This is an opinion editorial by Leon Wankum, one of the first financial economics students to write a thesis about Bitcoin in 2015.
As I walk through the ruins of Machu Picchu, an Incan citadel built in the heights of the Andes Mountains in Peru and dating back to sometime around 1450, I see the magnificent remains of buildings and structures erected by a civilization long gone. To this day, we cannot explain how the Inca built it or what its exact use was. Historians know the Inca used Machu Picchu as a sacred site to house around 700 high priests. A place full of magical mysteries, Machu Picchu is known for its intricate ashlar walls that fuse huge stones together without mortar and for buildings that incorporate astronomical alignments.
Machu Picchu is part of a series of humanity's greatest achievements, which we do not fully understand how they were built, such as[1] the pyramids in Cairo; the pyramids in Teotihuacán, Mexico; and Coricancha in Cusco, Peru. How were the Inca able to carry and then align large stones up a 2,430-meter mountain, which would be difficult even with the most modern tools?
What we do know is that the Inca lived in harmony with nature. They participated in an agricultural society that used the forces of nature to build cities and sacred sites that still stand today. The philosophy of life in the Andes was based on benefiting from nature without destroying it. According to Juan Carlos Machicado Figueroa in “When the Stones Speak[2],” samples of this way of life are seen in different archeological sites, from the early cultures to the complexity of Incan society. Generally speaking, scholars are obsessed by the idea of resolving the question of how the Inca managed