than any
Speaker 2: army could march. It decimated the military, the leadership class,
Speaker 2: and the general population.
Speaker 1: It's a really sobering reflection on how fragile massive systems
Speaker 1: actually are. A civilization that dominated the Mighty andes brought
Speaker 1: down not by superior military strategy, but by internal political
Speaker 1: fractures and microscopic viruses.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: The devastation is total. The Spanish systematically destroy the remnants
Speaker 1: of the civilization. They leveled the temples and cusco. They
Speaker 1: melt down all that sacred gold into standardized European ingots,
Speaker 1: and they impose a new religion.
Speaker 2: They systematically dismantled the infrastructure of the Inca state, but
Speaker 2: a faction of surviving royals, led by a figure named Manco,
Speaker 2: managed to retreat deep into the rugged mountains.
Speaker 1: And they established a base right yes.
Speaker 2: They established a hidden rebel capital called Vilcabamba, and from
Speaker 2: there they fought a stubborn guerrilla war against the Spanish
Speaker 2: for decades.
Speaker 1: The Spanish spent years hunting for this rebel base. Eventually
Speaker 1: in fifteen seventy two, they found vil Cabamba, executed the
Speaker 1: last royal inca, and that specific site was abandoned.
Speaker 2: Right that was the end of the resistance.
Speaker 1: But the key takeaway here for you listening is that
Speaker 1: while the Spanish destroyed almost everything, they missed one place
Speaker 1: They never found, Machu.
Speaker 2: Picchu, never even knew it was there.
Speaker 1: And the desperate, centuries long historical search for that lost
Speaker 1: rebel capital of vill Cabamba is the exact catalyst that
Speaker 1: accidentally introduced Machu Picchu to the modern world.
Speaker 2: That historical obsession with finding the quote unquote lost city
Speaker 2: brings us to the year nineteen eleven, directly to the
Speaker 2: doorstep of an American named Hiram Bingham.
Speaker 1: Hiram Bingham is such a fascinating, complicated character. He's an
Speaker 1: American explorer. He's a geography and history lecturer at Yale University.
Speaker 2: Very credentialed.
Speaker 1: But the documentary paints a very specific psychological profile of him.
Speaker 1: He is a man intensely driven by a desire for
Speaker 1: personal fame.
Speaker 2: Oh, the ambition was deeply ingrained. Bingham's father and grandfather
Speaker 2: were both famous, influential missionaries. He grew up under the
Speaker 2: immense weight of their legacy, feeling this crushing pressure to
Speaker 2: achieve his own daring exploits.
Speaker 1: So he had some serious daddy issues driving him.
Speaker 2: You could say that he wanted to carve his name
Speaker 2: into the annals of history, and his chosen vehicle for
Speaker 2: that glory was to be the man who finally discovered Vilcabamba,
Speaker 2: the last refuge of the Inca.
Speaker 1: So, fueled by this ambition, he heads to Peru in
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven. He arrives in Cusco in July, and he
Speaker 1: starts hearing local rumors about ruins near a place called
Speaker 1: Mandor Pompa. Right, he puts together a small expedition and
Speaker 1: heads into the Urubamba cloud forest. We really need to
Speaker 1: establish what a cloud forest actually is because the phrase
Speaker 1: sounds lovely and ethereal, but the physical reality of it
Speaker 1: is brutal.
Speaker 2: Cloud forest is really just a polite term for a wet,
Speaker 2: incredibly dense, nearly impenetrable tropical mountain jungle. We are talking
Speaker 2: about an environment situated at an altitude between three thousand
Speaker 2: and eight thousand feet. The terrain is characterized by steep ravines,
Speaker 2: constant rainfall, thick mud, and extremely aggressive vegetation.
Speaker 1: It is definitely not a casual weekend hike. Richard Berger,
Speaker 1: an anthropologist from Yale featured in the documentary, describes Bingham
Speaker 1: as an incredibly.
Speaker 2: Lucky scholar, which is very accurate.
Speaker 1: Because Bingham didn't hack his way through untouched jungle for months.
Speaker 1: He managed to navigate this dense vegetation primarily because the
Speaker 1: Peruvian government had very recently blasted and cut a new
Speaker 1: trade path deep into the forest to facilitate local commerce.
Speaker 2: Exactly, he was utilizing modern local infrastructure, and while camping
Speaker 2: near a small hot along this new road, Bingham encounters
Speaker 2: a local farmer named.
Speaker 1: Arteaga and what is Artaaga? Tell him?
Speaker 2: Artiaga casually mentions that up on top of the terrifying
Speaker 2: vertical precipice is looming over them, there are some old ruins.
Speaker 1: And Bingham is like, sure, I'll check it out.
Speaker 2: Basically, Bingham, driven by his relentless checklist, figures it probably
Speaker 2: isn't the grand capital of thel Cabamba, but he can't
Speaker 2: pass up documenting a ruin.
Speaker 1: So on the morning of July twenty fourth, nineteen eleven, Bingham,
Speaker 1: his local guide, and a military escort start the climb.
Speaker 2: The famous climb.
Speaker 1: The documentary describes this ascent, and it completely shatters the
Speaker 1: romantic image of the heroic explorer boldly striding into the unknown.
Speaker 1: They are fighting their way up this mountain for more
Speaker 1: than two and a half hours.
Speaker 2: It was grueling.
Speaker 1: The brush is so thick and the slope is so
Speaker 1: steep that they are literally crawling on their hands and knees,
Speaker 1: pulling themselves up by roots. They are exhausted, soaking, wet,
Speaker 1: and covered in mud.
Speaker 2: And when they finally crest the ridge and pull themselves
Speaker 2: over the ledge, the reality the site completely subverts the
Speaker 2: narrative of a pristine, untouched discovery.
Speaker 1: I love this detail more than anything else. In the story,
Speaker 1: Bingham is gasping for air, dreaming of historical glory. He
Speaker 1: looks up and there's just a local family hanging.
Speaker 2: Out that's going about their day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a family had established a farm up there. They
Speaker 1: were growing crops on the ancient terraces. They look at
Speaker 1: this muddy American and a young boy casually volunteers to
Speaker 1: walk them over to see the old stone houses.
Speaker 2: It forces us to entirely reframe what the word discovery
Speaker 2: means in a historical context. Totally Bigham did not discover
Speaker 2: Machu Picchu in the sense of finding something that no
Speaker 2: human knew existed. Local indigenous people were intimately aware of it.
Speaker 2: They were utilizing the ancient engineering for their daily survival.
Speaker 1: The kid leads him a short distance through the overgrowth,
Speaker 1: and Bingham finds himself standing in what he describes as
Speaker 1: a maze of beautiful granite houses.
Speaker 2: But it was very overgrown.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the jungle has consumed most of it. There are
Speaker 1: trees growing through the roofs, thick moss covering the walls,
Speaker 1: but the sheer scale of the stonework is undeniable. It
Speaker 1: is a massive complex.
