Why Machu Picchu Was Abandoned: An Inca Estate That Went Quiet

Machu Picchu sits on a narrow ridge high in the eastern Andes. This film explains how a royal Inca estate emptied in the 1530s without a battle or Spanish arrival. Radiocarbon dates from human remains place occupation roughly 1420–1530. The site was an estate associated with Pachacuti, not a capital, supported by a few hundred to around 750 retainers, workers and household members at a time. It depended on the imperial system of labor drafts, storehouses and roads. Smallpox, the civil war between Huáscar and Atahualpa, and the Spanish conquest collapsed that system. The last residents left; the Spanish never found the ridge.