Intihuatana

This guide to the Intihuatana at Machu Picchu, above Aguas Calientes, traces why this carved granite pillar is the only one of its kind still standing on its original base anywhere in Peru, after the Spanish tore down every other one because these stones spoke directly to the sun god Inti. It follows Hiram Bingham's discovery of the stone half buried in vines in 1911, and shows what the pillar still does on the equinoxes each March and September, when the sun sits overhead and its four carved faces cast no shadow at all. Watch how that vanishing shadow once fixed the planting calendar for an entire empire.