Speaker 2: Yet Bigham's immediate reaction to finding one of the greatest
Speaker 2: archaeological sites on the planet is incredibly anti climactic.
Speaker 1: What does he do?
Speaker 2: He takes a few photographs with his camera, He sketches
Speaker 2: out a very rough map, and then he turns around
Speaker 2: and leaves the very same afternoon. By five pm, he
Speaker 2: is heading back down the muddy trail to his camp.
Speaker 2: Wait what, Yeah, he didn't even bother to bring his
Speaker 2: expedition partners up the mountain the next day to show
Speaker 2: them what he found.
Speaker 1: That makes absolutely no sense to me. If you stumble
Speaker 1: onto a massive, perfectly carved city of granite hidden in
Speaker 1: the clouds, why do you just take a few snaps
Speaker 1: and bounds.
Speaker 2: It is a textbook example of confirmation.
Speaker 1: Bias because he was looking for something else.
Speaker 2: Precisely, Bingham was singularly obsessed with finding vilc Obamba. In
Speaker 2: his mind, vilc Obamba had a specific set of architectural
Speaker 2: criteria based on old Spanish chronicles, and this didn't match right.
Speaker 2: This overgrown on the ridge didn't neatly fit those preconceived notions,
Speaker 2: so his brain basically categorized it as a minor distraction.
Speaker 2: He was anxious to check the box and keep moving
Speaker 2: toward his actual.
Speaker 1: Goal, so he just moves on.
Speaker 2: He spent the next three months exploring other, frankly much
Speaker 2: less impressive sites in the region. It was only when
Speaker 2: he returned to the US, developed his photographs and really
Speaker 2: looked at the monumental scale of the masonry that he
Speaker 2: realized that cliff side ruins were actually something spectacular.
Speaker 1: Those photographs change his life. He realizes he has to
Speaker 1: figure out what this place was, and.
Speaker 2: He leverages the stunning visuals to secure major funding, most
Speaker 2: notably from the National Geographic.
Speaker 1: Society in nineteen twelve, so less than a year later
Speaker 1: he returns. But this time he's not a guy on
Speaker 1: a day hike. He brings a massive, multidisciplinary team, a
Speaker 1: real expert, He brings dozens of local laborers to hack
Speaker 1: away the jungle. He brings a geologist, and crucially, he
Speaker 1: brings a bone specialist named George Eaton. They start clearing
Speaker 1: the terraces and excavating the soil, and.
Speaker 2: The excavation yields signific tic It finds they uncover over
Speaker 2: one hundred graves hidden in the rocky overhangs around the city. Okay,
Speaker 2: they pull out skeletons, elaborate pottery, stone tools, and bronze knives.
Speaker 2: Bingham is desperate for these physical artifacts to tell him
Speaker 2: a story. He needs a compelling, marketable narrative to justify
Speaker 2: the funding and solidify his newfound fame.
Speaker 1: And this is where the limitations of early twentieth century
Speaker 1: field science really lead the entire expedition astray.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. The team's osteologist, George Eaton, examines the excavated skeletons.
Speaker 2: Based on his analysis of the bones, he concludes that
Speaker 2: the vast majority of the burials.
Speaker 1: Were female Eaton tells Bingham, these are mostly women, and
Speaker 1: Dingham takes that single, deeply flawed data point and sprints
Speaker 1: straight into fantasyland.
Speaker 2: He really does. Bingham was well read in Incan history.
Speaker 2: He knew of an institution called the Virgins of the Sun.
Speaker 2: These were chosen women known as the Akla, who were
Speaker 2: sequestered to live strict religious, chaste lives, separated from.
Speaker 1: Men dedicated to the Sun God.
Speaker 2: Right dedicated to the Sun God and the Emperor. Hearing
Speaker 2: that the graves were mostly female, Bingham theorizes that this remote,
Speaker 2: inaccessible city must have been a highly secretive convent designed
Speaker 2: specifically to hide the Virgins of the Sun from the
Speaker 2: invading Spanish.
Speaker 1: But his imagination didn't stop at the convent theory. He
Speaker 1: looked at the architecture itself and started spinning even more
Speaker 1: elaborate tales.
Speaker 2: He focused on a very prominent, beautifully carved structure within
Speaker 2: the ruins that features three large trapezoidal windows. Bingham dubbed
Speaker 2: at the temple of the three windows sounds very dramatic.
Speaker 2: He immediately linked this specific architectural feature to an ancient
Speaker 2: Incan origin legend. The myth states that the original founders
Speaker 2: of the Inca civilization. The three Ayre brothers emerged from
Speaker 2: three caves in a mountain to begin their conquest.
Speaker 1: Let me guess he thought the windows were the caves exactly.
Speaker 2: Bingham theorized that the three windows represented those three caves,
Speaker 2: leading him to declare that Machu Picha was not just
Speaker 2: a convent, but the very birthplace of the Inca civilization itself.
Speaker 1: He's just projecting these massive romantic mythologies onto the stones
Speaker 1: to fit his desire for a sweeping.
Speaker 2: Historical epic that works perfectly for him.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirteen, National Geographic dedicates an entire issue to
Speaker 1: his account, publishing over one hundred of his dramatic photographs.
Speaker 1: The world goes absolutely wild for the story of a
Speaker 1: lost convent in the clouds.
Speaker 2: It was a media sensation.
Speaker 1: Bingham becomes a global celebrity. He eventually leverages that fame
Speaker 1: into a political career as a US senator, and his wild,
Speaker 1: scientifically baseless guesses become the accepted historical truth for the
Speaker 1: next eight decades.
Speaker 2: It's amazing how a good story can overshadow the facts.
Speaker 1: But I really have to push back on Bingham's legacy here.
Speaker 1: Should we be celebrating this guy. He follows a local
Speaker 1: farmer up the hell, takes credit for discovering a site
Speaker 1: where indigenous people are actively farming, and then uses bad
Speaker 1: science to spin a bunch of totally incorrect theories that
Speaker 1: confuse global historians for almost a century.
Speaker 2: It's a very valid criticis.
Speaker 1: It just feels like the archetype of the arrogant parachute
Speaker 1: in explorer.
Speaker 2: That critique is highly prevalent in modern archaeological circles, and
Speaker 2: rightfully so. We must view Bingham through a critical lens. However,
Speaker 2: historical analysis requires holding two competing truths simultaneously.
Speaker 1: What's the other truth?
Speaker 2: We can acknowledge his massive flaws, his ego, and his
Speaker 2: sloppy conclusions, while also recognizing his genuine, irreplaceable contributions like
Speaker 2: what well. Without Bingham's desperate, perhaps selfish drive for fame,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't have bothered to haul heavy photographic equipment up
Speaker 2: that mudslick cliff. He wouldn't have secured the massive institutional
Speaker 2: funding required to clear the aggressive overgrowth.
Speaker 1: That's true, the jungle was literally eating it.
