History's Greatest Mysteries (2020) s05e08 Episode Script

Tonight, one of
the most puzzling
archeological sites on Earth.
Machu Picchu is a
very mysterious place.
Why build a city here?
People keep digging for answers,
and for some it's even
become an obsession.
500-year-old secrets hidden
in skeletons and stone.
Some of the skulls that were
found didn't even look human.
It could be the most important
archeological find on Earth.
You look at these single stones
and see how perfectly
they're fit.
There's not a good explanation
for how people were
able to do that.
Now, we explore the top
theories surrounding one
of the ancient world's
most enduring riddles.
How did they develop
such an accurate understanding
of time and space?
Some people think that there's
a much more ancient history
to Machu Picchu
we're unaware of.
Who built this astonishing
complex and why?
It's the
morning of July 24th, 1911.
Deep in the jungles of Peru,
Yale University Professor
Hiram Bingham is
on a quest to find an
infamous lost city.
There's a story
from 400 years ago
about the end of
the Inca Empire,
when the Spanish came
in and took them over,
that they took all
of the king's gold
and hid it in a place
that is called Vilcabamba.
And that has become
a myth called
the lost city of Inca gold.
By the turn of the century,
as far as historians
were concerned,
Vilcabamba was like Atlantis.
It was a fairytale.
Hiram Bingham disagreed.
He wasn't a trained
archeologist.
He was a professor at Yale,
but he believed very deeply
that Vilcabamba existed
and that it could be found.
There was still persistent talk
by the time Bingham
made his first journeys
to Peru, about this lost city,
where there was a huge
stash of Inca gold.
When Bingham arrives
to Peru in 1911,
he meets with a Peruvian
scholar who suggests
that he's seen in
maps, information
that there are a series of
very impressive Inca sites
along the Urubamba River.
Beginning on July 19th, 1911,
Bingham's team
bushwhacks its way
through perilous jungle terrain,
determined to find
the lost city.
He has to this deadly river,
and then up this steep,
jungle-covered hillside
that's infested with
poisonous snakes.
When he finally reaches
the top elevation,
he's expecting something that
would be striking immediately.
And it's just
essentially a farm.
It doesn't have the
immediate gut punch
that he was looking for.
That is, until he turns a corner
and takes in a shocking sight.
He can tell that
there's approximately
200 stone structures
that are buried
underneath the foliage.
Bingham is somewhat
impressed by the site
that is nevertheless still
covered by the forest.
It's unclear to him
what is it exactly,
but he senses that this might
be the lost city of the Inca.
It could be the most important
archeological find on Earth.
Bingham and his team go on
to uncover five square miles
of what are Inca ruins,
dating back several centuries.
Locals tell Bingham the
site is called Machu Picchu.
The Inca are really well known
for their incredible stonework,
which is called ashlar masonry,
and the stones fit together
perfectly without any mortar.
It's almost like
a jigsaw puzzle.
They did not have the
advanced technology
that we have today, so
it's really a marvel.
You cannot fit a dollar bill
or a razor blade between them.
The technique of fitting
these blocks together
baffles archeologists
and engineers today.
Bingham
marvels at the structures
that kept Machu Picchu
standing for so long,
and wonders if these
ruins could be Vilcabamba.
He also notices that a
grand plaza separates
the agricultural
terraces on one side
and a grid of closely-packed
buildings on the other.
There's a lot of different
kinds of architecture
on the site, which
suggests that it was used
for a lot of different purposes.
Machu Picchu is a
very mysterious place.
Why build a city here?
Was it an outpost?
Was it a secret
agricultural place?
Because the Incan people
had no written language,
we have to rely on what
record keeping was kept
by the Spanish conquistadors.
So what took place
in Machu Picchu,
what it was used for,
remains a mystery to us.
However, Hiram Bingham
does have some ideas.
The Inca Empire was founded
in the early 15th century
by a king named Pachacuti.
Pachacuti is known
as the Alexander the
Great of the Inca Empire.
He's the one that started
to expand the Inca state
from being a very small
state centered in Cusco,
just suddenly exploding like
a supernova across the Andes.
What started as a tribe
of around 100,000 people
grew over the next a
hundred years into an empire
of more than 10 million,
stretching over 2,500
miles from north to south.
The Incan Empire
excels at government,
architecture, agriculture.
