The Living Stones of Sacsayhuaman
A fascinating document of an architectural, historical and cultural wonder, The Living Stones of Sacsayhuaman takes viewers on a journey to the outskirts of Peru where a team of Russian researchers work to uncover the mysteries of the stone walls built by the Incas.
This marvel of construction seems impossible even by today's standards. Lacking any form of scripted communication, the Incas left behind no written indications of their customs. This has long complicated the quest to retrace and fully comprehend their astounding architectural achievements. Their structures can be found in a variety of sites from Ecuador to Chile, including Machu Picchu and Ollantaytambo. The walls of Sacsayhuaman, however, are perhaps the most awe-inspiring and perplexing of all Incan structures. Massive in scale and sophisticated in its geometric precision, the sheer complexity of Sacsayhuaman left many questioning whether it was the work of gods or demons.
Thought to have been constructed in the middle of the 15th century, Sacsayhuaman features long stretching rows of stones, each weighing as much as three hundred tons. How were these blocks transported, and forced to fit together with such accuracy?
That is but one mystery confronted by a team of Russian geophysicists as they travel to the site during the summer of 2012. The film follows these researchers, and benefits from the wealth of finely detailed footage they captured on their expedition. They collect samples of the soil surrounding the structure, as well as several of the stone formations, all of which will undergo further in-depth study at a research laboratory in their homeland. These studies will hopefully indicate the types of stones that comprise the mammoth walls, the means by which they were joined, and the materials used to aid in the process of their construction.
Illuminating and transporting, The Living Stones of Sacsayhuaman reminds us of the awesome wisdom of ancient civilizations, and how they managed to transcend their minimal resources with maximum ingenuity and skill. In spite of the countless advances brought forth by our modern world, many of their most spectacular accomplishments may forever remain out of our reach of understanding.
The narrator built these walls..
It's the first time I quit a documentary, seriously.
Could civilization have risen and fallen many times? Couldn't the machines that were used to construct these megaliths simply have rusted away and disintegrated over the eons? I have never heard this theory mentioned before.
Turn off the audio and watch ! Great footage, ridiculous narration!
Agree (y)
The narrator so many have complained about is a bot. Non-human. It's actually pretty good for a bot. You can tell there is no feeling or sense. Just reading. I can't stand them either. But they are the thing now.
I had to leave when the narrator said "sahk sa huw e man". Did this guy get any kind of guide to the pronunciation? Or a script? He says, "Cuzca". Seriously? Did he even see how the word was written?
I managed 3.5 mins before his voice and the word 'sorcery' ended it. Bye!
Ab Asaff.....very creative...gave me a laugh. Are you and Von Daniken related?
Peaceful happy Inca people and Akhenaten in Egypt who told his people to be happy and worshipped only one God....Sun....interesting....we know so little!
interesting fact is that the same sort of masonary can be seen in egypt
Amazed by the techniques they have used. One thing strikes most is that INCAN believe stone have life. When i was learning about the limestone and come to the new techniques developed by scientist that concrete can heal itself posting the link
might that is method used by them!
Google Graham Hancock...
This is wonderful...I'm just posting to urge those that haven't seen this film, that they should...
(...someone asks above "why didn't they fight back"...ever heard of Galapagos...? ...same phenomenon...in human society, crime and violence will always win – especially when crime and violence is not at all expected...)
@Don Duncan
Some interesting questions you have posed, some of them can be answered in the BBC documentary by Michael Wood - Conquistadors (TV series). It is on this site but the video link is broken. Worth checking out if you can track it down, will provide some insight into what happened.
Have to agree with some comments, the non-native narrator and the grammar mistakes were really off-putting.
don't think the narrator spoke English. He read a script of which he had no idea what he was saying. Beyond his delivery, the narration itself was abominable. And to whom was the speech to? Certainly, all the crevices and dings and scratches were metered out like a fact book from a coroner's autopsy findings. I realize that your movies are free, but someone needs to review them before presenting them, especially, this one.
The narrator is terrible. Its really difficult to get into such an interesting subject when the narrator never pauses, doesn't pronounce clearly and pretty much sounds like a computer generated voice attacked by a virus. Its really ruining the documentary for me. I'm gonna try to make it through the doc but I don't think I can get past the awful narration..
These great structures were not engineered by the Incas. They were done by a lost unknown culture long before the Incus came upon them. The use of sound frequencies were employed by the builders to under cut gravity diminishing the weight of the stones to zero, thus making it very easy to move and transport and accurately place megaliths. If one can produce a sound frequency that matches the vibrational frequency of the planet, gravity loses its hold. This is very likely the same method utilized by all enlightened ancient cultures to build seemingly impossible megalithic structures around the planet. (Pyramids, temples, henges, dolmans, etc.) It is a science of energy manipulation lost on modern man.
The vibrational crystalline properties of the rock used created great energy production and thus enabled the builders to transport themselves onto another dimension where they could access other worldly knowledge and enlightenment. The Inca Shamans later came to understand this and used it to initiate Kings, Priests and certain individuals into a mystery school. This allowed them to live a peaceful and purposeful life and the energy from the stone and surrounding area kept them in harmony with the land ensuring them good health as they absorbed the magnified energy inherent in Earth energy lines on which the rock was placed.
If the Inca were so adept at building with stone and had such a cohesive, happy, civilized society, how were the relatively primitive, few in number, barbarous Spanish conquerors successful in taking over their culture? Why would the Inca allow it? Why didn't they fight back? They had the numbers, so where was the will? Could they have been disarmed psychologically by their superstition? Was the Inca populace timid, obedient to authority?
Doesn't the narrator receive any pronunciation coaching? So often in these documentaries the narrator botches pronunciation, not only of foreign words, but of English! It is very jarring to hear "polygonal" and 'sepulcher" wrongly stressed. I had to play it back to be sure I was hearing "sepulcher". It's so unprofessional and off-putting. I decided to turn off the sound and just watch.
Amazing, as are all reminders of "man's" ancient past and megalithic construct. What I wish to point out is that some of the "pointless" works shown in the video could quite conceivably be remnants of a training area, where students demonstrated their abilities with various tools, and / or preliminary trials upon the stones before going to the actual construct. Nothing, or little, is ever said about the existence of training schools or labs or testing areas - I think archaeologists should always keep that in mind when encountering objects that seem to make no sense or lead nowhere, as the many sets of "steps" shown in the video. I could see dozens of students being assigned a place on the stone to show their acquired skills before they were graduated to the actual works.
This seems to top even the ancient Egyptians' ability to transport and precisely position extremely heavy rocks. Fascinating indeed. Such a shame that the Spanish fortune-hunters and their Catholic commissars destroyed all records of this old, mysterious civilisation. If I remember correctly, the Incas did have a method of keeping a written record: they used an alphabet employing ropes and knots that has never been deciphered. But I read this sveral decades ago, so maybe in the meantime there is more recent info. I'll have to do some googling.
Great docu. We loved the place when we visited, so mysterious and magical - we toured all the major ruins of Sacred Valley and it was a marvelous journey, I highly encourage others.
Instead of bangin my head against the problem of moving massive yet fragile stones, and getting them shaped with extreme precision... My concept is that the blocks were either poured on site, as some type of ancient cement mix... Or, the walls were made of an easily shapeable and moldable mud / mix type of material, that would eventually harden and even fossilize over time. That seems much more explainable for what we see today. How ever this doesn't answer all questions, so ...still probably far off. The aliens are probably laughing.
Have you walked on the stones of years?