Speaker 2: By marketing the ruins so effectively to the Western world,
Speaker 2: he inadvertently catalyzed its long term protection. If the site
Speaker 2: had remained obscure, it could easily have been lost to
Speaker 2: slow natural erosion or systematic looting by treasure hunters, long
Speaker 2: before rigorous, modern and scientific methodologies could be applied to
Speaker 2: study it properly.
Speaker 1: That's a fair balance. He was an incredibly flawed messenger,
Speaker 1: but he preserved the message exactly. And while Bingham was
Speaker 1: completely wrong about who lived there and why it was built,
Speaker 1: the photographs he took proved one undeniable objective fact. The
Speaker 1: physical reality of Machu Picchu, the how of its construction
Speaker 1: is an absolute engineering miracle.
Speaker 2: The transition from the romantic myths to the hard physical
Speaker 2: reality of the site is where the true genius of
Speaker 2: the Inca reveals itself.
Speaker 1: Let's really visualize the terrain they were dealing with. The
Speaker 1: city isn't built on a flat plateau. It is precariously
Speaker 1: balanced on a narrow saddle shaped.
Speaker 2: Ridge right a very tight space.
Speaker 1: You have the towering peak of Huina Pichu on one
Speaker 1: end and Machipichu Mountain on the other, and flanking the
Speaker 1: city on both sides are those sixteen hundred foot sheer
Speaker 1: drops straight down to the Urubamba River, which wraps around
Speaker 1: the base of the mountain like a horseshoe.
Speaker 2: Just surveying and planning a city of this magnitude in
Speaker 2: that specific topographical bottleneck is a monumental undertaking.
Speaker 1: How big is the site? Exactly?
Speaker 2: The site encompasses over one hundred and seventy distinct buildings,
Speaker 2: thousands of carved stone steps connecting the various levels, sixteen
Speaker 2: complex hydraulic fountains, and more than six hundred agricultural terraces
Speaker 2: built directly into the steep slopes.
Speaker 1: The stone work is what breaks my brain. The masonry
Speaker 1: of the elite buildings is legendary. They used massive blocks
Speaker 1: of white granite. Some of these stones way over twenty
Speaker 1: tons massive, and they fit them together so perfectly with
Speaker 1: such precise, multi angled joints that five hundred years later
Speaker 1: you cannot slide the blade of a pocket knife between them.
Speaker 1: We established they didn't have iron tools to carve them,
Speaker 1: they didn't have wheels or pulleys to lift them, and
Speaker 1: they didn't use mortar to glue them together. How is
Speaker 1: this physically possible?
Speaker 2: Our modern mechanized minds instinctively rejected as impossible. We're so
Speaker 2: reliant on steel and combustion engines that we under estimate
Speaker 2: the sheer power of human ingenuity paired with limits labor.
Speaker 1: So how did they do it?
Speaker 2: The documentary approaches this by breaking down two fundamental mechanical questions.
Speaker 2: How did they cut the granite and how do they
Speaker 2: move it?
Speaker 1: Okay, let's start with cutting.
Speaker 2: The answer to the cutting process is surprisingly primitive yet
Speaker 2: brutally effective. They used rock to carve rock.
Speaker 1: The documentary shows an expert, Ruth Wright, examining the quarry
Speaker 1: on site. She points out a hammerstone and it just
Speaker 1: looks like a smooth, heavy rock you'd find at the
Speaker 1: bottom of a riverbed.
Speaker 2: That is exactly what it is. The inca utilized incredibly
Speaker 2: hard river cobbles, some weighing up to thirty pounds. Wow.
Speaker 2: The mechanism was pure kinetic force. Masons would hold these
Speaker 2: heavy river stones and simply pound away at the raw
Speaker 2: white granite in the local quarry.
Speaker 1: They didn't chisel it.
Speaker 2: No, they didn't slice the stone. They crushed the surface
Speaker 2: away millimeter by agonizing millimeter until they achieved the perfect
Speaker 2: geometric shape. It required immense punishing human labor.
Speaker 1: Imagine the logistical chain required just to haul thousands of
Speaker 1: thirty river rocks all the way up a sixteen hundred
Speaker 1: foot mountain from the river below, specifically to use them
Speaker 1: as disposable hammers to shape the local bedrock.
Speaker 2: It is mind boggling.
Speaker 1: It's like being asked to put together a massive twenty
Speaker 1: ton three D jigsaw puzzle, but first you have to
Speaker 1: carve the puzzle pieces yourself, using only a slightly harder
Speaker 1: rock as your tool. The patience required is staggering, truly staggering.
Speaker 1: But let's look at the second problem. Even if you
Speaker 1: spend months pounding a twenty ton block of granite into
Speaker 1: a perfect trapezoid, how do you move it? Because without wheels,
Speaker 1: without cranes, dragging a twenty ton rock up a staircase
Speaker 1: feels like a physics violation.
Speaker 2: This is where practical experimental archaeology provides clarity. The documentary
Speaker 2: highlights the work of an architect named Vince Lee.
Speaker 1: Oh I loved this part.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety eight, he conducted a field experiment to
Speaker 2: see if he could replicate INCA moving techniques using only
Speaker 2: the materials available to them. He procured a thirteen ton
Speaker 2: block of solid marble.
Speaker 1: Okay, so a huge block, Yes, His.
Speaker 2: Active was to move this massive stone up a wooden
Speaker 2: ramp with a steep twenty five percent grade and then
Speaker 2: crucially turn it ninety degrees to fit it into a
Speaker 2: tight mock wall position.
Speaker 1: And he set a major constraint for himself, right, he
Speaker 1: wanted to do it without ropes.
Speaker 2: Exactly, the logic being that in the very tight confined
Speaker 2: alleys and corners of Machu Picchu, you couldn't fit a
Speaker 2: team of one hundred men pulling on a long rope.
Speaker 2: It just wasn't the physical space.
Speaker 1: So they had to push it.
Speaker 2: The spatial constraints demanded a pushing mechanism, not a pulling one.
Speaker 2: Lee hypothesized that the Inca used a heavy wooden sled
Speaker 2: resting on a lubricated wooden track.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: To generate the massive force required to push thirteen tons
Speaker 2: up a steep incline, he utilized the physics of leverage.
Speaker 2: He had his team use long, sturdy logs as levers,
Speaker 2: wedging them behind the sled.
Speaker 1: I can vividly imagine the energy of this experiment. You
Speaker 1: have a small group of volunteers wedged shoulder to shoulder
Speaker 1: holding these massive log levers. They coordinate their movements yelling
Speaker 1: udo doos chess, and they throw their entire body weight
Speaker 1: against the levers simultaneously. It works, and through the simple
Speaker 1: mechanical advantage of the lever multiplying their force, you hear
Speaker 1: this massive groan of wood grinding on wood, and this
Speaker 1: thirteen ton block of marble actually lurches forward.
