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Machu Picchu

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  Location: Peru (in the Andes Mountains) (Continent of South America)
• Built by: The Inca (a native civilization to South America)
• Date built: Built around 1420 (about 600 years ago)
• How long to build: It took about 30 years to build
• Size: About 1,740 ft (530 m) long by 660 ft (200 m) wide
• Weight: Built with stones that weighed up to 50 lbs-55 tons (23 kg-45 m tons)
• Archeologists believed it had been a royal estate or a sacred religious site for the Inca leaders. There was a population of about 1,000 people.
• It has about 180 buildings: Royal houses, baths, worker’s houses, temples, and sanctuaries.
• The city was built of stone without the help of wheels or iron tools, and there is no mortar (something to stick the stones together) between them because of how well they fit together.
• The buildings were also built to withstand earthquakes; two fault lines meet here. They did this knowing there were fault lines because it would have a good water supply from when it rained or melted snow, run down the sides of the mountain, and have easy access to building materials because the stones would be loose from earlier earthquakes.
• Machu Picchu was an astronomical observatory where they kept track of the moon, stars, and sun. They depended on this knowledge to understand the changing seasons, when to plant and harvest their crops, and for religious ceremonies.
• Spanish invaders wiped out most of the Inca’s cities in the 16th century, but since Machu Picchu was well hidden in the mountains, they did not find it.
• There are a lot of different animals also live on the mountain, like the Spectacled bear (the only bear in South America), alpacas, llamas, Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, pumas, Andean condor, and many different kinds of insects, mammals, and reptiles, birds.
• There are only two ways to get there today: train (2-4 hours travel depending on where you get on) or foot (4-day hike).