MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Magnificent Mysterious Machu Picchu

In this special feature, Mercopress Correspondent Harold Briley, describes his impressions of visiting Machu Picchu and the results of his researches.

This year marks the ninetieth anniversary since the re-discovery of the legendary lost city of the Incas, Machu Picchu. It was in 1911 that the United States explorer and archaeologist, Professor Hiram Bingham, was told about the ruins by local Indians who guided him up the mountain through snake-infested undergrowth, to came upon the awe-inspiring city nestling on its plateau in the Peruvian Andes, hidden and unknown to the outside world for four-and-a-half centuries.

The Hiram Bingham "Highway", the rough road snaking up the mountain, has sometimes been washed away by heavy rain. My aircraft from the Peruvian capital, Lima, turned back over the jagged Andean peaks with mechanical trouble, and my train on the final stage of the return journey from Machu Picchu to the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco was de-railed by a landslide.

Journeys in this part of the world can sometimes be eventful, but very worthwhile. That is the unanimous verdict of visitors when they first set disbelieving eyes on Machu Picchu and experience the vastness and tranquillity of the ruined city in its unique mountain environment. Its neat stone buildings, its chapels and shrines, huddle on a carpet of green grass, in the shadow of the giant peaks, from which it takes its name, Ancient Hilltop.

The site was chosen with consummate care. You cannot see a single stone from the valley below. Llama graze contentedly among the ruins, oblivious of the tourist invasion.

Ninety years after Hiram Bingham found the lost city, sunken into the earth, overgrown with grass and jungle, it has been lovingly excavated. But the mystery of this marvellous place lies as deeply embedded in its Inca past as ever. Survivors of the proud Inca empire, centred on Cuzco, fled before the superior fire-power of the Spanish conquerors.

Mysterious Disappearance of the Virgins of the Sun

On this remote, hidden plateau, a thousand of them lived and worked until the last Inca ruler died in 1571. The Spaniards never found them. Yet, the city was suddenly abandoned, or its inhabitants all died. Were they all wiped out by plague? Was there mass suicide driven by religious extremism?

Nearly all the skeletons found in Machu Picchu's mass grave were wo