Page 86 - Joe and Laurie's Anniversary Cruise

It's a good place to examine how amazingly these many-angled stones
(one to the left of the doorjamb has 32 distinct angles) were fitted
together by Inca stonemasons.

Up a short flight of stairs is the Intihuatana, popularly called the
"hitching post of the sun." It looks to be a ritualistic carved rock or a sort
of sundial, and its shape echoes that of the sacred peak Huayna Picchu
beyond the ruins. The stone almost certainly functioned as an
astronomical and agricultural calendar (useful in judging the alignment
of constellations and solar events and, thus, the seasons).

The Incas built similar monuments elsewhere across the empire, but
most were destroyed by the Spaniards (who surely thought them to be
instruments of pagan worship). The one at Machu
Picchu survived in perfect form for nearly five
centuries until 2001, when a camera crew filming a
Cusqueña beer commercial sneaked in a 1,000-
pound crane, which fell over and chipped off the
top section of the Intihuatana.

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