Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) (41 page)

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s a result of the discovery of the Inca road leading from Puquiura to the vicinity of Machu Picchu and the evidence in the burial caves that the Lost City was last occupied by women, besides the unmistakable testimony that here was a Temple of the Sun and a great Sanctuary, we may be sure that its name in the days of the Spanish Conquest was Vilcapampa and that young Tupac Amaru, last of the Inca Emperors, had lived here. It is pleasant to think that he had spent most of his life in this beautiful city of white granite, which ‘in the sublimity of its surroundings, the marvel of its site, the character, and the mystery of its construction’ surpassed anything his cruel conquerors ever saw or found. The secret was so well kept that the Chosen Women lived and died there in peace, unmolested by the Spanish conquerors. For three hundred years the city was unknown.

Our identification of what the city was in its last years tells us little or nothing of its origin. While many of the houses were doubtless built by Manco and Titu Cusi to accommodate the Chosen Women and the attendants of the Sanctuary, the finer palaces and the temples were far too elaborate to have been constructed at that time. It was obviously a great Sanctuary long before they arrived. The finest buildings ante-dated the last years of the Inca Empire by centuries. The question naturally arises: who built them and when?

According to the late Philip Ainsworth Means, the Inca
Pachacutec who lived in the first half of the fifteenth century, from about 1400 to 1448, was a ‘very great man’. This was also the opinion of that distinguished English authority Sir Clements Markham, who styles Pachacutec ‘the greatest man that the Aboriginal Race of America has produced’. He had the advantage of inheriting a great empire which contained about 155,000 square miles of territory, approximately equal to the north-eastern States from Virginia to Maine. It had been thoroughly organized and the great mass of the people were absolutely subject to the wishes of the hierarchy of tribal and imperial officials. In his kingdom were many skilful generals and wise counsellors, so that he was able to carry on several difficult conquests, one of the earlier of which took him down the Urubamba valley.

Before Pachacutec’s time the Incas’ frontier in that direction had been at Ollantaytambo, but he, doubtless having in mind those incursions of savages from the forest-country that had given rise to the Chanca Confederacy and to the formidable struggle with it, determined to push his power farther down the stream. Means says: ‘He did so by the usual Inca methods, combining guile and diplomacy with military aggression! The citadel of Machu Picchu rises in the heart of this region, and it is highly probable that the Inca Pachacutec gave orders for its construction, intending it to be thenceforward an eastern bulwark of his empire.’

Although the empire inherited by this Inca was at that time large, Cuzco, his capital, was still only 50 miles from the jungle where lived warlike savages who were always ready to attack whoever ventured to penetrate the great forests of the upper Amazon. The construction of the Citadel of Machu Picchu at a point where its location could command the narrow valley through which the savages might attempt to make raids against the highly civilized Incas would have been a wise proceeding.

At the same time I cannot help feeling that a mountain fortress like the one first explored at Choqquequirau would have been entirely adequate for this purpose. The savage Indians had only crude weapons, blow-guns, bows and arrows. They did
not need great walls and a mighty citadel to hold them at bay. It seems most unlikely to me that the beautiful granite temples of Machu Picchu were built as an outlying fortress against the tribes of the Amazon. If my theory is correct then what is the significance of this carefully constructed Sanctuary here in the most inaccessible part of the Andes?

As has already been said in the account of the battle of La Raya, Montesinos states that after the death in battle of the last of the great Amautas, or kings, who ruled Peru for more than sixty generations, his faithful followers retired to the mountains, going to Tampu-tocco, which was ‘a healthy place’ where they hid the body of Pachacuti VI, their king, in a cave and where they were joined by refugees fleeing from the general chaos and disorder.

The Spaniards who asked about Tampu-tocco got the impression that it was at or near Paccari-tampu, a small place 8 or 10 miles south of Cuzco, in the vicinity of which there are the ruins of a small Inca town. Near it is a little hill consisting of several large rocks. The surface of one is carved into platforms and in one place into two sleeping pumas, a very unusual pattern, not really Inca. Beneath it are caves said to have been used by Spanish refugees, who may have carved the pumas.

