Michael Palin - Full Circle - Machu Picchu  - script

[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2YBVlgqqco ]

The railway runs alongside the Urubamba river, following its twisting course through gorges 
that grow steeper and steeper.

Seventy miles from Cuzco there rises above us one of the great cities of the world. A city 
where no one lives.

This is the Inca stronghold of Machu Picchu. Hidden beneath the forest for hundreds of 
years until an American, Hiram Bingham, stumbled across it in 1911.

Incredible location.

It certainly is.

Why did they build it up here which must have been extremely difficult to get everything up 
here? What was the reason?

One of the reasons this place was built here is because the sacred Urubamba river down 
here does almost a complete loop right around the ruins here. So the ruins are on a promontory looking out over this astounding mountain scenery in the cloud forest.

What are we standing on now? These terraces,  would they have been used for growing food?

It's not really sure what was grown here. It's presumed that the sacred foods were here for 
example maize for brewing sacred chicha (spelling?)- chicha being the corn alcoholic beverage of 
the Incas which is still drunk today.

Take a look at this wall here. This is some of the finest stonework we can find.

If you actually look down the course of it you can see it's flared out at the bottom, 
which is an anti-seismic device.

So they were obviously - living in an earthquake zone.

That's right so they were very conscious of it and all their buildings reflect it.

What was this the wall of? What's the building inside?

Well, just behind here is the...what Bingham called the torrejon, (spelling?) which is the only round building in the complex, which is...was an astronomical observation centre.

Machu Picchu has a powerful presence. A sense of mystery that clings to the buildings and makes the hair stand up on your neck as you walk amongst living quarters that seem so recently abandoned.

No one knows for sure what happened here. Why the city was built. Why it was deserted so soon.

It's quite dizzying up here. This is the classic picture postcard view.

How much of what we can see down there is restored?

In fact quite a lot. When Bingham found this when it was covered, many of these walls were tumbledown and have since been reconstructed.

Did the Spaniards ever find it?
Well, that's the most important thing about this site. It's the only large Inca archaeological site known that the Spanish in fact did not find.

The existence of the indi wattan (spelling?), a ceremonial stone that measures the position of the sun, is taken as proof that the Spaniards never came here. Every other one they found in Peru, they destroyed.