Best Way to Prepare for Inca Trail Trek to Machu Picchu Valley

Continued from previous page the roads the Inca built. Meanwhile, two brothers were embroiled in a devastating civil war to become the new Emperor - Atahuallpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Inca, was victorious, only to be captured, held for ransom, and then executed by Francisco Pizarro.

But a key reason for the Spaniards’ success was that the tribal people were not motivated to battle the invaders. Many wanted to be rid of the Inca rulers and allied with Spaniards (“The Inca weren’t very nice,” Jamie says). Also, the Spaniards seemed to be endowed with supernatural power and the incarnation of the priests’ prophesy of an existential event akin to Armageddon.

The first group of 90 Spaniards arrived in Cuzco in 1533 in Cuzco and lived together with Cuzco population for three years. But in 1536, a second, larger, more militant group came, determined to take the Inca’s gold and silver (the Inca did not understand how the Europeans valued precious metals as a source of power) and forcibly replace the “pagan” religion with Christianity.

The Incan leader Manco realized the Spaniards weren’t leaving, so rose up against them, but the Inca’s weapons were no match. After the third battle, the indigenous population abandoned Cuzco and the Spanish took over their properties.

We stop at the Manos de la Comunidad, a handicraft center where we see the different varieties of llama and alpaca, learn about how the wool is produced, the raw materials that the dyes are made from, and watch villagers at their looms, make stunning textiles. There’s also a fantastic gallery,

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This visit provides fascinating insights into the culture, heritage and structure of society and the ecosystem that shaped and sustained the Incan Empire: the environment that supports agriculture in high altitude (enough food and calories to fuel the building of these monumental structures and support an army) and domestication of llama and alpaca (they could carry goods, produce wool for clothes, provide meat and were the only domesticated animals in pre-Hispanic America), how the natural materials at hand shaped the culture (grasses were food for animals, and were used to make the ropes for bridges and haul the massive stones, and I suspect were also used to make the straight lines and measure without benefit of rulers).

These finely-woven textiles and the monumental architecture were the main arts of the Incan Empire; instead of written communications they used knotted strings (quipu) which still cannot be deciphered but which (Karen postulates) might have been a kind of Morse code (so why can’t a computer crack the code?). The colors and patterns of clothes would communicate tribal affiliation, friend or foe and be an expression of art.

The Inca’s success at farming had much to do with the fact the Inca calendar was tied to astronomy. Inca astronomers understood equinoxes, solstices, zenith passages and the Venus cycle. Religious leaders –the only others besides the nobles who were educated – used their knowledge as power over the people who were kept ignorant. The Inca also used mathematics to divide up political governance (a system of 10s), assess taxes, keep the census, and to do the calculations necessary to create such monumental architecture.

But the Inca could not have accomplished what they did – labor, military might – without enough food (calories) to support the population, which is why the Machu Picchu Sacred Valley was so vital.

We stop at a famous overlook known as El Mirador (Lookout Point) from where we can see the fertile Sacred Valley spread out in front of us.

Around the year 1000, Manco Capac claimed to be the “son of the sun god Inti” sent to earth to become the first Inca king. He was known for his courage, and taught the people how to grow plants, make weapons, work together, share resources and worship the gods – in other words, set the parameters for the society.

Karen suspects the source of Manco’s power over the people was that he was an agricultural genius and abundant food production was proof of his divinity. He probably was a popular dictator but later Inca rulers relied on force. Besides military might and a brutal form of “justice,” the Inca ruled through religion and superstition.

Their religion was based on nature and the different tribes had their own local gods and idols – worshipping the gods and goddesses of rain, lightning, rainbow (connected with fertility), moon, sea and water. The Inca imposed sun worship of Inti over the rest, such as Pachamama (Earth Mother). The people drafted to build the Inca’s palaces and temples did it as much out of devotion to god as their obligation to