An Exploration Of Megalithic Stone Work In Cusco Peru: June 2017

Greetings from beautiful Cusco in Peru. As many of you know I travel a lot around the world looking at ancient sites but what I'm going to do today is I'm going to simply walk through some of the streets of Cusco and have a look at some of the anomalies which will show you that Inca Cusco is much much older than the Inca. We'll see megalithic remains, we'll see Inca work, and we'll see Spanish colonial. So here for example you can see Inca stonework. You can even make out the tool marks of the Inca. This is called andesite stone which is local but here up on top you see that lintel of the cross piece that is basalt from a quarry 45 miles away. So that gives us the possible idea that the Inca were recycling stuff that was here before. And here we have another one of these lintels. Now this location is called San Cristobal. You see the church built in the 16th century and again you see a beautiful Inca wall with the anomalies of the cross pieces that are from 45 miles away. So what we're looking at is the recycling by the Inca of older megalithic works and then the recycling as in this case of the Spanish using the Inca constructions to build their church. Now San Cristobal is where 1,000 years ago the first of the high Sapa Inca or high Inca called Manco Capac or Maucu Capac built his palace. So that gives us a timeline of the Inca being in the Cusco area from about 1080 to 1533 when they were destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors. Okay now we're walking down towards the Plaza de Armas which is the main plaza of Cusco today, Cusco during the colonial times and Cusco during Inca times. So this is an original Inca road still in use as you can see and we have a repaired Inca wall but notice these huge stones here. Again here we have the local andesite stone this is a green type of stone from about a mile away and then here are the large pieces of basalt from the quarry 45 miles away. So this clearly shows us recycling of stone by the Inca or maybe colonial Spanish from an older structure of some kind. Now what you're looking at is likely a colonial Spanish wall. The way we can tell is because it's pretty bad workmanship. The first Spanish that came to Cusco were not very good at stone masonry. The Inca work is superior. So here again we have Inca work non-stop traffic but Inca work here and we have Inca work transitioning into older megalithic stone work. So again you see the obvious transition between this which is Inca and this which is actually older and superior. Once again the stone comes from the quarry 45 miles away. The wall is about three feet thick and this was an Inca inheritance. You see they carved two snakes which makes this a house of wisdom and here you see repair either during Inca times or during colonial times this top row and then the transition back into classic Inca construction technique. Local andesite stone quite tightly packed together but not perfect and then transition once again. Here's the older megalithic. The Inca carved some snakes into it and then a transition into Inca. The way we know that this is Inca and was recycled is this stone is basalt taken from probably the ruins of the wall that was over here and then almost all of the rest of it. Here's another piece of basalt but most of the rest of it is the local andesite stone that you would find right under my feet right now. And a classic Inca road. The interesting thing is the Inca set up their road systems to be perfectly north south east and west according to the winter solstice because that was one of their very major holidays. And then here you have Spanish colonial where the basalt was recycled by the Spanish going down to much more superior work. And then finally here to what looks very much like an Inca period repair. And then again we're going to see a transition here classic Inca. Transitioning into superior workmanship. How could this possibly be the labor of the same people? Now standard or I would prefer to say worn out academic theories that there were only two cultures. The first being the Inca who found this is basically virgin territory and then the god-awful Spanish conquistadors coming. Already you can see that that's not true because we see what a bronze age culture like the Inca could have done with small-ish stones. And we see the Spanish work like this plaster here on top of an Inca foundation. But then we'll see other differences. Here again Inca work. Pretty tight fitting stone work but not perfect. And then a transition again from Inca to superior craftsmanship. No mortar whatsoever. Each stone is a different shape and size. The wall is three feet thick. And then transition back out to inferior Inca period. And then we have classic Spanish recycling anything they could find because they simply want to build a wall. But wait till you see what that transitions into. This. Every stone a different shape and size. The wall is six feet thick. And what we're going to see later on is an Inca repair job. But this is as tight fitting stone work as you can find anywhere on the planet. In a lot of cases you can't fit a human hair in the joinery. And again we're going from perfect joinery all the stone from the same quarry transitioning to a later repair. Whoever did the repair work didn't seem to care what stone was used. But the original builders insisted that all of the stone came from the same quarry. Now my theory is that a thousand years ago the Inca entered Cusco and discovered an abandoned and destroyed megalithic city and then attempted to reconstruct as best they could these massive megalithic walls in order to make them functional again. And that's exactly what you're going to see as we walk along this wall which is part of what is called the Inca Roca compound or Inca Roca palace. You'll see the obvious differences. You see the repair work above and then the inferior concrete and repair work. And again here the best work is at the bottom and above a combination of Inca and then later Spanish colonial repair. And this in fact is one of my favorite locations because this is where we see three periods of history. Here Spanish colonial work. Right next to it Inca work. And then over here the megalithic work. So I hope you like this little video. It's one of many walking tour videos that I'll likely make in the future since we're going to be in Cusco for months. And you've seen just you've had a taste of the complexity of this ancient city which is clearly older than the Inca. And by our estimates, weird as it may sound, we believe that this place and other ancient locations on our planet were devastated 12,000 years ago.