And the Incan Empire
was celebrated
for the rumored
abundance of gold.
Inspired by rumors of treasure,
Spanish conquistadors
arrive in Peru in 1532.
The Inca Empire will
never be the same.
There's no competing
with the horses,
with the guns, and the disease.
Smallpox ended up killing
90% of the native population
in all of the Americas.
From the Spanish records,
we know that the last Inca
king retreated to Vilcabamba
with about 100 people,
and they evaded Spanish
invasion for nearly 40 years.
Based on Machu Picchu's
nearly inaccessible locale,
this seems like the perfect spot
to hide treasure and people.
The longer Hiram
Bingham studied this site,
the more apparent it
became that a large number
of people lived and
died at Machu Picchu.
During Bingham's
first expedition,
he only spent a day
up at Machu Picchu.
He didn't know
what to make of it,
but he came back for
two more expeditions
and started doing
excavations at Machu Picchu
for the first time.
What is this?
Could this possibly
be Vilcabamba?
Bingham
unearths large burial sites.
What he finds appears
to confirm his theory
that he's found
the lost Inca city.
Upon examining these graves,
Hiram's team determines
that over 80% of
them must be female.
Through that, he hypothesized
that this was one of the
cloisters of chosen women.
The Incas had a
group of women called
the Virgins of the Sun.
They'd find a girl who was
pretty and perfectly formed,
and they would take her
to this kind of a convent
when they were
about 10 years old.
Bingham believed that
this was Vilcabamba
and that the last
emperor retreated there
with these Virgins of the Sun.
And in 1913, "National
Geographic" devotes
an entire issue to
this incredible find.
But Bingham's crew does not find
the legendary stores of gold
that they were looking for.
Despite his disappointment
at the lack of treasure,
Bingham is convinced that Machu
Picchu is indeed Vilcabamba.
He even writes the 1948
memoir about the lost city
that becomes an
international bestseller.
Until his death in
1956, he continued
to argue Machu
Picchu must have been
the last lost city of the Inca.
And it's said that
he may have been one
of the inspirations
for Indiana Jones.
But by that time,
a growing number of historians
and archeologists
believe Bingham's wrong.
Bingham's expert took
a look at the skeletons,
and they looked thin and small
and he concluded
that they were women.
But these were
indigenous Quechua people
who are slight of build.
More recent studies have
shown that there was, in fact,
a fair balance
between men and women.
Even more importantly,
the Spaniards had
sacked Vilcabamba
and they burned the whole city.
But Machu Picchu was pristine.
There was no ash, there was
no burned anything there,
so it didn't seem to fit.
Bingham's theory
seems to hit a dead end
in 1964, when American
explorer Gene Savoy
reveals the true location of
the lost city of Inca gold.
Gene Savoy excavates a
site called Espiritu Pampa,
which was a site that Bingham
had actually traveled to,
but Bingham dismissed it.
In fact, he did
not go far enough
into the ruins to
realize how large it was.
Gene Savoy was able
to do enough research
to realize that the Espiritu
Pampa was Vilcabamba,
the actual lost
city of the Inca.
Savoy has
found the true Vilcabamba,
but alas, no gold is
found there either.
According to the
Spanish records,
when they did finally
find Vilcabamba,
they melted down every gold
and silver thing
they could find.
If Machu Picchu isn't
the lost city of Inca gold,
then what could it be?
You can't deny the strategic
location of the site.
It's very high up
on the mountains,
surrounded by the river
on basically three sides.
For almost all
of its 100-year existence,
the Inca Empire is at war
either with neighboring tribes,
Spanish invaders, or both.
The Inca Empire was a patchwork
of other cultures
that they absorbed.
Some of them were in an almost
constant state of rebellion.
Machu Picchu's remote location
makes it easily defendable.
The access to Machu
Picchu is very limited.
There's a formal entrance
where there was a
very narrow path cut
into the side of a cliff.
At one point, there's a bridge.
Below is thousands of feet,
so if you fall, you die.
And once the planks are
removed off this bridge,
the access to Machu Picchu
is completely cut off.
And attempting to
scale the cliffs below
would present an incredible
disadvantage against
anybody who wanted
to siege the city.
Machu Picchu has such a
unique strategic position,
located on the edge of the
mountains in the rainforest,
which means it can watch three
boundaries at the same time.
