Here is the intel for our Sunday adventure. We are going on a sight seeing trip to Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca city. We will meet up with Paddington Bear, as we all know comes from Peru and while he’s visiting relatives he is going to take us up the mountain in his bus to tour the city and then we’ll have a picnic with him, marmalade sandwiches of course!

Toward the end of the tour you can either stay in a group or branch out on your own to take a tour of the city on. your own or with pals. There will be 2 links posted in pic 9a. One is an interactive tour where you can touch your screen to look around the city in 360 degrees and the other is a normal video tour where you dont touch the screen, well you can but it won’t do anything lol . You can take 5 minutes to look at the video’s and then meet the rest of us on the steps in Machu Picchu for the picnic with Paddington.
After the picnic you’ll see the quiz questions posted, so while you’re chomping on your sandwiches you can double check the following intel for the answers.
Then finally our world famous Caption Competition. Hopefully we’ll get done in an hour but there’s a lot to see and a lot of pics to post (14) not including the quiz and the caption pic.
It’s a super trip and we hope you’ll all enjoy it and learn a bit about the Inca city Machu Picchu.

So here is the intel and the quiz answers will be within it. It’s long, cos there’s no way it could have been shortened, but with your super powers it won’t take you long to skim through it.
More than 7,000 feet above sea level in the Andes Mountains, Machu Picchu is the symbol of the Incan Empire and was built around 1450AD. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 and was named one of the New Seven Wonders Of The World in 2007.

In the Quechua Indian language Machu Picchu means ‘Old Peak’ or ‘Old Mountain’. It is made up of more than 150 buildings ranging from baths and houses to temples and sanctuaries. The compound contains more than 100 separate flights of stairs, most of which were carved from one slab of stone.

Although many stones used to build the city were more than 50 pounds in weight it’s believed that no wheels were used to transport them up the mountain. It is thought hundreds of men pushed them up the steep mountain side.

There are many theories about the city’s purpose. A royal estate or a secret ceremonial centre among them.

The Incas were some of the best masons in the world. The structures so well built with a technique called ashlar (stones that are cut to fit together without mortar) that not even a knife blade can fit between them.

Machu Picchu was unknown until it was discovered by Prof Hiram Bingham in 1911. There was a long dispute between Yale University and Peru as to who owns the artefacts found by Bingham which still exists today. Yale insist they own them, Peru insists they were given on loan.

Most cities built by the Incas were destroyed by the Spanish conquest. Machu Picchu being hidden and unseen from below survived. Making it one of the most well preserved Inca cities and an archaeological gem.

It was an astronomical observatory, and it’s sacred Intihuatana stone accurately indicates the two equinoxes. Twice a year the sun sits directly over the stone creating no shadow. The Incas had a vast knowledge of the sun, moon and stars. And stones on the site were positioned to show important times of the year. The Intihuatana stone was also used as an astrological clock and calendar. And at dawn on 21 June, when the first sunlight rises above the mountains the light shines perfectly through one of the windows of the Temple of the Sun, illuminating the ceremonial stone inside. The Inca considered the Sun to be their father and the Moon their mother.

The construction we see today is 75% original. In the 15th century when the Spanish arrived in Peru, they destroyed most Inca constructions and sacred sites during their conquest, building Catholic Churches on top.

The engineering used to build the city was extremely advanced, there are 600 terraces below the citadel to prevent it sliding down the mountain. There is still 40% of the city covered in thick vegetation.

The city is located in a beautiful cloud forest which boasts a large collection of bats, insects, flowers including 300 varieties of orchids, animals and birds. One of the animals that live there is the Spectacled Bear. It is the only bear species found in South America. And occasionally can be spotted wandering around the citadel. There are also plenty of Llamas which were important to the Incas, where they would have lived as domesticated animals. Sacrificial temples contained Llama bones and some buildings were built shaped like a Llama.

Up to 1,000 people lived at Machu Picchu during the 1400’s, but archaeologists found that the area where Machu Picchu was built was used for agriculture as far aback as 760BC. Most of the population were of the highest social class, Inca nobility. And according to early DNA analysis about 135 skeletons were found and nearly all of them were female. But later research and more advanced technology confirmed that the population were about half male and half females.