Research Paper On Machu Picchu

Kylee McFarland

Mrs. Smith

English 10

19 October 2015

Machu Picchu

Introduction- i/o. Machu Picchu

1 Machu Picchu is located nine thousand feet above sea level on a long narrow strip of land between mountains and above a valley. The two sacred mountains were named by the Incans, Huayana Picchu meaning young mountain and Machu Picchu meaning ancient mountain and the valley surrounding the city was named Urubamba. Fifty-four miles from Cusco, another Peruvian city, lies Machu Picchu and is "one of the largest and most sophisticated pre-Columbian empires in South America" (Littleton 215). ANALYSIS. THESIS

1 A historian named Hiram Bingham rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1912 with the help of a local farmer named Melchior Artega. Bingham was from Yale University and was researching in Peru when he heard about a lost city high up in the mountains called Vilcambama. He

In the Temple of the Sun, a small half circle shaped building, the sunrise lines up with a window that is very small in size. Sunlight shines through the window on this day aiming a bright light in the middle of the room. Just like the Temple of the Sun, Inti Wantana is a device used by the Incan people to tell the time and the year using the sun. It is a very large stone that shows the time by the position of the shadow from the sun. They could tell what year it was by measuring the shadow. ANALYSIS. THESIS.

2 Religious shrines and temples are located all over Machu Picchu to worship their god Inti, the god of the sun. Most temples located in Machu Picchu are buildings with only three walls like the Great Central Temple and the Temple of the Three Windows. An ancient Incan legend says that their ancestors came from a cave with three windows and Temple of the Three Windows is believed to be connected to the fable. ANALYSIS.