So if you wanted a
first line of defense,
that's where you'd
put your citadel.
Even so, some historians note
that Machu Picchu
architecture isn't typical
of Inca military outposts.
What's inside the many grave
sites raises further question.
The Inca were known
for burying their dead
with implements that were
important to the person
during their life.
But we don't see anybody
buried with implements of war
or skeletal injuries that
would be related to war.
And so a military
fortress probably was not
the main purpose of the site.
Ever since
Hiram Bingham introduced
the modern world
to Machu Picchu,
scholars have puzzled
over its purpose.
Because the site
is so interesting
and still so well preserved,
people keep digging for answers
and for some it's even
become an obsession.
In 1987, one expert searching
through historical archives
in the former Inca
capital of Cusco, Peru
makes an amazing discovery.
The Inca did not
leave a written record,
but in the 1500s, Spanish
began to interview some
of the descendants of the Inca
to write down these
oral histories
and leave somewhat of a
record of the Inca past.
An anthropologist was in Cusco,
poring over some of the records
that were in the archives,
and came across a
letter from 1568
that said that there
was a royal palace.
It outlines a court case
in which an Inca family
was demanding the return
of their lands that included
a mountaintop palace
that was named Picchu.
Not only does it
describe generally
where Machu Picchu is located,
but the Peruvian descendants
who bring this claim
to the Spanish conquistadors
claim themselves
to be descendants of Pachacuti.
Suddenly, there's
a brand new explanation
for this settlement in the sky.
After he spent the first part
of his time as Inca king
expanding the empire,
Pachacuti spent the second half
of his life building
these royal retreats
that were on the
outskirts of Cusco.
Many of these palaces are
very similar architecturally
to what we see at Machu Picchu.
Based on Spanish records,
many historians agree
that Pachacuti was
probably involved
in Machu Picchu's construction.
The Inca royalty
itself was divided
into a series of royal lineages.
Each of them had royal estates.
It's possible
Pachacuti's descendants
would spend time in Machu
Picchu, probably relaxing.
Machu Picchu was at a
elevation of 8,000 feet.
That's 3,200 feet lower
than the elevation of Cusco.
So during the nights,
it was much warmer
and it was a much more
pleasant atmosphere
in the middle of winter.
If we look at Machu Picchu
as a palatial residence,
the layout makes sense.
There are clearly sectors
that are the most private,
the largest and most
elaborate rooms.
There's one dwelling
at Machu Picchu believed
to have been the residence
of the Emperor Pachacuti.
That residence is the only
one that had its own bathroom
with flowing water through it.
A reexamination
of Machu Picchu's dead
reveals new information
about who else lived here.
They're just
buried in the ground
and though they have objects,
they seem like everyday wares.
The lack of treasures indicates
that these bodies were
not necessarily royalty,
but they also don't have
the same kind of injuries
and arthritis that
would indicate
that they were laborers either.
Those graves that Bingham dug
are really the servants
and staff of the city.
A technique called
isotopic analysis tells us
even more about Machu
Picchu's residents.
Archeologists can take
a small sample of bone
and vaporize it, essentially,
examining the DNA for
traces of the diet
of the person while they lived.
And they found that these
individuals ate a lot of corn.
Corn was, in fact, a symbol
of status among the Inca.
And what they find is these
people ate mainly corn
because of their
privileged status
as retainers and
servants of royalty.
There are more clues to be found
by studying the skulls.
Some of the skulls that
were found were very bizarre
and they didn't even look human.
Some of the skulls
have cranial deformation
and seem to be squished to
a higher point at the top.
It's really well known
in the history of the Andes
that the people would bind their
heads into different shapes
that had to do with
an ethnic identity.
This was often done when
an individual was born
and their head was
very malleable.
Modified skulls
are not the only clues
that Machu Picchu
was a royal hub.
From the ceramics that
were left in the burials,
they could determine this
was a real heterogeneous
accumulation of people
throughout the empire
who were actually at
Machu Picchu working
as metallurgists,
attendants, and staff.
Leading
researchers suspect Machu Picchu
was a place for Pachacuti
to entertain a vast
array of guests.
We can think of it as a
16th-century Camp David.
In addition to the
varied visitors
that may have come to the site,
there were people
that had to work there
to grow the crops, tend to
the fields, to cook the food,
to make the crafts and
the goods that were used.
