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Dinesh club

Posted: 10 Aug 2022

Taken: 10 Aug 2022

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Incas •
Author •
Gordon McEwan •
Second excerpt •
Civilization •
Niall Ferguson •

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
One other type of settlement also deserves mention. These are the royal estates and the estates of the nobility that were scattered throughout the country. The most famous of these is the ty nor lost. Instead it was a royal retreat for the Inca Pachacuti. These estates were designed to be relatively self-sufficient and were staffed by ‘yanacona’ so that their owners did not have to repay agricultural labor with reciprocity. Not only did they provide a place of relaxation, but they also generated agricultural and other types of wealth. It was not uncommon for an Inca ruler to own numerous estates, the favored locations being the so-called Sacred Valley of the Urubamba and other places near Cuzco. ~ Page 110

Terracing served number of functions. It created new lands for agriculture, stablized step slopes and prevented erosion, and provided level ground on which to build. The Incas were not content, however, to simply make utilitarian terraces. Many of them most impressive terraced sites are works of land-scape architecture famous throughout the world. Sites such as royal estates of Machu Pichu, Chinchero, Pisac, and Ollantaytambo were all built on terraces, some of which seem to cling to impossibly steep hill sides. Cuzco itself and almost all major highland sites were heavily terraced, and some sites such as Zmarupata in the valley of Cuzco and Inti Pata near Machin Pichu consisted solely on elaborate terrace works. ~ Page 123

Incas
20 months ago. Edited 20 months ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Machu Pichu

Among the Spaniards was a young captain from Segovia named Jeronimo de Aliaga. To de Aliaga, Peru was as weird as it was wonderful. He marveled at the scale and sophistication of Inca architecture, not least the huge northern wall of the Sacsayhuaman fortress at their capital, Cuzco, with its perfectly interlocking 200-ton stones. Much of what the Spaniards later built at Cuzco they erected on top of Inca walls and foundations, recognizing their extraordinary, earthquake-resistant quality. Today we can get a better sense of the pre-Conquest grandeur of the Inca achievement at Machu Picchu – the legendary ‘lost city of the Incas’, which seems to float amid the clouds of the Andes, a city the Spaniards never found and so never despoiled and rebuilt. High above the Urubamba River, Machu Picchu was probably constructed in the mid-fifteenth century. Despite its seemingly impractical location, clinging to steep mountain sides more than 8,000 feet above sea-level, it was clearly a self-sufficient settlement, with running spring water and terrace for cultivation of crops and gazing of livestock. Wholly unknown to the Western world until 1911, when it was found by the American academic and explorer Hiram Bingham, it serves as a warning that no civilization no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible. We still do not know what purpose the city served. Nor do we know exactly when and why the Incas abandoned it. One strong possibility is that epidemic disease arrived there from Hispaniola (the island which is today divided between the Dominican Republic and Haiti) ahead of the conquistadors, killing the population and leaving Machu Picchu a ghost town. ~ Page 101 (From "Civilization" ~ Niall Ferguson)
20 months ago. Edited 20 months ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Civilization
20 months ago.

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