Speaker 2: The physics worked flawlessly. By inching the sled forward with levers,
Speaker 2: they successfully moved the thirteen ton block up the twenty
Speaker 2: five percent incline that is insane. Furthermore, they prove they
Speaker 2: could turn the block ninety degrees in a tight space
Speaker 2: by using the levers to pivot the sled. The experiment
Speaker 2: conclusively demonstrated that the construction of these monumental buildings, which
Speaker 2: relied on immense weight and precise fits, was entirely achievable
Speaker 2: using nothing but human sweat, basic leverage, physics, and organized time.
Speaker 1: You know, every time I see a special on ancient monuments,
Speaker 1: whether it's the Pyramids or Stonehenge or Machipicchu, there's always
Speaker 1: that fringe element promoting alien conspiracy theories. The narrative is always, oh,
Speaker 1: primitive humans couldn't possibly have built this. It must have
Speaker 1: been extraterrestrial levitation, but vince Lee's experiment is the ultimate
Speaker 1: debunking of that.
Speaker 2: It absolutely is.
Speaker 1: It proves that simple physics, relentless effort, and human ingenuity
Speaker 1: are infinitely more impressive than any sci fi explanation.
Speaker 2: The alien theories strip ancient indigenous peoples of their agency
Speaker 2: and their brilliance. What the construction of Machu Picu truly
Speaker 2: demonstrates is the human capacity for hyper specific environmental problem solving.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: We often equate a lack of wheels or smelted iron
Speaker 2: with a primitive intellect, but the Inca didn't lack intelligence.
Speaker 2: They faced highly specific geographical constraints.
Speaker 1: Right, wheels wouldn't even work up there.
Speaker 2: Precisely, if you think about the steep, tight vertical staircases
Speaker 2: of a mountain peak, a wheeled cart is not an advantage.
Speaker 2: It is a lethal liability.
Speaker 1: Oh true.
Speaker 2: A court loaded with a ten ton stone on a
Speaker 2: thirty degree mountain slope will simply roll backward and kill
Speaker 2: everyone behind it. The Inca evaluated their environment and innovated
Speaker 2: the exact physical tools levers, sleds, and friction that were
Speaker 2: perfectly adapted to safely navigate their vertical world.
Speaker 1: And that adaptation extends to the masonry itself. The mortarless
Speaker 1: construction wasn't just them showing off their stone carving skills.
Speaker 1: It was a functional necessity for survival.
Speaker 2: The Andes Mountains sit on a highly active seismic zone.
Speaker 2: Earthquakes are a constant destructive reality. If you build a
Speaker 2: massive stone wall and glue it together with rigid mortar,
Speaker 2: when the earth shakes, the mortar cracks, the wall loses
Speaker 2: its structural integrity, and the building collaxis.
Speaker 1: So how did they solve it?
Speaker 2: The INCA engineers solve this by relying on gravity and geometry.
Speaker 2: Because the stones were carved with multi angled joints that
Speaker 2: lock together perfectly without mortar, the walls were.
Speaker 1: Dynamic dynamic walls.
Speaker 2: Yes, during an earthquake, the massive stones could actually shift slightly,
Speaker 2: essentially dancing to absorb the kinetic energy of the tremor,
Speaker 2: and then, guided by their perfectly matched angles in sheer weight,
Speaker 2: they would settle right back into their original stable positions.
Speaker 2: Is a brilliant earthquake resistant design.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they figured out how to move the stones,
Speaker 1: and they figured out how to make them survive an earthquake.
Speaker 1: But building a heavy stone city on the side of
Speaker 1: a cliff and a rainforest presents a completely different terrifying
Speaker 1: problem water, Right, how do you keep the whole thing
Speaker 1: from just sliding down the mountain in a massive mudslide.
Speaker 2: Controlling the flow of water and stabilizing the earth was
Speaker 2: perhaps their greatest engineering triumph.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the rain because the Urubamba cloud forest
Speaker 1: is intensely wet. The documentary notes that Machu Pichu receives
Speaker 1: roughly seventy nine inches of rainfall every single year.
Speaker 2: That is a staggering volume of water.
Speaker 1: Hitting a steep dirt slope Under normal circumstances, that much
Speaker 1: water turns the top soil into a slurry and washes
Speaker 1: the entire hillside away.
Speaker 2: To prevent catastrophic erosion, the Inca engineers had to anchor
Speaker 2: the city to the mountain. They achieved this by building
Speaker 2: over six hundred terraces.
Speaker 1: We often think of terraces simply as flat areas carved
Speaker 1: out for farming, right, yes.
Speaker 2: But as civil engineer Kenneth Wright points out in the documentary,
Speaker 2: these structures acted as structural claws, gripping the mountain side
Speaker 2: and holding the city in place.
Speaker 1: The internal engineering of these terraces is fascinating. They didn't
Speaker 1: just build a stone wall and dump random dirt behind it.
Speaker 1: It was highly stratified, deliberate construction.
Speaker 2: If you were to slice a terrace open, you'd see
Speaker 2: distinct layers, like a cake sort of. They started at
Speaker 2: the bottom with a coarse rock base to provide stability
Speaker 2: and allow bulk water flow. Above that, they laid a
Speaker 2: layer of smaller stones than a layer of gravel, than
Speaker 2: a layer of sand, and finally capping it all off
Speaker 2: three feet of rich top soil.
Speaker 1: And we must emphasize that this nutrient rich top soil
Speaker 1: did not originate on the rocky mountain peak.
Speaker 2: It was imported, Yes it was. Laborers carried it basket
Speaker 2: by heavy basket all the way up from the Eurubamba
Speaker 2: floodplain sixteen hundred feet below.
Speaker 1: The sheer caloric expenditure involved in just transporting the dirt
Speaker 1: to build the terraces is mine boggling.
Speaker 2: It's hard to even calculate.
Speaker 1: I picture the terrace is functioning like a giant mountain
Speaker 1: sized French press. If you just pour a bucket of
Speaker 1: water onto top soil, it turns to mud and washes away.
Speaker 1: But the Inca engineered a massive filtration system. Right when
Speaker 1: those seventy nine inches of torrential rain hit the terraces,
Speaker 1: the kinetic energy of the water is broken by the
Speaker 1: flat surface. The water doesn't sheet off the side and
Speaker 1: cause a mud slide. Instead, the sand acts as a
Speaker 1: fine filter, preventing the top soil from washing down.
Speaker 2: The water percolates gently down through the gravel and the
Speaker 2: coarse rocks, safely draining through the mountain without taking the
Speaker 2: soil with it.
Speaker 1: It is a masterpiece of preventative hydraulic engineering.
Speaker 2: By controlling the internal hydrostatic pressure of the mountain, they
Speaker 2: ensured the city wouldn't wash away. Now, these terraces, while
Speaker 2: structurally vital, did also serve an agricultural purpose.
Speaker 1: Right they grew food on them.
Speaker 2: Soil samples taken in the nineteen nineties and analyzed for
Speaker 2: ancient pollens proved that the Inca grew maize, potatoes, and
Speaker 2: avocados on these twelve acres of terraced land.
