Machu Picchu: the famous Inca mountain would have had the wrong name for more than 100 years


The famous Inca citadel located in Peru would not be called “Machu Picchu” but “Huayna Picchu” according to a Peruvian historian and an American archaeologist quoted by the newspaper The Guardian.

In this article, the two researchers claim that after going through the names of the citadel mentioned in the 19th century maps and those in the 17th century documents, none of the sources referred to the site as Machu Picchu.

In contrast, researchers found that the ruins of an Inca city called Huayna Picchu were mentioned in a 1904 atlas published seven years before Hiram Bingham (one of the site’s discoverers) arrived in Peru. The most definitive links to the Inca city’s original name are preserved in accounts written by Spanish conquerors shortly after taking Cusco in the late 16th century, researchers say.

Other uncertainties

Machu Picchu has not yet revealed all its mysteries. Last year, other researchers had indeed claimed that the ruins of the site had not been built after 1440, as it was supposed, but undoubtedly a few decades earlier. A questioning encouraged by the AMS tests which indicate that the historical chronology is inaccurate.

Today, the date of the construction of the city is still a source of discussion.



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