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At the Other End of the Suns Path:
A New Interpretation of Machu Picchu
Giulio Magli
Dipartimento di Matematica Politecnico di Milano P.le Leonardo da Vinci 32 20133 Milano ITALY
Giulio.Magli@polimi.it
Keywords: Machu Picchu, Inca architecture, Inca astronomy
1 Introduction
This paper analyzes one of the most beautiful and enigmatic achievements ever accomplished anywhere in the world by architecture. It is an ancient Andean town whose original name is unknown; it is famous with the name Machu Picchu. Although it may seem strange at a first glance for such a renowned archaeological site, the reason why the town was built, the date at which it was built, the ruler who ordered its construction, the reason why it was abandoned, in a word, the interpretation of this place, are unknown. For reasons we do not know, Machu Picchu was abandoned and forgotten; it was brought again to the attention of the world only with the famous expedition of Hiram Bingham in 1911 (see [Bingham 1952] or [Salazar-Burger 2004] for an up-to-date account). Immediately after its re-discovery the site was enveloped by a halo of mystery. Bingham himself thought it to be the lost capital of the last Inca reign, Vilcabamba, an interpretation that we know to be untenable today; various errors and misunderstandings further contributed to the confusion, such as, for instance, an exaggeratedly high estimate of the percentage of female bones found in the burials, which led to the hypothesis that Machu Picchu may have been a sanctuary inhabited by Incas Virgins of the Sun. Today, this as well as other, even more unsound theories have been canceled by modern archaeological research (for instance, the true excess of female with respect to male bones is around 1.46 to 1). Modern research also helped, for instance, to clarify the day-to-day life of the inhabitants (see [Burger 2004] and references therein). However, contemporary with such important developments, nothing has really come out that helps to explain why and when the Incas built the town (or at least, this is the opinion of the present author, to be substantiated in what follows).
Living without interpretative schemes is extremely difficult in any science (e.g., physics) and archaeology is no exception. Therefore, archaeologists have adopted a scheme, a sort...