Laura wrote about our Inca Trail experience (which you should read below) but I wanted to just throw in my two cents really quickly. First interesting thing is that the Inca people are actually called the Quechua. They are called Incas because Inca was their word for king...and when the Spanish arrived they were told by everyone to talk to the Inca...so with all those people saying that word they called them the Incans...whooops.
Anyway, the Quechua acheived things that simply blow the mind. First of all, look at the pictures that we have of Machu Pichu (which means Old Mountain in Quechua)...it is made with HUGE stones that all fit together perfectly...they didnt have any horses so these were all brought up to the Andes (thousands and thousands of feet above sea level) by PEOPLE. Second, these people´s understanding of the stars was crazy. For example, Machu Pichu has a Sun Temple that has two windows. On the Solstice and Equinox (I forget the exact days but its like Decemeber 20 and June 20) the sun shines EXACTLY through these two windows. This is to indicate to the people that is time to start planting crops because the rainy season is coming. It is sad that these people were basically completely wiped out and all of their knoweldge lost. The fact that their buildings still stand and are in such great shape is a testament to their genius.
Then consider that, without the wheel or horses, their empire ranged from Columbia in the North to Chile in the South...Laura and I have been busing around for more than a month and havent covered half of that area. Amamzing. Its crazy to think that such an advanced people could be conquered by a few hundered Spanish soldiers. Wacky.
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