Exploring Tambomachay: The Master Engineers of Ancient Peru

At an altitude of approximately 3,700 meters above sea level and about 15 minutes from the city of Cusco sits a beautiful and mysterious temple called Tambomachay. Here the sun, stone, wind, and water dance together in a quiet harmony best heard before the din of the crowds that come around 10 30 in the morning. Tambomachay's significance today mainly extends to its engineering feats. The site features advanced hydraulic innovations that support agriculture and ceremony sites across the region. The builders of the site also utilize sophisticated ashlar masonry techniques featuring precisely cut stones fitted together without mortar in polygonal and cushioned styles. These methods involve selecting high quality anti-site from local quarries and shaping the stone to achieve tight joints that resist earthquakes and weathering. The resulting walls and terraces demonstrate exceptional precision with stones interlocking seamlessly to form watertight channels and platforms highlighting the builder's mastery of stonework for both functional and symbolic purposes. Like so many of the sites in the Andes water veneration always seems to play a central role as it represents one of the key elements of Inca cosmology. Water is represented as the sacred life force and is a symbol of fertility deeply intertwined with the divine feminine and the essence of creation and renewal. Water is also seen as a conduit of vitality which links the earthly realms of Kaipacha to the upper world invoking heavenly and communal harmony. As to whether or not the Inca built these sites themselves they most certainly did recognize the importance and sacredness of these sites and because of that they probably carried out fertility and purification rites at them and there does seem to be some evidence for this in the writings of the famous mestizo historian Garcilaso de la Vega. In his 1609 Comentarios Reales de los Incas or the Royal Commentaries of the Inca he wrote about the elaborate royal bathing facilities and water temples at Tambomachay and this is why today Tambomachay is referred to as the Royal Inca Baths. When we look at the temple complex itself we notice that it has four stepped up terraces supported by retaining walls of perfectly fitted polygonal stones which are seamlessly integrated into the natural landscape but if we look closer we can see that the bedrock itself shows evidence of an even earlier culture called Hanapacha. These Hanapacha vestiges are almost always under the megalithic and Inca buildings who built on top of these ancient structures. You may be asking what is Hanapacha? Hanapacha in Quechua means heavenly world and references the earliest form of stonework found around the hills of Saqsaywaman. The use of the definition Hanapacha was part of a method to categorize the first of three different styles of stonework by the Peruvian researcher Alfredo Gamara. Gamara called the other styles Uranpacha which represented the megalithic stonework and Ucupacha which represented the later cultures like the Inca in the Kilke. Hanapacha formations are formed out of living rock usually limestone and look very plasticine in nature. While much of it looks like native rock other parts show the unmistaken hand of man sometimes with evidence of fingerprints in the stone itself. If you'd like you can check out my video about these fingerprints in the video I will link to at the end of this video. On top of this Hanapacha work is a megalithic style temple which has an upper platform which according to archaeologists was used for ceremonial purposes and for astronomical observations. Here there are architectural elements that are said to align to the December solstice sunrise marking the sun's renewal and the time for planting agricultural crops. In the retaining wall we find four trapezoidal niches which were believed to have once held idols or mummies. Access to the upper platform was by a staircase on the side of the third terrace where one can see two large trapezoidal false doorways. I wonder if these false doorways could have represented duality which is a prominent concept in Andean cosmology or perhaps they were used as portals by priest or Inca royalty to access higher dimensions. Certainly the false door seemed to imply that this was its purpose. Although much about this site is still a mystery there are things that we can say for sure about what the builders of this place had in mind. Here we can see that they showed a reverence of nature and strove to create their structures in a harmonious relationship to it. They also watched the movements of the sun and the moon and the stars to know when to harvest or to plant crops. They revered water, the sun, and the earth for the vitalizing essence they provided and saw themselves intimately as part of this cosmic dance. It seems like there is so much we can learn from the builders of these ancient sites as today so much of humanity is out of balance with nature and our natural rhythms. We live our lives online and disconnected from the environment we've involved in for millions of years and as a consequence we don't seem all that happy. We work too much, we play too hard, and many of us are on medication to manage the daily stresses of our modern lives. Maybe we need to listen to what so many of the spiritual traditions have said about going back to nature and to live more simpler lives because in the deepest essence of our souls we are part of the natural world. Maybe these monuments are a reminder for us of what we have forgotten. Don't forget to like and subscribe and share this video and if you'd like to go more in depth about the three different architectural styles that you can find not only in Peru but also around the world please check out my book Sorcerers of Stone Architects of the Three Ages. You can find it at all major bookstores. Once again I'd like to thank you for joining me on this journey and wishing you all blessings and happy travels. Here we see another shaped stone here and all around there is a megalithic wall and here was that stone we were looking at but this looks like concrete. This doesn't look like the Hanampacha work so I think the Ministry of Culture actually made a a concrete stone here to hold this together when they were seeing some erosion. So a massive stone wall here. Did the Incas put these together or is this something much older than the Inca? And just for a sense of scale you can see my friend Lindia here who can show you just how big these rocks are.