There is enough about the characteristics of Paccari-tampu to lend colour to the story frequently told to the early Spaniards that this was Tampu-tocco. Yet the surrounding region is not hard to reach and is not at all inaccessible. There are no precipices. There are no natural defences against an invading force large and strong enough to capture the neighbouring valley of Cuzco. A few men might have hidden in the caves of Paccari-tampu but it was not a place where an independent kingdom might readily have been established by a disorganized handful of the followers and chief priests of Pachacuti VI. Furthermore there are no windows in the architecture which would justify the name of Tampu-tocco, which means a
tambo
, or place of temporary abode, characterized by windows.

On 21 January 1572, a legal inquiry was made by the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo. Fifteen Indians who were descended from those who used to live near the important salt terraces round
Cuzco, on being questioned, agreed that they had heard their fathers and grandfathers repeat the tradition that the first Inca, Manco Capac, came from Tampu-tocco when he arrived to take their lands away from their ancestors. They did
not
say that the first Inca came from Paccari-tampu, which, it seems to me, would have been a most natural thing for them to have said if it were true. In addition to this testimony, there is still the older testimony of some Indians born before the arrival of Pizarro, who in 1570 were examined at a legal investigation made in Jauja. The oldest witness, ninety-five years of age, on being sworn, said that Manco Capac was lord of the town where he was born and had conquered Cuzco but that he had never heard what town it was that Manco came from. The Indian chief who followed him was ninety-four years old and also denied that he knew where Manco Capac was born. Another chief, aged ninety-two, testified that Manco Capac came out of a cave called Tocco and that he was lord of the town near the cave. Not one of the witnesses stated that Manco Capac came from Paccari-tampu, although it is difficult to imagine why they should not have done so if, as the Spaniards believed, this was the original Tampu-tocco.

At all events, there is an interesting cave at Paccari-tampu and the chroniclers, not one of whom knew of the important ruins at Machu Picchu, were willing enough to assume that this was the place where the first Inca was born and from which he came to conquer Cuzco. Yet it seems hardly possible that the old Indians should have forgotten entirely where Tampu-tocco was. Their reticence in regard to it must be attributed, it seems to me, to the fact of its having been successfully kept secret by reason of its location in a remote place whither the followers of Pachacuti VI fled with his body after the overthrow of the old régime, and in the same remote fastness of the Andes to which the young Inca Manco II fled from Cuzco in the days of Pizarro.

Certainly Machu Picchu answers the description in Montesinos of Tampu-tocco. The splendid natural defences of the Grand Canyon of the Urubamba made it an ideal refuge for the descendants of the Amautas during the five or six hundred years
of lawlessness and confusion which succeeded the barbarian invasions from the plains to the east and south. The scarcity of violent earthquakes, and also the healthfulness, both marked characteristics of Tampu-tocco, are met at Machu Picchu.

Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua’s story of the construction of a memorial wall with three windows at the place of Manco Capac’s birth points clearly to Machu Picchu. Although none of the other ancient chronicles gives the story of the first Inca ordering a memorial wall to be built at the place of his birth, they nearly all tell of his having come from a place called Tampu-tocco, ‘a country place remarkable for its windows’. To be sure, the only place assigned by them as the location of Tampu-tocco is Paccari-tampu, which, as has been said, is about 8 or 10 miles south-west of Cuzco and has some ruins; but careful examination shows that there were no windows in the buildings of Paccari-tampu and nothing to justify its having such a name as Tampu-tocco. The climate of Paccari-tampu – it is part of the high plateau, elevation 12,000 feet – is too severe to invite or encourage the use of windows. The temperature in the shade or inside an unheated cabin is never far from freezing. On the other hand, to people accustomed to the climatic conditions of Cuzco, the climate of Machu Picchu seemed mild, and consequently the use of windows was agreeable. Many of the houses at Machu Picchu have windows. In fact, since there are far more windows here than in any other ruin it would be natural to refer to it as a country place remarkable for its windows. Obviously, from the very elaborate character of its structure, it was a highly venerated place, a veritable Holy City containing temples enough for the sun, the moon, the thunder and all the Inca Pantheon; no conquistador was allowed to see it or even hear about it when they were questioning the wisest men in Cuzco.

