Frequently when we visit archaeology sites we usually have a guide with us. In fact, there are some places you can’t visit without a guide, like Machu Picchu, and usually they are what they call “official” guides. To be an official guide one needs to go through official education and get approved by the Peruvian government to get that designation, which means they will usually have an official card, and one narrative that must be repeated or else they lose their job. In Peru this narrative usually goes something like this: “The Incas built it and they built it this way (using copper and bronze tools and pounding stones with a huge army of workers and lots of patience.)” Sometimes they may substitute ‘Inca’ for ‘Wari’ or ‘Killke’, or any of the other pre-Incan civilizations in the Andes, depending on their respective styles.
This commonly heard trope is so frequent that I wonder why they went to school in the first place as anyone could repeat this mantra. Why pay the money I say if you are going to be spoon-fed a narrative and give the same answers to visitors?
I remember the exasperation I felt when I asked my guide at Raqch’i about the vastly different styles of construction found on the walls of the Palace of Wiracocha. For instance, the lower part of the palace’s walls are composed of fabulously-fitted, andesite megaliths, and on top of this beautiful and sophisticated stonework is adobe, which is a combination of mud, small rocks and straw. It looked very out of place on top of superior megalithic construction.
When I pointed out the incongruities out to my guide, mentioning that it looked like very different cultures were at work here, he dismissed me with the usual pat answer: “The Inca built everything at the site, and they had different construction styles,” and he preceded to asked the tour group to move on.
This “Inca built everything” answer never rang true to me. After all, why would the Inca build such beautiful megalithic walls at one level and vastly inferior materials on top of it? It not only is jarring to the senses, but is a vast let-down in expectations. One bizarre explanation I heard to explain the mismatched materials on the walls were that the Inca switched from using andesite stone to adobe because they were in a rush to finish the construction because of warfare. One would think they would go fight the battle and return and finish the megalithic structure at a later date instead of make such a strange looking structure.
Also, there is a blaring inconsistency in the story itself. Since Wiracocha long preceded the Incas — official sources say he was worshipped more than 4000 years before the Inca were around — and this temple was alleged to have been Wiracocha’s temple, why assume the Incas built the megalithic parts of the wall?
These kind of errors in timelines are in fact so very common that you kind of expect this in Peru. If you don’t know who built it, just say it was the Incas that did, and that works for most people who are rushing through the sites on tours.
For example, I booked the “Sacred Valley Tour” recently because my son was visiting for a short time, and I thought this was a good way to see the best sites in the Valley in just a day. The tour takes visitors to Chinchero, Moray, Ollantaytambo, and Pisac, with a lunch and a few stops at shops thrown in between. It is a lot to digest in just one day.
Our first stop were the ruins at Chinchero (a place I am very familiar with) which has some of the most interesting huacas (sacred rock sites) in the Valley. I was curious to find out what my guide would say about the Hanan Pacha constructions found below the main temple area, and I asked him what he knew about them. Unfortunately, I got the same answer, “The Inca were master masons and they built it all,” and then asked our group to move on.
I understand that tour guides are on tight schedules, and maybe they feel that they are so pushed for time that they can’t answer questions in depth, but this dismissive attitude to sincere questions is exasperating and shows a lack of respect for visitors.
Although there is some value in using official tour guides as they can give us some interesting historical interpretations about sites, many, if not most of which are no doubt true, but, unfortunately, so much of ancient history is clouded by the official narrative that the Inca were the builders of all the vestiges seen throughout the Andes region, and this is a fairy tale. Even most archaeologists would agree with this assessment as there were many older pre-Incan cultures in the same areas and some were quite powerful, most notably the Wari and Tiwanakan Civilizaitions.
So, I have a bit of advice when you come to Cusco and the Sacred Valley — if you are mainly interested in physical archaeology as opposed to officially sanctioned cultural interpretations of sites — ditch the official tour guides as in many places you don’t need a guide at all. And, when you are at these places, ask yourself, what are your eyes telling you? What are you observing regarding the differences in construction styles and methods? And, finally, ask yourself, who could have made them? Though we may never know for sure, their mystery is part of their charm.
Always follow your inner guide. She is your best interpreter.