Talk:Sacsayhuamán

Links to other languages
The corresponding page on Spanish Wikipedia is much more complete, so I'll be adding a link to it.

River Cobbles
Under "theories about construction of the walls". I couldn't find any information about what "river cobble masonry" would be. I added a dead link. If anyone has any information, I'm curious. Editfromwithout (talk) 20:34, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Requested move
I think this article should be renamed to Sacsayhuaman, without diacritics, per Naming conventions. According to this guideline the choice between anglicized and native spellings should follow English usage, that is, one should prefer common English usage when naming an article. Sacsayhuamán with and acute accent is not the anglicized name for this archaeological site but the hispanicized one. The original name is in Quechua, a language that does not use acute accents. In my opinion the correct name for the Wikipedia article should be Sacsayhuaman, without diacritics, as this is the most common usage in English on the web as well as on scholarly sources. --Victor12 (talk) 15:58, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose "Sacsayhuamán" with the accent is as anglicized as the version without it. The accent though allows the reader to know which syllable is stressed in this likely unfamiliar word. Hús  ö  nd  17:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, in Quechua (Sacsayhuaman is a quechua word), the stress is always on the penult (one syllable before the last), so having the stress in mán does not match the original pronunciation, rather, it is an Spanish adaptation. Thus, it would be wrong to have an accent mark on the last syllable. --Victor12 (talk) 19:06, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * In that case, I guess it's okay. But why would the name carry an accent in the last syllable in Spanish? Hús  ö  nd  19:29, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * A change in stress from the penultimate syllable to the last one is not uncommon in Quechua words adapted by Spanish users, for instance, Pachacamác, Lurín, and so on. Not sure about the reasons though. --Victor12 (talk) 19:43, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

weight estimate
I provided 2 weight estimates from 2 books. They have a large difference. this wall is a retaining wall so they may not be able to tell the depth of the blocks. Scarre sited a block 5 meters wide and 5 meters tall in his book which he showed a picture of it wasn't square so it was probably only about 20 square meters. 128 tons of limestone should be about 51 cubic meters so if the average depth of this stone is about 2.5 meters then he should be about right. If it is closer to 4 meters deep then readers digest would be closer. Or if they are refering to another block with 80 cubic meters.

Zacherystaylor (talk) 07:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Vince Lee hyperlink is wrong
Hello Vince Lee's name hyperlinks to the page about the guy who chopped off someone's head on a Greyhound bus in Canada. I'm pretty convinced they're not the same person. Someone with better technical skill than me might want to change that? I'd do it myself but I'm not especially tech-savvy. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.231.68 (talk) 00:40, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The link was removed. Dger (talk) 17:55, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Vince Lee and dubious reference
The reference to Vince Lee under "theories about construction of the walls" is somewhat dubious. First, he is supposedly an "adventurer-explorer" which is never a good sign but especially there isn't a reference in this section, just his name. Someone might remove that information but something more concrete needs to be put in its place. Editfromwithout (talk) 20:38, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I have trimmed it a bit, given a reference. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:08, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

"Theories about construction of walls"
This section is absurd. Most of the sources are dead links and the diatribe is written like it's truth and not theory. instead of making up nonsense this section should just be honest and state that no one knows how the construction was achieved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.155.211.99 (talk) 08:53, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

This section says that no one knows how the Inca built this site, but earlier in the article it says definitively that the Inca did not build it at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.190.82.90 (talk) 17:04, 21 February 2020 (UTC)


 * You've misread it. The Inca didn't start the site, but the lead says "The complex was expanded and added to by the Inca from the 13th century; they built dry stone walls constructed of huge stones. The workers carefully cut the boulders to fit them together tightly without mortar.". The section is about the walls constructed by the Inca. The first IP is just wrong. Including it seems about the dead links. Doug Weller  talk 17:16, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Somenody should put some sense. Incas didnt build this site with small tools and copying the egypt techniques. 95.123.119.191 (talk) 23:39, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Fitting the large stones together by repeated lifting and knocking down high spots seems close to impossible. So maybe they worked them together horizontally (no gravity to overcome) then, once carved, stacked vertically to make the wall. Wayne5142 (talk) 19:08, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Purpose
Saksaywaman was a religious site, not a fortification. The Spanish thought it was a fortification because the Incas chose to defend Qosco from it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:2346:CD00:C73:9B40:E41B:F1FE (talk) 20:53, 27 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Do you have any reference to this notion? If the Incas used it as a fortification to fight the Spaniards than it was a fortification at least for a time. Dger (talk) 00:20, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Not completely without mortar
Differently from what's stated in the introduction, according to one source cited on the article: "Note that the perfect fit is only on the front surface: the stones are slightly wedge shaped, meaning that their cross sections are smaller inside the wall that they are on the outer surface. The internal space between rocks is taken by filler." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.234.134.0 (talk) 18:24, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Citation? Note?
Can someone tell me what this parenthetical bit in "Theories about Construction (first paragraph)" means (italics mine)?:

(1948:63 [1571])

I don't recognize it as a tag and it doesn't lead to/open anything. I'm inclined to delete it as a typo unless someone can help me understand what it is.

Thanks! Sugarbat (talk) 20:46, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

reference 20
This does not exist anywhere to be examined and is only referred to by secondary authors, none of which confirm what is being referenced. Gutierrez de Santa Clara 1963:252. It would need a Journal name to be at all valid.


 * My guess is that was taken from this source which is a University press book. and that the source used is this, published in 1963 although the author was of course long dead.


 * This JSTOR article can be read online at the moment if you create an account and might be a good source. Doug Weller  talk 17:58, 15 June 2020 (UTC)


 * In any case that text was a copyright violation from Bauer. Doug Weller  talk 13:37, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Inca History
In the Description, when would the Inca have been aware of lions? Are we talking about panthers here? SquashEngineer (talk) 14:28, 23 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Certainly. "Lion" is a loose term for large cat - like panther, puma, cougar, mountain lion, etc. It doesn't have to mean African lion. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:19, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Copyright and quote correction
I understand there were questions about copyright for Brian S. Bauer's book and thought a description of it would be appropriate, especially the quote by Pedro Cieza de León, which should be way beyond copyright. Apparently part of this quote was already there earlier in the article, but the quote didn't match the source cited, which is the same one I thought about adding, and was translated in 1883, well beyond copyright. It's one of the few stories where Europeans allegedly saw ancient civilizations when megaliths were being moved, so I'm correcting and expanding it to match the existing source. I'll probably update the theories section based on the same source. Pedro Cieza de León doesn't provide a precise enough description to calculate the weight of the megaliths he saw, whether he watched them move them or not, but my best guess is the biggest one he described might be close to, if not more than 50 tons, which is less than half the lowest estimate of the largest megalith from modern researchers. Zacherystaylor (talk) 18:33, 5 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Just in case anyone's interested, the footnotes from this expanded excerpt are obviously from the translator Clements R. Markham, I don't know if it's appropriate to skip them, but anyone going to the link, and the complete book at Gutenberg can read them. It's not the same translation cited by Brian S. Bauer, which was from 1976 by Harriet de Onis, so there are slight differences. Her translation doesn't appear to be online. Zacherystaylor (talk) 18:56, 5 September 2023 (UTC)