So these discoveries
have led to the idea
that this could have
been a royal retreat
where people were
coming from a variety
of different locations
from around the empire.
Many scholars speculate
that Machu Picchu was built
in the mid-15th century
as a winter getaway for
Inca Emperor Pachacuti
and his entourage.
But could the site have
a more serious purpose?
If political entertainment
and relaxation are
the primary activities
that are being done
at Machu Picchu,
then why all of these spaces
that seem to be devoted
to religious ceremonies?
Parts of the architecture
and the landscape where the
site was built really suggest
that there is a sacred
purpose behind Machu Picchu,
which is really
significant when we think
about Inca worldview
and how they worshiped both
their ancestors and the gods.
In terms of the way in
which the Inca worshiped,
we can't be entirely sure,
but we do know that they
worshiped a number of gods.
Illapa's the god of
thunder, god of the weather,
god of rain.
Beneath that, it was a
vast assortment of gods
and a host of spirits.
Viracocha was the creator god
and one of the most
prominent and important,
but Inti, the sun, was also
very important to the Inca.
During his first visit,
Bingham came across
this curved wall
that caught his attention.
He famously called
it the Torreon,
right, the turret or tower.
It really resembles the Temple
of the Sun found in Cusco,
which has led
scholars to believe
that this was another
Temple of the Sun.
Hiram Bingham was
fascinated by this,
not only because of the rare
curved architecture on top,
but it was built
on top of a cave
that had itself very
intricately carved stone.
It's also very close
to what we believe to
be the king's quarters.
There were places where it
was the king's obligation
to honor and remember
the deeds of Viracocha.
So he, as the son of the sun,
was probably stationed quite
close to the Temple of the Sun.
But the Inca
didn't just worship gods
in the sky, they also
worshiped water.
The Inca are world renowned
as some of the most
amazing hydraulic engineers
the ancient world ever knew,
and Machu Picchu is
an incredible showcase
of their abilities.
Not only did the
Incan people believe
that it was access to
water that gave you power,
but also that their ability
to control that flow of water
was something that was
given to them by the gods.
For the Inca,
everything is alive.
Pachamama, or Mother
Earth, was very important
to this Inca spirituality.
And Pachamama had to
be nourished through
different kinds
of water rituals.
Archeological studies suggest
that a site on the perimeter
of Machu Picchu
called Chachabamba
was built specifically
for the worship of water.
Chachabamba was
discovered in 1940,
a series of 14 sacred baths
that are believed to
be a very key part
of their ceremonial services.
Recently, some
researchers went in
and did drone LIDAR work,
using lasers to map the ground,
and then you can remove
that canopy of trees
and see what's below it.
And they were able to see
that there were a
lot more conduits
that were diverting
water from waterfalls
that were further away.
But why here,
just two miles down the
road from Machu Picchu?
Some archeologists
believe that Chachabamba
was a place where a traveler
would stop to purify their body
and their soul on their
way to Machu Picchu.
In 2009, a theory
emerged that Machu Picchu
was, in fact, a destination
for a spiritual pilgrimage,
a way to celebrate
their origin story.
The creator deity
Viracocha called up the sun
and the moon first from
the Island of the Sun
in Lake Titicaca.
He then used clay from
the sides of the lake
and created the first people,
and they take the journey
to establish Cusco
as the capital of
the Inca Empire.
The idea is that the baths
of Chachabamba are
like Lake Titicaca.
One immersed themselves
in this water.
Then the two-mile walk up
to Machu Picchu represents
this walk across the land.
If Machu Picchu was
indeed a pilgrimage site,
we can picture people
approaching the city
and conducting cleansing rituals
in places like Chachabamba
and other sites.
Pilgrimage
or not, scholars believe
that many of the structures
within Machu Picchu
served a religious function.
Among them, the Temple
of the Three Windows.
When Viracocha sends
the people to Cusco,
he sends them in a cave
entrance near Lake Titicaca.
And there are three cave exits,
so three windows symbolizing
those three exits.
Another feature of Machu Picchu
seemingly built
for religious use
is the Temple of the Condor.
[(condor shrieks]
The condor was a sacred
creature among the Inca.
They thought that the
mountain gods could transform
themselves into
condors and vice versa.
So not surprisingly,
at Machu Picchu,
there's this big temple,
and they actually carved
out of the bedrock
two wing-like structures
and the head of a condor.
