Sacsayhuaman, Peru's Mind-Boggling Megalithic Site

And these are the famous megalithic stones of Sasa Human. Look at the size of those, some of those are over 80 tons weight. So I came here on a wet day in April of 2026, like a pilgrimage to a place of mystery and yet utterly physical. There's Cusco in the distance, just to get a sense of the scale of these rocks. So archaeologists seem divided as to the exact purpose for the whole structure and the name itself Sasa Human means satisfied falcon in ancient India. But just look at the size of that rock. And here's some more enormous blocks beautifully put together. And right in the corner there, I move in you can see they're actually curved around the corner from the bottom up here. And the same technique is used in Egypt where the blocks interlock but they curl around the corner. That big block there in the centre is approximately three meters long by two meters high. And yet it's just carved like butter to fit in with all its neighbours. This rock possibly has fallen from the wall above. You can see how it's shaped to fit into its neighbours. This is actually a part of the site I was hoping to see and it might seem a bit strange but there's just cuts in the rock. But the thing is, if the camera can show this, they're actually perfectly regular steps underneath the top of the rock. So they're upside down, perfectly regular angles all around these sections. So how do you cut angles like this? There's steps there, this is like upside down steps, and angled like that there in limestone with copper or bronze tools. And it might be hard to see but over there the same thing. That's steps cut out of solid rock with copper and bronze tools, 1500 years ago. And this is one of the reasons I wanted to come to this site, even on such a bad day, was to see these angled cuts in solid bedrock limestone, perfectly straight, perfectly angled, no apparent reason to us, and done with copper or bronze tools 1500 years ago. And here's one line that's not actually straight, that top cut there is perfectly curved. And the single question going around my head looking at all this carving and cutting is why? Somebody has made a little offering of some biscuits. Perfectly straight steps on the underside of the rock. Everywhere you look there are shelves and steps cut into the bedrock and they're perfectly sharp and clear. Why would the ancient stonemasons spend so much time doing this? These are the devil slides that people can slide down on, on a good day obviously. So in 1536 the two Spanish Pizarro brothers laid siege to this and killed 20,000 Incas with their army. They reckon there's only 20 percent of this left, so imagine it five times bigger. So the story goes that the Spaniards couldn't actually move these particular blocks, that's why they're still here. So how did the original people quarry them, move them, and position them into these spots? Some of these massive blocks have indentations in them, like these two here, presumably to help move them. But how do you move some blocks up to 80 ton weight with just human power? So there you have it folks, the enduring marvellous mysteries of Sassahumma.