Machu Picchu: A Civil Engineering Marvel
by Alfredo Valencia Zegarra, Gordon, Ph.D. Mcewan, Kenneth R. Wright, Ruth M. Wright

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Book Reviews of Machu Picchu: A Civil Engineering Marvel

Book Review: This Book Enhanced Our Trip!
Summary: 5 Stars

Coloradans Ken and Ruth Wright have teamed with Peruvian archeologist Alfredo Valencia to place back in working order the sixteen fountains of Machu Picchu. You can see for yourself.

The Inca were master water handlers. They chose Machu Picchu as a ceremonial center because the mountains and the river spoke to them of life-giving power. The Urubamba River far below snakes triangular around the base of Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu mountains. A saddle between these peaks cradles the temples, rock shrines, dwelling places, and agricultural terraces that dance between the clouds in early morning and emerge to sunlight by Noon.

Water at the center of it all. The paleo-hydrologic studies of the Wrights and Valencia reveal how the Inca predicated the design and construction of Machu Picchu upon the flow of a spring. From high on the side of Machu Picchu Mountain, a canal brings water across an agricultural terrace to the first fountain just above the Temple of the Sun. From there, sixteen fountains splash, spout, and sing down a staircase to the Temple of the Condor.

The May 2002, issue of National Geographic Magazine contains yet another map of Machu Picchu deriving from the Wright-Valencia partnership. This map shows how magnificent Machu Picchu must have looked with its thatched roofs uplifted to the condor sky.
Underneath your feet at every turn is the invisible sixty-percent of Machu Picchu. In their Civil Engineering book, Ken and Alfredo describe the genius of Machu Picchu's foundational structure. The Inca edifices and agricultural terraces stand the test of time because of careful drainage and methodical trenchwork. The visible forty-percent of Machu Picchu rests on mountain bedrock and the skill of people who learned through ancestral experience how to counter earthquake and erosion's despoiling effect.

Ken and Alfredo deduce from their studies that the Inca did not irrigate the agricultural terraces at Machu Picchu, though they did elsewhere. Here, the rainy season and supplemental importation of agricultural products met the needs of the small resident population and the influx of those attending rituals. The Inca ruler Pachacuti began Machu Picchu as a ceremonial retreat in A.D. 1450. It likely ceased normal operation by A.D. 1540 due to the collapse of the Inca Empire under Spanish invasion.

Ken and Alfredo explain that Machu Picchu's durability stems from high quality professional workmanship:

"Machu Picchu's technical planning is surely the key to the site's longevity and functionality. The Inca's careful use of hydraulic, drainage, and construction techniques ensured that the retreat was not reduced to rubble during its many years of abandonment. These techniques, combined with a strong knowledge of hydrology, were what made it a grand and operational retreat high in the most rugged of terrain."

The Civil Engineering book is easily readable, yet contains much study and analysis of Machu Picchu's structural accomplishment. Ken and Alfredo devote chapters to (1) setting, geology, climate, and site selection; (2) city planning and engineering infrastructure; (3) hydrogeology, collection works, water requirements, and water supplies; (4) hydraulic engineering, water supply canal, and fountains; (5) drainage infrastructure, surface runoff and drainage criteria, agricultural terraces, and urban sector; (6) agriculture, hand-placed soil, crop water needs, and adequacy of nutrient production; (7) building foundations and stone walls; (8) construction methods, rock quarry, transporting and lifting rocks, using wood and vegetation, roof structures, canal stones, floors and plaster, bridges, and tools of the trade; (9) cultural background and Inca heritage; and (10) a walking tour of the engineering works (Ruth's contribution).

Dr. Gordon McEwan, excavator of Pikillacta and Chokepukio, illuminates the cultural background of the Inca in a fine chapter he contributes to the Civil Engineering work (chapter 9). He further explains in a June 2002 National Geographic Magazine article how the Inca culture built upon the Wari culture (A.D. 600-1000). At Pikillacta, the Wari relied on an aqueduct whose portals also served as their gateways and guardways to the Cusco Valley. Before the Wari, dating from B.C. 200, the Pukara and the Tiwanaku peoples conducted water for pragmatic and religious purposes.

The Inca were religious and practical people. They revered the earth, the mountains, and the sky, as their descendants the Quechua still do. On mountain torsos they saw visages of the serpent, the puma, and the condor. Rocks and dead ancestors were equally alive to inform and inspire them by daily consultation in community. They were expert engineers, architects, and water workers. Joseph and Pharaoh-like, they dreamed of drought and famine; so, they stored the plentiful crop against the certitude of impending scarcity. The Inca exacted a tax in the form of labor. In return, the community benefited from stored food and ritual celebrations.

In the third summer of a North American western drought (A.D.2002), with the published work of Ken, Ruth, and Alfredo in hand, I could see it too--how water works at Machu Picchu for domestic water supply, aesthetic, and spiritual needs. The Inca water containment and delivery structures join those of the Mayans at Tikal, the Anasazi at Mesa Verde, and the Hopi at their mesas in a centuries-old mosaic of water use in the Western Hemisphere.

In scarcity lies the opportunity for community. The native peoples of the Americas practiced the art of water works construction out of ingenuity and necessity, praying to the gods for rain to fill their earth-constructed hope against despair. The native peoples also demonstrated that water supply planning and infrastructure is a core responsibility of those who would govern in the public interest. Westerners always come round to the practical and symbolic value of water for people and the environment.

Summary of Machu Picchu: A Civil Engineering Marvel

Arts & Photography Books

• Subjects > Arts & Photography
• History > Americas > South America > Peru
• Ancient > Incan
• Crafts, Hobbies & Home > How-to & Home Improvements > Building & Construction
• Professional & Technical > Engineering