Speaker 1: As much as I appreciate the historical conformation of fifteenth
Speaker 1: century avocados, there is a massive mathematical problem here. Kenneth
Speaker 1: Wright crunched the numbers he did. He calculated the agricultural
Speaker 1: yield of those twelve acres and concluded that the terraces
Speaker 1: could only provide enough calories to feed about fifty five
Speaker 1: people on a permanent basis.
Speaker 2: That is the critical logistical bottleneck, because archaeological estimates place
Speaker 2: the permanent or seasonal population of Machu Pichu anywhere from
Speaker 2: three hundred to seven hundred and fifty people.
Speaker 1: So the math absolutely does not add up. If they
Speaker 1: have seven hundred and fifty people and they can only
Speaker 1: grow food for fifty five people, where are the calories
Speaker 1: coming from, the.
Speaker 2: Vast majority of their food had to be imported. It
Speaker 2: was grown on the wide, highly fertile agricultural lands down
Speaker 2: in the River valley and constantly carried up the mountain
Speaker 2: by porters.
Speaker 1: This brings up a massive conceptual hurdle for me. If
Speaker 1: the site is so incredibly remote and difficult to access,
Speaker 1: if you have to carry the very dirt up in
Speaker 1: baskets just to build the ground, and if you can't
Speaker 1: even grow enough food to feed the people living there,
Speaker 1: requiring a constant, labor intensive supply chain hauling corn up
Speaker 1: a mountain wy on.
Speaker 2: Earth build it there, it seems illogical.
Speaker 1: From a practical survivalist standpoint, it is the most inefficient
Speaker 1: location possible.
Speaker 2: If you look at it purely through the lens of
Speaker 2: utilitarian survival, it makes no sense. But Machu Pichu wasn't
Speaker 2: designed for mere survival. It was designed to project divine
Speaker 2: power and commune with the sacred. Well understand the why,
Speaker 2: we have to look at the meticulous city planning. The
Speaker 2: city was strictly divided into distinct sectors, an agricultural sector
Speaker 2: on the lower slopes and an urban sector higher up,
Speaker 2: separated by a large open plaza.
Speaker 1: And the urban sector was split too right.
Speaker 2: The urban sector was further subdivided. The eastern side housed
Speaker 2: functional buildings, workshops, housing for visiting priests and administrators. The
Speaker 2: western side, however, housed the major religious temples and the
Speaker 2: sprawling royal residents, which Hiram Bingham accurately labeled the King's Group.
Speaker 1: The King's Group is characterized by those massive, beautifully finished
Speaker 1: three ton stone lintels resting above the doorways. It screams
Speaker 1: elite status.
Speaker 2: It really does, and the entire layout of this complex,
Speaker 2: segregated city was likely dictated by a single vital physical element, waterflow.
Speaker 2: Water again, Inca hydraulic engineers tapped a natural spring located
Speaker 2: a half mile away on the slopes of Machupchu Mountain.
Speaker 2: They constructed a two four hundred and fifty foot stone
Speaker 2: lined canal to carry that fresh drinking water directly into
Speaker 2: the heart of the city.
Speaker 1: And this is where the physics of gravity fed water
Speaker 1: dictate the architecture. Yeah, the water fed a series of
Speaker 1: sixteen interconnected cascading fountains, but to keep the water flowing
Speaker 1: at a manageable speed so it didn't pool and stagnate,
Speaker 1: but also didn't rush so fast that it eroded the stone,
Speaker 1: the canal had to be built at a very precise,
Speaker 1: consistent slope.
Speaker 2: Exactly because the laws of physics and gravity determined the
Speaker 2: slope of the canal the physical location where that water
Speaker 2: finally enter the city proper. The location of Fountain number
Speaker 2: one was predetermined by nature, not by an architect's whim.
Speaker 1: And in a highly stratified society, who gets first access
Speaker 1: to the absolute cleanest, purest water from Fountain number one?
Speaker 2: The Emperor, of course.
Speaker 1: The royal residents, and the adjacent Temple of the Sun
Speaker 1: were constructed immediately next to Fountain number one. The physics
Speaker 1: of the water slope dictated the location of the royal palace,
Speaker 1: which in turn anchored the layout of the entire western
Speaker 1: urban sector.
Speaker 2: It is an incredible synergy where the environment dictated the
Speaker 2: architecture and the architecture revered the environment.
Speaker 1: Peter Frost, an Andean scholar in the documentary, expands on
Speaker 1: this concept. He explains that the Inca didn't view nature
Speaker 1: as something to be conquered or paved over.
Speaker 2: No, they believe the earth itself was alive and filled
Speaker 2: with sacred powers.
Speaker 1: They focused their worship on.
Speaker 2: Huacas, yes wakas, which could be sacred rocks, mountain peaks, streams,
Speaker 2: or springs. They've built their architecture to integrate with these wakas.
Speaker 1: You see this integration everywhere at the site. The main
Speaker 1: gateway to the city is designed to perfectly frame the
Speaker 1: towering peak of Juena Peachu.
Speaker 2: And the Temple of the Sun is perhaps the most
Speaker 2: profound example. It is a beautifully curved, semi circular tower,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't built on a flat foundation.
Speaker 1: What was it built on?
Speaker 2: It was built directly around and on top of a
Speaker 2: massive naturally occurring boulder, a major huaka. Yeah, the carved
Speaker 2: stone walls literally embrace the raw.
Speaker 1: Bedrock wow and the temple functions as a massive celestial clock.
Speaker 1: It has a specific eastern facing window. On the morning
Speaker 1: of the winter solstice, as the sun rises over the
Speaker 1: distant peaks, the light shines directly through that window and
Speaker 1: casts a beam onto the sacred rock inside.
Speaker 2: And the rock is carved with a specific groove so
Speaker 2: that the solstice sunlight is split perfectly in half. It
Speaker 2: is a precise solar observatory built to track the movements
Speaker 2: of their primary deity.
Speaker 1: At the highest point in the urban sector you find
Speaker 1: another profound huaka, a carved pillar of stone known as
Speaker 1: the into Watana.
Speaker 2: The modern translation of the name means the hitching post
Speaker 2: of the sun.
Speaker 1: That is such an evocative name.
Speaker 2: While we cannot know the exact rituals with certainty because
Speaker 2: the Inca left no written records, anthropologists heavily speculate, based
Speaker 2: on later Spanish accounts.
Speaker 1: What do they think happened there.
Speaker 2: It is believed that during the winter solstice, the shortest
Speaker 2: day of the year, when the sun god seemed to
Speaker 2: be abandoning the earth, priests would perform desperate, elaborate ceremonies
Speaker 2: at the Intuwatana to ritually tie or hitch the sun
Speaker 2: to the stone, pleading with it not to disappear, right,
Speaker 2: pleading with it not to disappear beyond the horizon and
Speaker 2: plunge the world into darkness.