That's a place where they
could offer sacrifices.
Some of those
sacrifices may have been animal.
Some archeologists believe
that the Temple of
the Condor was used
for sacrificing
guinea pigs and llamas
as a symbol of
power and fertility.
And some
offerings may have been human.
There's a specific Inca
ceremony called the Capacocha,
and it's very well known that
young children were chosen
to be sacrificial victims when
there were times of trouble.
That seems very barbaric
from Western society,
but if you are in an
environment where you believe
that the gods need
your sacrifices,
children are the absolute
most precious thing
we could sacrifice.
Machu Picchu may
have been the place
for the ultimate sacrifice.
Because the Incas
were dependent upon all
of these spirits and
gods around them,
it was very important
to maintain a good
relationship with them.
And the way they felt they
could best do that was
to offer offerings to
them on a regular basis.
We see this in various
parts of the empire.
Children that were
sacrificed have been found,
but there's no evidence of
the Capacocha ceremony ever
to have took place
at Machu Picchu.
We have not found any
remains that relate to that.
But you really can't deny
that there would've been
some religious and spiritual
use for these buildings
when the population
itself was so tied
to their spiritual recognition
of these places
and these entities.
to their spiritual recogn thany
since Hiram Bingham introduced
Machu Picchu to the world,
and even after
decades of scrutiny,
the site is reluctant
to give up its secrets.
But the Inca did
leave clues behind,
including ones that suggest
the site filled a very
practical purpose.
The Inca really had a
phenomenal understanding
of the movement of
the celestial bodies.
They were very spiritual
and they very much revered
the sun and the moon.
Incas obviously didn't
have clocks and watches,
so they used passage of the sun
to determine their
clock, so to speak.
The rocks themselves
were like little sundials
so they could tell by
the shadows on the rocks
what time of year it was,
what time of day it was.
Tracking the movement of
the sun is very difficult
in itself, but they accomplish
this with a lot of precision.
So the Temple of the Sun
especially noteworthy
because, although it might seem
that it's just a beam of light
projecting into the wall,
there's much more to it.
The architecture
reflects and encompasses
how they could have had
such a precise understanding
of the movements of the cosmos.
The Temple of the Sun
isn't the only building
in Machu Picchu
that marks the sun's movement.
There's at least two
observatories in Machu Picchu.
One marking the summer solstice,
the other one, the
winter solstice.
Beneath the Sun Temple,
there's this cavity there
and is exquisitely cut
stones, like stairways.
And the name of that carved
area underneath the Sun Temple
is called Intimachay, which
means cave of the sun.
The sun enters the cave in June
for a certain window of time.
And in 2012, there was
a team of researchers
that went and mapped the
inside of this cave using LIDAR
and 3D technologies to
really understand the details
inside the cave.
They discover
that this structure
is even more complex
than it appears.
The cave may not have only
had some of these
solar alignments,
there's probably some
lunar alignments as well
that show that there's much
more in-depth understanding
of the movement of
the heavenly bodies
than we may even understand
was actually
happening at the site.
While the Intimachay acts
like a solar
calendar underground,
another carving tracks
the sun from above.
One of the very prominent
features of Machu Picchu is
you go up on this
precipice there,
and there's a rock carved
right out of bedrock
and it's called the Intihuatana,
the Hitching Post of the Sun.
It marks the four points,
north, east, south, and west,
and also it's thought to mimic
the nearby sacred mountain
of Huayna Picchu,
which is the famous
backdrop of Machu Picchu
because it models the shading
of that mountain there.
So the Intihuatana is this
extraordinary measuring device.
And during the equinoxes when
the sun is right above it,
it projects no shadow at all.
It was a place
for the Inca priests
to watch the equinox
and the solstice,
and they would then
ceremoniously tie the sun
to the hitching post
so that it didn't go
farther north or south.
Keeping time
by observing the skies
was critical to the Inca.
The way they're tracking
the winter solstice
and the summer solstice
through these buildings
becomes extremely important
for the planting and
harvesting season.
The Inca spirituality really
was so much about nature,
so being in this location
that's high up in the clouds,
you are really immersed in
this environment of the gods.
You're close to that
celestial movement,
which is so important
to the understanding
of when to perform
certain ceremonies,
when to harvest plants.
