Machu Picchu (11)


Source: WTL photo taken on site in Machu Picchu.
Comments: The lone house with the thatched roof is the lookout spot from whence many of this collection of photographs were taken. This particular photo was taken from the path that ascends Huayna Picchu. To the left of the building you see tourists. And angling toward the upper left you see the high mountain path that was one of the principal transportation arteries the Incas used throughout their empire. In other words, generally speaking, people came to Machu Picchu from these high trails, not from the river far below the site. (For the image of a Quechua woman coming to Machu Picchu along this path, see Machu Picchu #11a.) The professor-photographer asked the Quechua anthropologists what kind of produce was grown on these terraces, assuming that this was where residents of Machu Picchu grew their food. Their answer surprised him. They told him that the only seeds they found on these terraces were those of flowers. (See the virtual tour imbedded in Machu Picchu #23.) By contrast--which, after all makes sense--vegetables for Machu Picchu's residents were grown in the good soil along the Urubamba River and then transported up the serpentine 1,500 feet road up to the sacred site itself.