Speaker 1: So we have built a picture of a city that
Speaker 1: is a gravity defying engineering marvel, a masterclass in hydraulic
Speaker 1: and seismic design, a sacred solar observatory, and an elite
Speaker 1: compound that is entirely reliant on an external food supply chain.
Speaker 1: It's a lot to process, which brings us all the
Speaker 1: way back to the core riddle, why build this impractical, beautiful,
Speaker 1: sacred city in the cloud? What was its actual function?
Speaker 2: To answer that, we have to look at how modern
Speaker 2: science finally stepped in to overturn Hiram Bingham's romantic guesses.
Speaker 1: This is where the story shifts from exploration to rigorous
Speaker 1: forensic science.
Speaker 2: For decades after Bingham's nineteen eleven expedition, the true purpose
Speaker 2: of Machu Picchu remained a total mystery. Bingham's theories, the
Speaker 2: convent for virgins, the birthplace of the Inca, the last
Speaker 2: rebel stronghold, ruled the history books simply because no one
Speaker 2: had the data to challenge them.
Speaker 1: But in the nineteen eighties, science began to aggressively correct
Speaker 1: the historical record.
Speaker 2: And this scientific revolution didn't happen on a misty mountain peak.
Speaker 2: It started in a basement in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: Anthropologists Richard Berger and Lucy Salazar decided to re examine
Speaker 1: the original physical artifacts from Bingham's nineteen twelve excavation.
Speaker 2: These were items, pottery, tools, bones that had literally been
Speaker 2: sitting in dusty cardboard boxes in the basement of Yale's
Speaker 2: Peabody Museum of Natural History for eighty years.
Speaker 1: The answers were just waiting in storage.
Speaker 2: They really were. Lucy Salazar focused our analysis on the ceramics. Specifically,
Speaker 2: she identified several distinct jars featuring two vertical handles.
Speaker 1: What's special about those jars?
Speaker 2: Through comparative archaeological analysis, she identified these specific jars as
Speaker 2: belonging to a group called the Colis.
Speaker 1: Who are the Calas and why does their pottery blow
Speaker 1: up Bingham's theories?
Speaker 2: The Culas were a distinct ethnic group from the Lake
Speaker 2: Titikaka region, located hundreds of miles away on the modern
Speaker 2: day Peruvian Bolivian border. They had been conquered and assimilated
Speaker 2: by the expanding Inca Empire.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they were from far away.
Speaker 2: Crucially, the Colas were renowned throughout the Andes for their
Speaker 2: superior stone masonry skills.
Speaker 1: Ah, I see where this is going.
Speaker 2: The presence of their specific domestic pottery at Machu Pichu
Speaker 2: proved that the city wasn't built and inhabited solely by
Speaker 2: a local, isolated population. It was built by highly specialized craftsmen,
Speaker 2: essentially a drafted labor force imported from across the vast empire. Wow.
Speaker 1: The artifacts also forced a massive shift in the timeline,
Speaker 1: didn't they Yes.
Speaker 2: Carbon dating and stylistic analysis of the artifacts indicated that
Speaker 2: major construction at the site began around fourteen fifty, That.
Speaker 1: Is, roughly eighty years before Pizarro and the Spanish arrived
Speaker 1: in Peru.
Speaker 2: Exactly so immediately Bingham's theory that Machi Picchu was a
Speaker 2: desperate rebel fortress built to hide from the Spanish crumbles.
Speaker 2: The timing is completely.
Speaker 1: Wrong, and the rebel stronghold theory was dismantled entirely when
Speaker 1: an American adventurer named Jean Savoy conducted expeditions in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: Right Savoy definitively identified the real ruins of vil Cabamba
Speaker 2: at a much lower, hotter site in the jungle culled
Speaker 2: Espiritu Pampa.
Speaker 1: This is my absolute favorite, deeply ironic twist in the
Speaker 1: entire saga. Bingham actually visited Espiritu Pampa in nineteen eleven.
Speaker 2: He walked right into the real Vilcabamba, but.
Speaker 1: He dismissed it. He saw a few overgrown walls, decided
Speaker 1: it was too hot and the mosquitoes were too bad,
Speaker 1: and assumed it couldn't be the grand capital he was
Speaker 1: looking for.
Speaker 2: He failed to realize there were hundreds of buildings hidden
Speaker 2: nder the jumble canopy.
Speaker 1: He found exactly what he had spent his life searching for,
Speaker 1: and he just walked away from it because it didn't
Speaker 1: match his fantasy.
Speaker 2: It is a tragic comedy of historical exploration. So the
Speaker 2: forensics prove Machupchu is not ville Cabamba and it's not
Speaker 2: a rebel base.
Speaker 1: What about Bingham's most famous, most lucrative theory, the secret
Speaker 1: Convent for the Virgins of the Sun.
Speaker 2: That theory gets completely dismantled by modern osteology. A forensic
Speaker 2: anthropologist named John Verano steps in to reevaluate the skeletons
Speaker 2: that George Eaton had confidently declared mostly female back in
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: And he applies modern tools.
Speaker 2: Rono applies modern forensic tools and decades of comparative data
Speaker 2: that simply did not exist during Eaton's time in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 2: Determining the sex of a skeleton, particularly from a population
Speaker 2: with different physiological baselines than Europeans, was highly speculative.
Speaker 1: So Eton basically guessed wrong.
Speaker 2: Verano analyzed the pelvic structures, the cranial ridges, and the
Speaker 2: long bone robusticity. His results were definitive and undenied. The
Speaker 2: bones belonged to both men and women in roughly equal numbers,
Speaker 2: so much for the convent. Furthermore, analysis of the female
Speaker 2: pelvic bones showed clear scarring and structural changes, indicating that
Speaker 2: many of these women had borne children. The entire premise
Speaker 2: of a chaste, isolated convent was instantly scientifically debunked.
Speaker 1: There were no virgins of the Sun at Machipichu. It
Speaker 1: was a mixed population of laborers, servants, and elites exactly so,
Speaker 1: if the stones and the bones tell us what it wasn't.
Speaker 1: How did we finally learn what it was? The final
Speaker 1: puzzle piece didn't come from a shovel, and it didn't
Speaker 1: come from a lab. It came from a library.
Speaker 2: The definitive answer lay in a sixteenth century legal archive
Speaker 2: in the city of Cusco. A Berkeley anthropologist and historian
Speaker 2: named John Rowe was meticulously analyzing mundane Spanish colonial administrative records.
Speaker 1: While reading through hundreds of pages of litigations, he discovered
Speaker 1: a specific group of legal documents. I love this analogy.
Speaker 1: It's like a historian finding a five hundred year old
Speaker 1: property deed buried in a messy, modern filing cabinet, and
Speaker 1: that single piece of paper completely rewrites world history. It
Speaker 1: really is like that, what did these specific legal documents say?
