Goliatha visits a museum and learns about the Incas

Before the Spanish came Peru has a strong empire and a lot of gold. At its height, the Inca empire stretched from Argentina to Ecuador. You can see on the map to the right just how big this empire was.

The Inca empire started around 1200 AD. It finally faded away by the late-1500s because of the Spanish invaders.

One of the most famous places in Peru from the Inca period is Machu Picchu. In the local language "Machu Picchu" means "OldPeak." It is a pre-Columbian (that means before Christopher Columbus landed in the New World) site located 8,000 feet above sea level.

It is on a mountain above the Urubamba Valley in Peru, about 50 miles northwest of the major city Cuzco. Nearby is the Urubamba River, which is one of the rivers that later becomes the Amazon River.

Machu Pichu was was built around 1460 AD but was abandoned by the Inca rulers a hundred years later at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.

The site was well known by the local people but after the Spanish conquest, Machu Picchu was forgotten by the rest of the world. It wasn't until 1911 that the American historian Hiram Bingham wrote about the site and made it well-known again.

Since 1911 Machu Picchu has been an important tourist attraction. It was declared a a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. There are concerns about the effect of tourism on the site as it reached 400,000 visitors in 2003.

One of the things the Inca were famous for was their gold work. They made jewelry and masks and other decorative items. Some of the things made were to honor the gods the Inca worshiped. Some of the stuff was used for the high leaders of the society. And other items were made to be buried with the leaders.

On the right you can see Goliatha with an Inca gold mask at the national museum in Lima.

Besides gold, the Inca made a lot of beautiful pottery. Here is Goliatha with some of the pottery as seen in the national museum.