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History: Was Machu Picchu a cosmopolitan city like New York?

2023-08-15 10:13:54Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
History: Was Machu Picchu a cosmopolitan city like New York?
Inca civilization

The first complete DNA analysis of people buried at Machu Picchu reveals that the lost city of the Incas was a cosmopolitan community: people from all over the Inca Empire came here to work at the fortress.

Machu Picchu is an archaeological site located at an altitude of 2400 meters in the Cusco region (Peru) near the Andes jungle. The ancient city of the Incas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983, was discovered in 1911 by archaeologist Hiram Bingham (1875-1956). The castle is still a testament to the incredible engineering skills of its inhabitants, miraculously spared by time and Spanish colonization, which never got that far. But unsolved mysteries still lurk among the ruins of this archaeological site. Why was it founded right here, at more than 2,400 meters above sea level, so far from the center of the empire? Who lived there? And above all, by whom was it built?

The answer to these questions can be found in part in a study published in "Science Advances", which, thanks to the first complete analysis of the DNA of people buried more than 500 years ago in the country of the Incas, demonstrates the genetic diversity of residents.

Researchers had tried to draw a DNA map of pre-Columbian civilizations to reconstruct the history of migrations in the area, but this time the analysis focused exclusively on the burials of ordinary people, found in the lost city, to understand who had actively contributed to build this royal castle so efficiently that it even withstood the powerful earthquake of 1950.

The Inca civilization began around 1100-1200 and lasted until the Spanish conquest in 1532. This population reached its maximum expansion under the Pachacutec empire (1438 1471). It first conquered Peru and then expanded further, forming an empire in the mid-fifteenth century that ranged from southern Colombia to the center of present-day Chile, reaching the Amazonian lowland jungle and the Argentine Gran Chaco steppes. . About 9 million individuals lived in this region, divided into 250 tribes.

When Bingham came upon the ruins of Machu Picchu on July 24, 1911, he initially thought he had found the last refuge of the Incas after the Spanish conquest, but in reality Machu Picchu was intact, so it remains to be seen why it was abandoned by its inhabitants. And this is not the only mystery.

Peruvian archaeologists Alfredo Valencia and Arminda Gibaja have attempted to calculate the yield of terraced crops that surrounded the city's perimeter. Their estimates indicate that local agricultural production was at most sufficient to support a population of 300 to 600 inhabitants.

But the city was designed for at least twice as many residents. It can be concluded that it was not very populated. This information is consistent with the research of American archaeologists Richard Burger and Lucy Salazar from Yale University. Based on 16th-century Spanish documents and studies conducted on pottery found at Machu Picchu, researchers argue that the site was not a regular settlement, nor a citadel or religious center, but one of many royal residences, founded by the ruler Pachacutec.

Like all royal estates, Machu Picchu housed not only the sovereigns and their court, but also servants, including artisans and unskilled workers, known as yanacona, who lived permanently in the fortification and contributed to the maintenance of the buildings. The Yanacona were brought to the estates from the conquered lands and were considered privileged compared to the rest of the population. That's what came out of genetic tests conducted by the team of Jason Nesbitt, associate professor of archeology at Tulane University's School of Liberal Arts, on the population buried at the site more than 500 years ago.

The researchers compared the DNA of 34 individuals who were at Machu Picchu, buried as yanacona, with that of 34 individuals from other places in the Inca Empire and with that of several modern South American genomes, to see how much related" were those".

The results showed that the individuals came from all over the Empire, a third of them as far away as the Amazon. Only a few had compatible DNA, indicating that they were single individuals rather than family groups brought to the imperial residence to work. Therefore, those who came to the palace to perform a specific task were part of a heterogeneous community that represented many different ethnic groups from across the Inca Empire.

From the genetic analysis it was observed that the four areas of the Machu Picchu cemetery were not separated according to the origin of the deceased. The individuals buried together in the caves had completely different DNA: "These results confirm that Machu Picchu was a cosmopolitan community in which people of different backgrounds lived together, married, had children and were buried together," concludes Burger.

Source: Focus Storia


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