Word: machu
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...miles northwest of the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco, a handful of Peruvians and Americans met last week to dedicate a bronze plaque to U.S. Archaeologist Hiram Bingham and the mysterious lost city he discovered 50 years ago. Some experts believe that parts of the city, which Bingham named Machu Picchu (Old Peak), are 60 centuries old, which would make it 1,000 years older than ancient Babylon. More recently, if its ruins are interpreted correctly, it was at once an impregnable fortress and a majestic royal capital of an exiled civilization...
Built on a saddle between two peaks, Machu Picchu is surrounded by a granite wall, can be entered only by one main gate. Inside is a maze of a thousand ruined houses, temples, palaces, and staircases, all hewn from white granite and dominated by a great granite sundial. In Quechua, language of the sun-worshipping Incas and their present-day descendants, the dial was known as Intihuatana-hitching post...
...closed session of the Senate Finance Committee which was considering a tariff bill of special interest to manufacturers. But politics was never his true province. An irrepressible adventurer, Honolulu-born Hiram Bingham led the first ascent of the Andes' Coropuna (21.700 ft.), discovered the famed Andean ruins of Machu Picchu. "Senators," he once said, "I understand not at all. I understand so much better the ethics and morals of explorers...
After the flowery speeches, the old explorer climbed the steep slopes of Machu Picchu to show his friends one of the New World's greatest archeological glories. Here was the granite observatory where Inca priests marked the solstices and claimed, each June 21 (when their freezing subjects feared midwinter starvation), that they had tied the sun to a stone. There stood the Emperor's palace, and beyond, the convent of the Vestals of the Sun. Just below were the terraces, where corn, potatoes and tomatoes grew long before the white man ever heard of them...
...Search. The erect old guide told how he came to find Machu Picchu. After searching old texts, studying old charts, he said, he had concluded that somewhere in the Andes was an Inca capital that the Spanish never reached. Thereupon, he had gone out from Cuzco with a group of eager young scientists, had struck down the might gorge of the Urubamba canyon. Finally, on a muleteer's grudging tip, Bingham crawled up the peak known as Machu Picchu. There, under trees and matted vines, lay the lost city...