Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian 15th-century Inca site in Peru, in South America.
The Incas built the city on an Andes mountain ridge, 2430m above sea level. They lived there between 1200 and 1450 AD. Other people lived there before about 650 AD.
The Incas built houses, fields and temples by cutting the rock on the mountain so it was flat. They built some observatories to look at the stars.
When the Spanish invaded Peru, the Incas left Machu Picchu. Nobody knows for sure why they did that, but some think it was because of diseases from Europe (such as smallpox). The city was left unfinished, most likely due to the Spanish invasion and/or a civil war between the ruling rival Inca brothers named Huascar and Atahualpa. The Spanish never found Machu Picchu or the lost city during their occupation.
Machu Picchu is very difficult to get to because it is so high in the mountains. It has only one way in and a stone wall to protect it. Most people on Earth did not know it was there until a Yale graduate named Hiram Bingham rediscovered it in 1911. He heard rumors of a hidden city which was already known to the native Peruvians, who guided him there. He led a restoration project that was partly funded by the National Geographic Society. Bingham made a deal with the government to take artifacts to the Peabody Museum for study. Peru is still trying to have those artifacts returned to them.
Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll.
Today, there is a new road so that tourists can visit. People can also walk along the Inca Trail, or take a train from Cusco.
Facts
In the Quechua Indian language, “Machu Picchu” means “Old Peak” or “Old Mountain.”
Machu Picchu is made up of more than 150 buildings ranging from baths and houses to temples and sanctuaries.
There are more than 100 separate flights of stairs. Most of the individual staircases were carved from one slab of stone.
Written for younger readers
Machu Picchu, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: World Heritage Sites
Machu Picchu is located in southern Peru, on a mountain 2,430 metres (7,970 feet) high. Most archaeologists (people who who studies the objects of people who lived in the past) believe that Machu Picchu was constructed as a palace for the Inca dynasty emperor Pachacuti. The Incas built the compound around 1450 but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known in Peru, it was not known to the Spanish during the time where they occupied Peru and remained unknown to the outside world until American historian (a person who studies and writes about the past) Hiram Bingham discovered it in 1911.
Machu Picchu consist of three main structures, namely Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. Most of the buildings on the edges of the complex have been rebuilt in order to give tourists a better idea of how they originally appeared. By 1976, thirty percent of Machu Picchu had been restored and restoration continues till today. Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historic Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.
Machu Picchu is both a cultural and natural UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since its discovery in 1911, growing numbers of tourists have visited the site each year, including 1,411,279 in 2017.
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Machu Picchu” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.