Without being able to so
accurately predict the seasons,
it would've been
virtually impossible
for their terraced
gardens to have been able
to support the people
that were living there.
So a variety of different
kinds of architecture
at the site may have been used
for astronomical observations.
People might think of the Incas
as being a primitive culture,
but they created the largest
empire in the New World.
However, on the other hand,
we'll probably never know
the extent of Inca cosmology.
It leaves us
absolutely mystified
as to how they could have
made these calculations.
How did they develop such
an accurate understanding
of time and space?
Whatever the driving force was
behind Machu Picchu's
construction,
it's a testament to the
ancient Inca's sophistication
as builders, engineers,
and even astronomers.
But not everyone thinks the
Inca created this place alone.
In the 1960s, theories
emerged regarding a lot
of structures around the Earth,
Stonehenge, Easter
Island, the pyramids,
that suggested that it was
impossible for human beings
to have created these
architectural feats.
When you look at a wall on
Easter Island called Vinapu,
this building
technique is identical
to what you see in Peru.
Perfectly-fitted granite blocks,
would seem they're
using power tools
to cut very hard rocks,
granite and basalt.
It was believed that
for human beings to
construct anything like this,
we would've had
to have been aided
by a far more
advanced technology
than was available
on Earth at the time.
And according to proponents of
the ancient astronaut theory,
we got help from other worlds.
It may sound like
the plot of a sci-fi movie,
but there are some things about
Machu Picchu's construction
that defy logic.
A few stones in the
center of Machu Picchu
are over 50 tons.
And you look at
these single stones
and see how perfectly
they're fit,
there's not a good
explanation, to this day,
how people with
rudimentary technologies
were able to do that.
It seems impossible.
The feet of engineering does
seem otherworldly at times,
because even though
the ashlar technique
was used throughout
the Incan Empire,
which was a way that
the stones were carved
and they fit together in
a sort of puzzle piece,
how do you do it at
the top of a mountain?
A closer examination
of the foundations
underneath Machu Picchu show
such a significantly
different architectural style
that it's possible that
the foundations were built
by an entirely
different civilization.
Whether it's extraterrestrials
or some other
sophisticated civilization,
who can do these things
and perfectly fit giant
blocks of stone together?
The ancient astronaut
theory is considered by many
to be pseudoscience.
However, there is new evidence
that the history of Machu
Picchu may be much, much older
than anyone has anticipated.
There's a long history of
civilization in the Andes,
going back to the first
cities being built, 3000 BCE,
throughout what eventually
became the Inca Empire.
Some of these carved rocks
are as big as box cars,
and archeologists believe
that they predate the Incans
by hundreds of years.
Just a short
walk from the center
of Machu Picchu in an area
named after Pachamama,
the Earth Mother, stands
a large granite outcrop
that's been hiding a secret
for over 1,000 years.
In 2016, one of the
Machu Picchu archeologists
discovered a faint symbol that
raised some new questions.
What's found on that
panel is a man, a llama,
and some black-and-white
geometric shapes.
Some people think
that it's an indicator
that there's a much
more ancient history
to Machu Picchu
we're unaware of.
Whatever it means,
it has no specific ties
to the Incan population
in the 15th or 16th centuries.
Further exploration of Pachamama
reveals even more
puzzling cave paintings,
estimated to have been
made as early as 800 AD.
Perhaps the greatest indication
that there was some association
with ancient aliens comes from
the Incan religion itself.
And there's one
Inca legend in particular
that can certainly be
interpreted as supernatural.
There's a legend that
the Emperor Pachacuti,
on the eve of a great battle,
went to a lake and is
reflecting on what to do next.
And that in this moment,
a disc fell from the sky
from which emerged a face.
And the supernatural
creature tells Pachachuti
that he's going to win the
upcoming battle and many more.
The story is then that these
huge monolithic stones
come to life and assist
Pachacuti in his battle.
And these levitating rocks
are what helped build Machu
Picchu in the first place.
There is no evidence to
support any of these stories,
but there are many stories
that indicate that the skies
above Machu Picchu today
still remain a hotspot
for paranormal activity.
UFO activity in Peru
is quite considerable.
And, in fact, when
you're in Peru,
the subject of UFOs
is a very common one.
Most people do not
doubt the existence
of extraterrestrial sky gods
who had the technology
to fly through the sky,
to levitate stones and
magically move them.
