Peruvian Times: Earthquake struck Machu Picchu in 1450
[Headline from DRJ]
This is old news from December 2018 (actually, really old — from 1450) but it interests me:
Construction of Machu Picchu was interrupted around 1450 by a powerful earthquake, leaving damage still evident today and prompting the Inca to perfect the seismic-resistant megalithic architecture that is now so famous throughout Cusco, according to a major new scientific study revealed by Peru’s state-run news agency Andina.
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“We see openings between rocks and stones, which is not typical of the Incas because they employed an impeccable, perfect construction. Some edges of the rocks are broken, which means that in the undulation of the earth, they hit each other, which caused the breaks,” Benavente said. “After that, they continued the building in a different manner to complete what would become Machu Picchu.”
Benavente said that “there is no doubt” that the strong earthquake also caused the deformation of the walls of Sacsayhuamán, Tipón and Tambomachay, as well as along the street of the Twelve Angles Stone in the city of Cusco, among other areas.
As a result, the Inca moved away from using smaller stones, assembled in a more rustic cellular architecture, and continued to develop and perfect seismic-resistant trapezoidal structures, with giant stone blocks at the base with narrower upper walls.
“They knew how to coexist with diverse geologic dangers, like earthquakes, landslides and avalanches,” he said.
Insert obligatory “We could learn from them” comment here.
— DRJ
Meh… they shrugged it off, had another chew and worked on…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 8/10/2019 @ 8:24 am… under the watchful eye of Frank Lloyd Guachimines…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 8/10/2019 @ 8:27 amQuite interesting. Engineering quake resistant structures is a fascinating challenge. It’s the retrofitting that gets so costly. Understanding how the shock waves transmit and bleed off the energy through the geology of a particular region is till an evolving science. An Easter quake we experienced some years go was an interesting example– by chance the family was inside the house and not only felt the jolts through the foundation but watched the walls torque slightly and sliding doors rattle in their tracks… I was outside, ten feet away standing on grass, felt nothing- and not a tree or bush moved– though noticed the birds had gone quiet. If I hadn’t heard the doors rattling, would not have realized a quake occurred.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/10/2019 @ 1:33 pmI got to tour Peru, including the sites mentioned in the post, about three years ago. It’s true that the Incans were remarkably adaptive people. You note when viewing their structures that they hand-carved their stones so that they would fit together, rather than using mortar to force them to stick together. This meant that when earthquakes came the stones had more latitude to move around and then (hopefully) resettle in their original position. Also, they learned to angle their side walls at precisely 13 degrees, which turns out to protect them during seismic activity.
When the Spanish came they learned nothing of what the Incans had done, so the cathedrals and other structures they built continually crumbled during earthquakes. In fact, one of the ironies you see in a city like Lima is that when the Spanish built a structure on top of an existing Incan structure, the earthquake would destroy the Spanish walls but leave the Incan walls intact. The Incans were really remarkable engineers.
JVW (54fd0b) — 8/10/2019 @ 4:13 pmDoncha know it was Aliens that built the structures? 😻 teeheeheehee…. snort.
yoda jr. (7e7f21) — 8/10/2019 @ 8:28 pm