The prevailing theory seems to be that Pachacuti had Pisac (and Ollantaytambo) built after he defeated the Cuyos (and Tambos) in the Vilcanota (or Sacred) Valley. They were his private estates, designed to both protect the valley from attack and to provide food and other resources necessary to support his family and descendants. (MacQuarrie, p. 439)
Pisac is huge. The ruins here are unique in that there are four distinct building areas: P’isaqa, Qanchiracay, Intihuatana, and Q’allaqasa for the elite, agricultural, religious, and military inhabitants of the complex.
I like the following view because it gives the viewer an idea of what the terraces looked like before and after restoration following about 400 years of non-use.
Look carefully at the slopes in the background. It looks as if the terraces extended almost to the peak. Given all the easily accessible good farmland in the valley, the amount of land cultivated on the mountainsides during the time of the Incas would appear to be unnecessary unless there were a whole lot of people living here.
Not all of the terraces were for farming. More than 3,000 burial places stud the hillside.
Ransacked burial sites at Pisaq
And here’s a view from across the valley.
Each of the “villages” has its own character with the religious sector having the finest architecture and the Intihuatana or Sun Temple having the best of the best.
Pisaq religious sector
- The Intihuatana and other temples
Like the Intihuatana in other locales, it is the building with the curved walls encasing a natural stone outcrop.
Intihuatana or Sun Temple
Rough stone building in religious sector
Compare the workmanship to these buildings.
The Q’allaqasa or military citadel sits strategically above the confluence,
- Q’allaqasa or military sector at Pisac
while the elite lived lower down on the hillside at Pisaqa.
Pisaqa
The peons had the crudest building works, at least as reconstructed.
A rebuilt structure at Qanchiracay
Qanchiracay
Given the reconstruction and restoration of all but the best walls that have withstood the tests of time, it is hard to know where the reality of the 16th century has been usurped by the imagination of the 20th. For example, look closely at the steps in the following image. Rarely did any of the thousands of steps on the Inca Trail look this even or of such uniform height. Obviously, some changes have made made for visitor safety, but once one begins to question, one doesn’t know where to stop.
Was this really what it looked like around 1500?
This dilemma on the part of both the caretaker and the visitor is not unique to Incan ruins. I’ve encountered it time and time again in the American Southwest where the National Park Service (and other custodians of American Indian ruins) struggle to make places like the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park both safe and true to the past when starting with not much more than a pile of rocks and no written records.
Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado