Hiking Huayna Picchu, Machu Picchu, Peru
I have seen many pictures of Machu Picchu, Peru
(http://www.encounterstravel.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/day-10-13-peru-machu-picchu.jpg)
But never until today did I realize the enormity of what daily life was like there and what they would have had to do to carry those rocks... THIS picture really is worth a thousand words...
(https://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/q71/1378272_10151741714131985_356317522_n.jpg)
The perspective on that photo makes it look steeper, it doesn't looks worse than the common stairs on the castle walls I have seen (and climbed) here in Portugal. :)
Why didn't they just use stone from the cliffs near the buildings?
In Zs top photo there are two peaks in the rear left, with a small valley in between. Imagine if the city in front at one time had 2 peaks just like that and all they did was to bust it up and move rocks down hill and never up. it would have taken a long time to do by hand but very possible. I saw one mountain here, about as large as the one on the right, taken down in about 3 months with modern equipment. Down goes very fast with TNT and a lot of ants. [workers]
Deuem
Not having studied about this, Pim deuem could be on the right track. In Pim and deuem's line of thinking, is there any reason not to think that they may have simply used the stone chipped away from a "once existing" mountain top it sits upon, to do their building??
Moving the stone around, as Z said, would have been work enough, but, getting/keeping enough food up there may have been a greater chore.
It interesting to note that the people in the pic are STICKING VERY CLOSE TO THE INSIDE WALL OF THE STAIRWAY!! With this perspective, I know that there is no way I could get CLOSE ENOUGH to that "inside wall"!! :))
Quote from: rdunk on October 12, 2013, 10:10:45 PM
Moving the stone around, as Z said, would have been work enough, but, getting/keeping enough food up there may have been a greater chore.
Around here they have a lot of farms that are on hillsides like this. Yea they have to back pack the food up and down the mountain. That's not that bad, most food is light. the real problem comes when the rainfall can no longer support the plants.
If there is no natural stream of water up there then the water for the plants has to be lugged up the mountain side. The bigger the farm, the more the lugging. You can see people lugging water from sun up to sun set just for the plants. Today many of them use electric pumps but that is new, last few years or so. Water is very heavy and the plants need a lot of it, more than people use.
It can take generations to level out all of the steps shown. That is not easy to do by hand or even with a beast or two. many animals can walk those steps with ease. Better than we can, they have 4 feet to balance on. So they can help also.
In some places, evey hill side is stepped right t the top. Lets see some USA City folk do that. And they say farmers are stupid...Over 90% of city people would die off first.
We must have our MTV and Internet or we go crazy. I would like to think that I would be one of the 10% that would survive but I don't want to test it right now. I like Airconditioning too much.
Would you do this? Or could you do this?
deuem