In 2019, I walked the Inca trail from Ollantaytambo to Machu Picchu in four days. Due to altitude sickness, by the time I arrived in Machu Picchu, I was so dehydrated, I was whisked through to the emergency gate and brought to a hotel in Aguas Calientes to rest. I have a better memory of the hot springs in town than I do of the world historic site. In a sense, this time was my first time at Machu Picchu.
I have mixed feelings about Machu Picchu. On the one hand, I had the opportunity to walk through a world-heritage site with few tourists, which allowed for wide, clear vistas. On the other hand, due to pandemic restrictions, we had to walk single-file through the site, with no rest stops, and with our masks firmly placed on our nose and mouth despite the heat and altitude. It was an educational but not particularly pleasant walk. Certainly, I was glad to have done all my hiking before coming to Peru to withstand the 3 hours of climbing and hiking.
This said, it is an architectural wonder to behold. It is an entire town perched in the mountains and impeccably restored (the guards are stern but with reason). The foundations are set on cliff sides, and rise into temples, common buildings, homes and agricultural plots. Two aspects in particular caught my attention. One was the temple of the Condor whose architecture is a real feat: notice below how the wings expand from either side of the head, the flat triangular stone on the floor. The entire structure looks like it's about to take flight!
The other feature was a series of plots, exposed to various temperatures and altitudes to experiment with crop development. I live in a city that has the only urban farm in the world, designed specifically for research... a very similar concept to the one that the Inca built in Machu Picchu! I always find it fascinating when ideas travel in unexpected ways.
Who were the Inca anyway?
I asked myself this question as our guide affirmed that the Inca had built Machu Picchu long ago in the 15th century and that the culture was so old that it predated the Romans. I probably misunderstood because it made no sense. Nor did it make any sense when we toured the Marriott's El Convento in Cusco, built on three civilizations: the Killke, the Inca and the Spanish. Answering a question regarding the fate of the Killke, the guide assured us that the Inca had peacefully annexed the Killke. This sounded like the victor's history to me. So I did some digging.
The Killke appeared in Cusco as early as 900 AD. They had advanced skills and built a huge fortress in a style very reminiscent (albeit less sophisticated) of Machu Picchu on a hilltop in Cusco. They worshipped the Frog, the Serpent, the Jaguar and the Eagle; the Inca kept all of these totems except the frog. The Quetchua language, spoken by both the Inca and the Killke is even older than that. There are traces of it in the Wari and Chincha cultures (500 AD). Indeed Pre-Colombian culture can be dated as far back as
1500 BCE in Peru with crops such as cotton and avocado appearing as early as 7000 BCE. These civilizations would have been the equivalent to the Egyptian, Aegean and Nubian civilizations which were flourishing on the other side of the Atlantic. Development through the centuries lead to a succession of tribes and societies, creating a long tradition of textiles, pottery, agriculture, architecture and more.
Maybe to simplify for tourists, Peruvians only mention the Inca as representative of the pre-Spanish era. Personally, I love it that Peru has such an incredibly rich history. It gives it substance, endurance, and a deep beauty of its own where successive layers transmit elements of knowledge, technologies and traditions. It allows for a complexity that we erase by oversimplifying and in doing so we lose an understanding of who we are and where we come from. As I write this, Canada is suffering from this terribly: for decades it told a partial history written by its victor and specifically hid its treatment of Indigenous communities, and today it is haunted by its actions. In Peru, the Inca deserve to praised for their contributions, just as the Killke, the Wari and the Chincha. In Canada, the First Nations deserve the same.