Accordingly, I am convinced that the name of the older part of Machu Picchu was Tampu-tocco, that here Pachacuti VI was buried, and that here was the capital of the little kingdom where, during the centuries – possibly eight or ten – between the Amautas and the Incas, there were kept alive the wisdom, skill, and best traditions of the ancient folk who had developed the
civilization of Peru, using agricultural terraces as its base. It seems to me quite probable that Manco Capac, after he had established himself as Inca in Cuzco, should have built a fine temple to the honour of his ancestors. Ancestor worship was common among the Incas and nothing would have been more reasonable than the construction of the Temple of the Three Windows in their honour.

Furthermore, there is so little arable land capable of being developed within a radius of 10 or 15 miles of Machu Picchu that it would have been perfectly natural for the chiefs of this region to have sought to conquer the great stretches of arable land near Cuzco. When they once got control of Cuzco and the rich valleys in its vicinity, convenience, superstition, and regard for the great Amautas, from whom they traced their descent, would have led them to establish themselves once more at Cuzco. There was no longer any necessity for them to maintain Tampu-tocco. Consequently Machu Picchu may have been practically deserted for three hundred years while the Inca Empire flourished and grew until it covered a large part of South America. In the meantime Tampu-tocco – ‘out of sight, out of mind’, a sacred place whose whereabouts was undoubtedly known to the priests and those who preserved the most sacred secrets of the Incas – was forgotten by the common people. On the other hand it may have been kept in good condition as one of the great Temples of the Sun where the Chosen Women were educated for the service of the Incas.

If my theory of Machu Picchu as Tampu-tocco is correct, it may be that the principal sanctuary in Cuzco, now the Dominican Monastery but known to the conquistadors as the Temple of the Sun, was built during the reign of the Incas as an echo, on a large scale, of the semicircular temple at Machu Picchu. If this latter temple was constructed above the cave where tradition says Pachacuti VI, last of the Amautas, was buried, it would naturally have been the most revered spot at Machu Picchu. Certainly the stonework of its surroundings has rarely been equalled and never surpassed in beauty and strength. When the Incas left Tampu-tocco, therefore, and took up their residence
in Cuzco, nothing would have been more likely than for them to have built their first temple in a manner resembling the finest temple at Tampu-tocco. Probably the semicircular character of the Machu Picchu temple was caused by accident rather than by design, and was due to the natural curve of the great rock beneath which lay the mausoleum of Pachacuti VI and his immediate family. This particular architectural feature in the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco was not required by the nature of the gravel bank on which it rests, in common with all the other parts of the city. Moreover, a wall with a flattened curve or ‘parabolic enclosure wall’ is not characteristic of ancient Peruvian structures and occurs very rarely. It is extremely difficult to construct and requires the highest type of artistic stone-cutting. What more likely, then, than that the builders of the Cuzco temple had the semicircular temple of Machu Picchu in mind? The occurrence in both structures of openings to which golden images of the sun could be attached, and their absence elsewhere, would also seem to lend colour to this theory and helps to strengthen my belief that Machu Picchu was Tampu-tocco, and that the Inca rulers of Cuzco not only constructed at Machu Picchu a ceremonial wall with three windows to commemorate and honour the home of their ancestors, but built in Cuzco a semicircular Temple of the Sun resembling the beautiful one in their ancient Sanctuary.

No one realizes better than the present writer how fantastic this last suggestion will seem to those archaeologists who have been unwilling to follow my reasoning in regard to Tampu-tocco as the first name of the sanctuary on the slopes of Machu Picchu Mountain. To those who are willing to accept the story of the Spanish chroniclers that the original home of the Incas was the nearby village of Paccari-tampu, the origin of the city on the slopes of Machu Picchu Mountain is usually that put forth by the late Philip Ainsworth Means. Since the architecture of Machu Picchu contains examples of all kinds of structures found in the central Andes, it is barely possible that the city does not go farther back than the early fifteenth century, as Means contends. His theory undoubtedly meets with the approval of
those archaeologists who choose to shorten and limit the period of Inca civilization. Perhaps they are right in the length of time which saw anyone called an Inca occupying the cities of the Peruvian Highlands. But when one considers the number of centuries which were required to domesticate the llamas and alpacas as well as to discover, select, and domesticate the scores of plants used for food and medicine, the very long time consumed in the evolution of their agriculture, engineering, masonry, and metallurgy, and the advanced state of their textiles and pottery, it seems unwise to contend that Inca civilization was less ancient than that of the Mayas in Central America. It seems to me highly probable that the story of Machu Picchu covers many, many centuries.