Machu Picchu’s existence was possible only because of the labor and goods the Inca rulers received as taxes.

 Machu Picchu Centennial Likely To Lack Yale Artifacts
 
An Incan “aryballo” pot discovered at Machu Picchu
Yale Daily News
May 13, 2010
 With the 100th anniversary of Hiram Bingham’s discovery of the Inca archeological treasure Machu Picchu approaching, Peru’s Chamber of Tourism is preparing to celebrate — but without many of the site’s most precious artifacts, […]

 
Evidence of Spanish bullet holes in 500-year-old Inca skulls, found at a burial site on the outskirts of Lima, Peru

Inca Skeletons Show Evidence of Spanish Brutality
Science News
April 2, 2010
If bones could scream, a bloodcurdling din would be reverberating through a 500-year-old cemetery in Peru. Human skeletons unearthed there have yielded the first direct evidence of […]

 
You’re invited to an Evening with author and filmmaker Kim MacQuarrie & Writer/Editor Don George
Tuesday February 23rd, 7pm
Herbst Theatre
401 Van Ness Avenue at McAllister Street, San Francisco
Please be our guest as Don George and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and author Kim MacQuarrie take the stage for a globe-roaming conversation about indigenous peoples around the world, […]

 
Ukupacha Project Investigators Study Portrait of the Rebel Incan Emperor Manco Inca
Spanish-Peruvian Team Succeed in Reaching  Rock Art Wall of [Emperor] Manco Inca II
The painting was completed over 400 years ago on a cliff in the Sacred Valley of the Incas
August 9, 2009
(ANDINA)
(Translation: K. MacQuarrie)
(Note: in 1536, a 19-year-old Incan emperor named […]

(Above: The Torreón at Machu Picchu is a tower built around a stone that still has a carved groove in it. Once a year, the groove is illuminated as the rising sun shines through one window each June solstice. The window also frames the Pleiades constellation, which was used by the Incas to decide when […]

(Above: Scientists examine a 15-year-old girl who lived in the Inca Empire, then was sacrificed and remained frozen for 500 years)
Incas fattened up their children before sacrifice on the volcano
The Times
October 2, 2007
Grim evidence of how the Incas “fattened up” children before sacrificing them to their gods has emerged from a new analysis of hair […]

(Above: The 15-year-old “Llullaillaco Maiden” was sacrificed along with two other children on top of Mt. Llullaillco, in northern Argentina, at 22,000 feet)
In Argentina, A Museum Unveils A Long-Frozen Maiden
September 11, 2007
NYT
SALTA, Argentina — The maiden, the boy, the girl of lightning: they were three Inca children, entombed on a bleak and frigid mountaintop […]

First Known Gunshot Victim in Americas Discovered
National Geographic News
June 19, 2007
The first known gunshot victim in the Americas was an Inca Indian killed by a musket-wielding Spaniard nearly 500 years ago in Peru, scientists announced today.
The casualty’s skeleton was discovered in 2004 while excavating an Inca cemetery in the Lima suburb of Puruchuco—less than a […]

Incan Skull Surgery
Science News
April 25th, 2008
When Incan healers scraped or cut a hunk of bone out of a person’s head, they meant business. Practitioners of this technique, known as trepanation, demonstrated great skill more than 500 years ago in treating warriors’ head wounds and possibly other medical problems, rarely causing infections or killing their patients, […]

June 7, 2008
Armed With a Pen, and Ready to Save the Incas’ Mother Tongue
NYT
CALLAO, Peru
“Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago.”
Simple enough, right? But not for Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui.
Instead, he regales visitors to his home here in this gritty port city […]