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Pam and Mike pose at the overlook, February 2016. “We were there!!”

The plateau on which the city was built was also the place where the construction materials were extracted. The rock quarry – this can still be found in the city of Machu Picchu. So, the Incas had no major difficulties in constructing the stone blocks.

The majority of construction bricks, rocks are rather small, unlike in the case of Ollantaytambo and Sacsayhuamán.

About 5.000 people must have worked to build Machu Picchu – specialists say. But it could only accommodate 750 – 1.000 inhabitants. Strangely there were only about 200 – 250 skeletons found.

About 140 buildings were erected. Most of these are houses, some are temples. There also are depots and even a guard house at the edge of the city.

The Incas used dry stone technique to build the city. No mortar was used, the stone bricks were simply put together without any material to stick them together.

All rocks used were split perfectly and the bricks were put together like a huge puzzle. Some of the bricks are so tightly put together that one cannot even put a knife between them. The rocks were probably cut with the so-called wooden wedge technique: holes were drilled into the rocks and wet wooden wedges were inserted into them. After that the constructors waited until the wet wooden wedges froze.

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