Speaker 2: There were transcripts of a land dispute lawsuit decades after
Speaker 2: the conquest. The descendants of the Great Emperor Pachacuti were
Speaker 2: suing the Spanish colonial government for the return of private
Speaker 2: lands that they claimed rightfully belonged to the royal lineage.
Speaker 1: Okay at property dispute, and.
Speaker 2: The specific lands they were claiming, meticulously detailed in the
Speaker 2: geographic descriptions of the lawsuit, were around a royal retreat
Speaker 2: called Pichu Pichu.
Speaker 1: The geography matched perfectly.
Speaker 2: It was an exact match. When historians synthesized all this
Speaker 2: new data, the Collis pottery proving an imported workforce, the
Speaker 2: mixed gender bones debunking the convent, the construction data fourteen
Speaker 2: fifty aligning perfectly with Pachacuti's reign, and finally, the written
Speaker 2: legal documents claiming the land for Padjacuti's lineage. It all
Speaker 2: converged on one undeniable factual conclusion, which is Machu Pachi.
Speaker 2: It was a royal estate. It was a lavish country
Speaker 2: palace built specifically for Emperor Patchakuti, a.
Speaker 1: Fifteenth century vacation home for the emperor, And when you
Speaker 1: factor in the climate logic of the region, the location
Speaker 1: suddenly makes perfect practical sense. How so, the imperial capital
Speaker 1: of Cusco six, at an altitude of over eleven thousand
Speaker 1: feet in the Andean winter, it is bitterly cold, freezing
Speaker 1: and harsh. True, Machupchu, even though it sits precariously on
Speaker 1: a mountain peak, is actually down in the cloud forest
Speaker 1: at an altitude of about eight thousand feet. It is
Speaker 1: three thousand feet.
Speaker 2: Lower than the capital so it's warmer.
Speaker 1: It is significantly warmer, more humid, and lush. It was
Speaker 1: a warm weather winter retreat for the emperor and his
Speaker 1: court to escape the freezing andy and cold.
Speaker 2: But this revelation often prompts a philosophical reaction. I want
Speaker 2: to address the question you raised earlier when you asked
Speaker 2: if building this incredibly impractical city on a cliff was
Speaker 2: just foolishness. Now we know it was essentially a vacation home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to ask if if it was just
Speaker 1: a winter vacation home for a wealthy emperor, does that
Speaker 1: lessen the majesty of the site. Is it really just
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century equivalent of a tech billionaire building an
Speaker 1: incredibly expensive private island getaway. Doesn't reducing it to real
Speaker 1: estate sort of ruin the mystical magic of the place.
Speaker 2: Not if you view it accurately through the lens of
Speaker 2: Incan cosmology. We cannot separate the political from the spiritual.
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: As Peter Frost emphasizes, Padjacuti wasn't just a powerful politician
Speaker 2: or a wealthy ceo. He was viewed by his people
Speaker 2: as a literal, living, spiritual deity. He was the direct
Speaker 2: descendant of the Sun god Ah.
Speaker 1: So it's a divine property.
Speaker 2: Therefore, a vacation home for a living god is not
Speaker 2: just a place to relax, It is simultaneously a highly sacred,
Speaker 2: active temple complex. The sheer difficulty of its construction was the.
Speaker 1: Point it was a flex.
Speaker 2: It was a monumental symbol of his absolute power over
Speaker 2: human labor and nature, a private estate that functioned as
Speaker 2: a profound religious center where the emperor could commune with
Speaker 2: the Wakas and the Sun on behalf of the empire.
Speaker 1: That makes profound sense. It's a divine palace, an intersection
Speaker 1: of ultimate political power and religious devotion. But that realization
Speaker 1: leads us to the final and perhaps most haunting question
Speaker 1: of our deep dive.
Speaker 2: What happened to it?
Speaker 1: If this was the beloved, highly sacred royal retreat of
Speaker 1: the most powerful man in the Americas, why on earth
Speaker 1: was it completely abandoned to the jungle just ninety years
Speaker 1: after it was built.
Speaker 2: The timeline of Machu Picchu's active life is remarkably tragically short.
Speaker 2: Construction began around fourteen fifty, and the site was largely
Speaker 2: abandoned by fifteen forty. It functioned for less than a century.
Speaker 1: It is a mere blink of an eye in historical.
Speaker 2: Terms, and what is crucial to understand about its demise
Speaker 2: is the nature of its death. Machu Picchu wasn't violently destroyed.
Speaker 2: The Spanish conquistadors never found it. They never marched up.
Speaker 1: That mountain, so they didn't sack it.
Speaker 2: They didn't melt down as gold artifacts, they didn't smash
Speaker 2: its sacred wakas, and they didn't tear down its walls
Speaker 2: like they did in Cusco.
Speaker 1: So if there was no battle, no fire, no invasion,
Speaker 1: what happened to the people.
Speaker 2: The city died a neglect, driven entirely by the systemic
Speaker 2: collapse of the broader empire. Remember, Machu Pichu was a
Speaker 2: hyper specialized luxury settlement. It was not self.
Speaker 1: Sufficient, right, They couldn't grow their own food.
Speaker 2: When Pizarro conquered Cusco and executed the emperor, the political, administrative,
Speaker 2: and logistical heart of the Inca world simply stopped beating.
Speaker 2: Pachikuti's royal kin group. His extended family known as a panaka,
Speaker 2: who were responsible for living at and maintaining the estate
Speaker 2: after his death, suddenly became completely isolated.
Speaker 1: This goes right back to the food supply chain. We
Speaker 1: established that the seven hundred and fifty residents couldn't survive
Speaker 1: on the meager calories produced by the twelve acres of terraces.
Speaker 1: They were entirely dependent on a massive state sponsored logistical
Speaker 1: network bringing food up from the Urubamba floodplain.
Speaker 2: Exactly when the central government in Cusco fell, that massive
Speaker 2: supply chain broke instantly, and without food, without the or
Speaker 2: organizational might and the threat of force from the capital
Speaker 2: to maintain the flow of resources and labor, residents of
Speaker 2: Machu Picchu simply could not sustain themselves on that mountaintop.
Speaker 2: They began to starve. That is so dark they were
Speaker 2: forced to abandon the site justifind food. The specialized Coos
Speaker 2: craftsmen who had been imported to maintain the stonework likely
Speaker 2: packed up their tools and began the long, dangerous walk
Speaker 2: back to their home regions in the south, and as.
Speaker 1: They dispersed, the true apocalyptic horrors of the conquest set
Speaker 1: in across the Andes. The brutal warfare with the Spanish,
Speaker 1: the collapse of the agricultural systems leading to famine, and
Speaker 1: most devastatingly, the unchecked small talks epidemics.
Speaker 2: The combined forces wiped out over three hundred thousand Incas
Speaker 2: in a terrifyingly short period. The sheer scale of death
Speaker 2: was catastrophic, and.
Speaker 1: That massive death toll had a secondary effect right It
Speaker 1: erased the institutional memory of the empire.