Is it possible that these
same sky gods are the ones
who built Machu Picchu?
It's a common belief there that
that is what was happening.
Nearly 600 years
after Machu Picchu was founded,
research teams aren't certain
how Machu Picchu
was made, or why.
It's estimated that
potentially up to 60%
of the construction of
Machu Picchu is underground,
and these deep
foundations were necessary
to help with seismic movements
and terrace drainage,
to make sure things
would filter properly.
To keep a place like
Machu Picchu securely
on the mountaintop,
it takes under-the-earth
infrastructure.
It's entirely possible
that there are subterranean
chambers we've yet to contact.
In 2010, an engineer
named David Crespy
came to Machu Picchu, looking
specifically at those caves
under the Temple of
the Three Windows,
and said that structurally, the
wall that was in the back
looked like it might be hiding
an entrance into
deeper chambers.
He immediately alerts the
other archeological teams
to his discovery,
but gets no response.
After enough time goes by,
he reaches out to a French
archeologist named Thierry Jamin
to see if he can help see
what might be underground.
Jamin gets
approval to search the area
with ground-penetrating radar.
In April 2012, along with
a team of archeologists,
he makes a stunning discovery.
They did some geophysical
investigations at the site.
And what he thinks he found
is some kind of a
chamber below this door
that may have had a
staircase leading into it.
The radar also
indicates a huge amount
of metal down there,
which could indicate
silver and gold,
exactly the kind of riches
that one would expect
to be buried with royalty.
Like the ancient Egyptians,
the Incas mummified
their great leaders,
not to memorialize their
power, but to preserve it.
They were not fancy
burials, and they believed
that their ancestors did
not die when they died.
They would go into the
afterworld, but their spirit
would remain and would look
over their descendants.
In the chronicles that
the Spanish left behind,
they describe instances
of them eating
and drinking with these remains,
even building vast palaces
as if they were still alive.
So the Spanish
Conquistadors were horrified
with the amount of power
that these mummies
had over the living.
Maybe this whole place was
dedicated to the afterlife.
Hiram Bingham's crew is believed
to have excavated all of
the graves on Machu Picchu,
but they perhaps missed
the most important one.
The Peruvian government
denies Jamin's request
to excavate further,
but he has a hunch
about what or who
may be lying within the chamber.
Thierry Jamin
believes that Pachacuti,
who is one of the legendary
builders of Machu Picchu,
would be buried there too.
And his gold mummy was somehow
interred inside this wall.
It's possible that
Pachacuti's mummified remains
were once located in the cave
underneath the Temple of the Sun
that Bingham had originally
believed was a burial chamber.
Pachacuti dies in 1471.
According to his wishes,
the whole of the Inca
Empire mourns for a year
and then spends a month
celebrating his life.
Although his remains
were originally installed
in the capital city of Cusco,
according to the
Spanish chronicles,
a person of his stature
would have made regular
outings, even as a mummy.
But after the Spanish conquest
starting in 1532,
just when his people
need him most,
Pachacuti's mummy
mysteriously disappears.
In 1559, a Spanish
magistrate claims
to have collected, by
order of the viceroy,
the deceased bodies of
Inca kings and queens,
and then shipped them to Lima.
The bodies were
deposited in a hospital
in the city of Lima,
and they were
eventually buried there
where we believe they
can still be found.
None of those human remains
have been positively
identified as Pachacuti.
Unofficially, the
question remains
were Pachacuti's
mummified remains
instead brought to Machu
Picchu for reburial?
Is Machu Picchu a location
for the life and afterlife
of the Inca's greatest leader?
Thierry Jamin
and his crew are keen to know
if what they've
seen on that radar
could really be
Pachacuti's tomb.
For now, the truth
is staying buried.
Today, we can't help
but look at Machu Picchu
through our Western eyes.
But, of course, it
was made by people
who had a very different
cosmovision than we do.
Part of the mystery of Machu
Picchu is we just don't know
how to look at it the right way.
Whether Machu Picchu was
built for war or peace,
as a place of worship
or a place to unwind,
an astronomical wonder
or a tomb for the dead,
the search for more answers
about this astonishing
site continues.
As top archeologists
employ new technologies,
perhaps they will one day
decipher the true purpose
of Machu Picchu.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
"History's Greatest Mysteries."