Notas del episodio
A 2021 study of old maps and documents suggests the site was originally called Huayna Picchu or just Picchu. Hiram Bingham III, leading the Yale Peruvian Expedition in search of Vilcabamba or Vitcos, reached it on July 24, 1911, guided by farmer and innkeeper Melchor Arteaga. At the top he found two Quechua families farming the terraces, and an 11-year-old boy named Pablito showed him around. On the Temple of the Three Windows was a charcoal signature, A. Lizarraga 1902, left by AgustÃn Lizárraga, which Bingham recorded privately. In a 1922 letter he compared himself to Columbus, and in 1952 he published Lost City of the Incas. The emperor Pachacuti ordered the citadel built around 1420 as a royal retreat served by about 750 residents.
Isotope and genome studies of skeletons show those residents came from across the empire, from the coast, the Ecuadorian highlands, and the Amazon, with less wear than typical laborers. Builders placed the site on fault lines that supplied pre-fractured granite for mortarless ashlar walls, and about 12 acres of terraces handled 1,800 millimeters of yearly rain with layered stone, gravel, sand, and topsoil. The site was occupied from about 1420 to 1530, likely emptied by smallpox. Bingham's team removed thousands of artifacts in 1912, 1914, and 1915 on an 18-month loan that became a century-long dispute with Yale, pressed by figures such as Eliane Karp, until the last pieces returned to Cusco's Casa Concha Museum in 2012. It now draws over 1.5 million visitors a year.
- Teeth that record childhood water and food, and bones that record where a person lived later
- Llamas and alpacas brought down from 4,000 meters for meat and pelts, with dogs buried beside people
- The Intihuatana stone aligned with sacred peaks rather than serving as a simple sundial
- Sunlight entering the Intimachay cave near the December solstice for Capac Raymi initiations
- Bismuth bronze knives that show advanced Inca metallurgy, among the artifacts taken to Yale