When I first arrived in Cusco and witnessed the wonderful megalithic polygonal blocks of Sacsaywaman (and after recovered from a brain shock), I decided that I wanted to come to Peru to explore and study the ancient people who built this miracle of architecture, even though my interest in the ancient civilizations started maybe 5 years before I visited Cusco in 1999.
Cusco is a millenary city, full of secrets that still waiting and wanting to be discovered and research.
Exploring the streets of Cusco it’s quite a unique experience, you still smell the footprints of a glorious past who left an imprint in the stone walls of their knowledge in many different fields like, engineering, architecture, and of course astronomy, among others.
If you walk around the old town you will notice that it is full of cathedrals and churches located where in the past supposed to stand the most important temples of the Andean religion. Also, the construction still has stones as the basements of the colonial houses just like the stone blocks paving the streets so you have the feeling you are walking over the steps of the Incan inhabitants 600 years ago.
There are some special places that I often visit in the city, like the magnificent Temple of Qoricancha or the uncomparable polygonal megaliths of The Inka Roqa Temple, holder of 12 angle stone, famous because of its shapes, but the skills of the ancient stonemasons were at a supreme level on these green diorite walls.
The design of this ancient astronomical city took inspiration from the sky, just like The Kybalion, the ancient Egyptian book from Hermes Trismegistus, the master of masters, said, “as above so below” In Cusco the reflection of the stars is present in the design of every corner and street of the ancient town, starting from the sun that was precisely measured and traced organizing every corner and every street of the ancient city.
In other words, the city was designed in regards to different references from the sky, being the sun the first and one of the most important ones, the orientation of the streets at the east part of downtown are staring at the rising sun of the winter solstice, at the same time after the sunset that same day, the southern cross is setting on the southwest.
But something extraordinary is happening that night over the night sky, the milky way crosses the sky from 30° Azimut northwest to the southeast and over the earth, the main temples of the city are perfectly aligned (The cathedral or Wiracocha’s temple, the Qoricancha, San Cristobal Church or MancoQapaq Temple and Muyukmarka, above the town in Sacsaywaman) and all reflecting the milky way or the Willka Mayu (sacred river in Quechua words).
But this celestial phenomenon is not happening nowadays, I have been studying these alignments for over 18 years now and I believe it was designed and aligned to the year 10,000 BCE.
The indestructible Sacsaywaman!
This was the place that hooked me, it blew my mind from the first minute I walked around the site, those massive blocks of andesite were so perfectly cut and smoothly model to have a perfect fit between one and other I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing.
I felt completely amazed by those ancient architects who designed this monument with such greatness and millimetrically oriented to the sun and the stars. Not only that but the fact that the biggest stone on these walls was up to 150 tons, supposedly with no wheels or technological gear to help with the monumental enterprise.
This was the beginning of my life in Cusco, exploring, reading every book I found about the subject, arguing any theory, and of course, waiting for the perfect moment to see the sunrise or sunset converting into stone through the almost magical alignments of the ancient designs.
Archaeoastronomy is part of my life and as a book of stone, I came to Cusco to read every page of the ancient knowledge petrified on the old temples.
Andres Adasme
Exploration, Development & Experiences Mountain Lodge of Peru.
