Inca Pyramids

The inca pyramids has no relation with Egyptian or Mayas pyramids; The only explanation is that they found the same solution to the same problem; The problem is, how to build a huge and high building with soft materials like mud; The answer is the pyramid structure, because is the logical structure solution for a building with multiple levels.

The Egyptians build pyramids for specific burial purposes; The incas pyramids were build for a variety of purposes, besides the incas build hundreds of them all over the kingdom; The pyramids build by the incas were call Huacas; The word huaca is use to define a religious or important ceremony place, for example a huaca could be a river, a mountain or a tree where it was believe that lived some deity or ancestor.

The inca pyramids were made with mud bricks of clay, mixed with dry straw of corn plant, as binding material; When the inca people found a pyramidal structure build by other culture, they build their own inca temples on top of them, some of this old pyramids goes from 10mt up to 50mt high; The pyramids were use for political and administrative purposes, just like a town hall, where the local authorities live and manage the community.

Most of the inca cities were build with their pyramidal religious centers, right on the middle of the city; The main reason of the fanaticism in the construction of so many pyramids, was to use the religion to keep control of the population; The main job of the local priest, was to use the power of the inca religion to control the people.

Some inca pyramids were use specifically for human sacrifices, the human sacrifices were a lot more common before the incas; During the inca empire, the practice of human sacrifices happen occasionally, in most of the cases, the human sacrifices were perform to peaceful the gods, to show respect to the inca gods or to punish hostage enemies.

Many pyramids were constructed for specifically astronomical purposes; This fact it is known today, because it had been found stone plaques, with large flat holes, distribute in large areas; The holes were fill up with water, then a priest look at the water and observe the reflexion of the sky, this is how they follow the movement of the stars; This type of inca pyramids were build all over the kingdom, as a community clock and inca calendar.

Actually there is one thing that the Egyptian pyramids and the incas pyramids has in common; This will be the curse, that goes to the treasure hunters that open the burial pyramids; The entire world know about the curse of the Egyptians pyramids, but no one knows about the incas curse.

The inca pyramids curse story, begins with the looting of an inca pyramid in the north of Peru; 10 men participate in the looting, they found pottery and gold artifacts, that rapidly sale for ridiculous prices; Months after one by one were kill by estrange accidents; Like when two of them start to run, when they were about to be capture by the police, the police shot them to the legs as warning to stop running and in that precisely moment, they felt down and the bullets kill them instantaneously.

Peru has several hundreds of pyramids around the country, many of them had suffer a heavy erosion by action of the rain and wind; The Peruvian government is trying to keep track of all of them, classify them and protecting them from treasure hunters, but little can be done, because less than 20 percent of the known incas pyramids have been study until today.

The inca pyramids in Lima city are a good example of how abandon they are; Lima city had grow so fast, that the Peruvian government could not stop the depredation of the lands surrounding the pyramids; It is sad to see houses, full size towns and high ways passing by, if not cutting a piece of the pyramids in order to make enough space for the constructions.

It is an immense relief, that at list the biggest pyramids are save, specially the ones that are located in residential and touristic areas; Many young Peruvian archaeologist are tying by them selfs to develop a popular consciousness and understanding of conservation of the inca pyramids; Because at the end, the pyramids and the history, it is all that we have left from who we were ones.

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