Speaker 2: It did. Machu Picchu was not a public city. It
Speaker 2: was a private, highly exclusive, restricted royal estate. Very few
Speaker 2: commeons knew where it was, and only the highest privileged
Speaker 2: elites truly understood its significance.
Speaker 1: And they were the ones dying of the diseases.
Speaker 2: When those elites were systematically wiped out by war and plague,
Speaker 2: the memory of Patchikuti's grand estate died with them.
Speaker 1: It was literally erased from human memory within a generation.
Speaker 1: And once the humans left, nature immediately went on the offensive.
Speaker 2: The Urubamba cloud forest is intensely aggressive. Vegetation grows at
Speaker 2: an astonishing rate in that wet, tropical mountain environment.
Speaker 1: How fast are we talking.
Speaker 2: Within a few short years of the final caretaker leaving,
Speaker 2: the carefully manicured terraces would have been overrun with brush.
Speaker 2: Within a few decades, massive trees would have rooted in
Speaker 2: the plazas, their branches obscuring the granite walls, the moss
Speaker 2: covering the fine masonry.
Speaker 1: The jungle basically swallowed the city hull, rendering it completely
Speaker 1: invisible from the valley below.
Speaker 2: Just completely erased it from the map.
Speaker 1: It is a chilling realization. A place that required millions
Speaker 1: of hours of intense human life labor to construct, a
Speaker 1: place that housed a living god and tracked the movements
Speaker 1: of the cosmos, was just forgotten. It vanished.
Speaker 2: It really makes you think.
Speaker 1: It forces you to wonder about the fragility of our
Speaker 1: own modern systems. Could something like that happen today? Could
Speaker 1: a massive piece of our infrastructure, a whole city, just
Speaker 1: vanish into the landscape if the global supply chain suddenly broke.
Speaker 2: It is a stark reminder of how deeply vulnerable, complex,
Speaker 2: hyper specialized societies truly are when their underlying logistical networks fail.
Speaker 2: But in the specific case of Machu Picchu, there is
Speaker 2: a profound, beautiful irony. What's that the aggressive cloud forest
Speaker 2: that swallowed the city and erased it from memory was
Speaker 2: actually its ultimate savior.
Speaker 1: Wow? Think about that. The jungle preserved it because if
Speaker 1: the Spanish had known about it, if they had found
Speaker 1: it in fifteen forty it wouldn't exist for us to
Speaker 1: marvel at today.
Speaker 2: There is no question if the conquistadors had marched up
Speaker 2: that mountain path, Marchu Pichu would likely look like much
Speaker 2: of modern Gustco today. Tinam part It's perfect mortarless granite stone,
Speaker 2: torn down, a repurposed to build colonial Spanish churches. Its
Speaker 2: sacred wakas smashed to gravel. Its intricate terrace is destroyed.
Speaker 2: Its silent abandonment, it's descended to the protective of scuring
Speaker 2: embrace of the jungle was the only reason it survived
Speaker 2: intact for four centuries.
Speaker 1: And the irony continues even today. The documentary points out
Speaker 1: that right now, the modern caretakers and archaeologists at Machi
Speaker 1: Picchu have to wage a constant, daily, exhausting war against
Speaker 1: that very same vegetation just to keep the ruins visible.
Speaker 2: They are constantly cutting back the jungle for the three
Speaker 2: hundred thousand tourists who visit every year.
Speaker 1: We are actively fighting the very force of nature that
Speaker 1: saved the city, just so we can look at it.
Speaker 2: It is a profound daily testament to how aggressively and
Speaker 2: swiftly nature will reclaim human achievements the exact moment we
Speaker 2: stop actively.
Speaker 1: Maintaining them, which brings us to the end of our
Speaker 1: incredible journey. Today, let's summarize the ground we've covered. We
Speaker 1: started in the blood and tragedy of a brutal conquest
Speaker 1: that toppled a massive empire.
Speaker 2: We followed a complex, fame hungry Yale explorer as he
Speaker 2: stumbled up a muddy mountain path the claim of discovery
Speaker 2: that wasn't really his.
Speaker 1: We marveled at the sheer, gravity defying genius of ancient
Speaker 1: engineers and stonemasons who manipulated physics, water, and seismic energy
Speaker 1: without the use of iron or wheels.
Speaker 2: And finally we saw how modern forensic scientists and historians
Speaker 2: pieced together the scattered clues, the pots, the bones, the
Speaker 2: old colonial lawsuits to finally give Emperor Pachacuti his beloved
Speaker 2: estate back.
Speaker 1: It is a narrative that constantly forces us to reevaluate
Speaker 1: our assumptions, to question the established romantic myths, and to
Speaker 1: demand rigorous proof of what we think we know about
Speaker 1: the past.
Speaker 2: It's why history is a living discipline.
Speaker 1: And I want to connect this directly back to you
Speaker 1: listening to this deep dive right now. The story of
Speaker 1: Machu Picchu challenges all of us to think deeply about
Speaker 1: the physical legacy we leave behind when we are gone.
Speaker 1: That's a great point that Inca left absolutely no written record.
Speaker 1: They had no books, no scrolls, no carved languages to
Speaker 1: tell us their names or their dreams. But their profound
Speaker 1: scientific understanding of geology, their masterful manipulation of water, and
Speaker 1: their brilliant earthquake resistant architecture speaks louder than words ever
Speaker 1: could across five centuries. Their stones tell their story.
Speaker 2: They engineered a dialogue with the Earth itself, a physical
Speaker 2: legacy that ultimately outlasted the empire that built it.
Speaker 1: They really did. And before we sign off, I want
Speaker 1: to leave you with one final provocative thought to mullover
Speaker 1: as you go about your day. We just spent an
Speaker 1: hour learning that the true identity of one of the greatest,
Speaker 1: most mysterious archaeological wonders on Earth wasn't unlocked by some
Speaker 1: swashbuckling adventurer dodging boulders in a jungle temple.
Speaker 2: No it wasn't.
Speaker 1: The truth was unlocked by a scientist analyzing forgotten dusty
Speaker 1: pots in a Yale basement. And by a historian dusting
Speaker 1: off a boring sixteenth century property lawsuit in a library archive.
Speaker 1: The truth wasn't buried in the dirt, It was high
Speaker 1: in plain sight, in cardboard boxes and filing cabinets.
Speaker 2: Is a potent reminder that the archives hold just as
Speaker 2: many undiscovered frontiers as the jungles exactly.
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder what other incredible, world changing lost
Speaker 1: cities or massive paradigm shifting historical truths are currently sitting
Speaker 1: quietly in a cardboard box in a museum storage room
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: What mysteries are just waiting for the right forensic tool
Speaker 2: or the right curious mind to finally ask the right question.
Speaker 2: It is a.
Speaker 1: Deeply fascinating question to ponder. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us on this deep dive. Keep asking questions, keep
Speaker 1: looking closely at the world around you, and we will
Speaker 1: catch you next time.