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Max Hartshorne, travel website editor, sharing some of the stuff I read, hear and see with you. Updated every day. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Ancient Village…since 1993

by Max Hartshorne on February 17, 2005

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Found this snippet today on the web

Ever since the small Peruvian village of Chucuito discovered ancient Inca ruins nearby, said to be a site where Inca women would go to cure infertility, the village has become a mecca for millions of tourists each year.

People from all over the planet trek to this little village to see the ancient ruins and, perhaps, through that nearness feel an almost mystic kinship with the ancient Incas themselves – a people of which so little is known they seem almost to be beings of the realms of dream or myth.

Which is a good thing because, while the Incas and their culture were very real, the ancient Incan ritual infertility site at Chucuito only dates back to … 1993 … that would be A.D. (or C.E. if you’re an Oxfordian). That’s right, the relic of the ancient past is all of 12 years old.

How do we know this? Because that’s when the villagers of Chucuito built the “ruins” to attract tourists, reports Las Ultimas Noticias.

It’s not that the villagers talked, mind you, but experts brought in to study the “ruins” discovered they were built by the villagers to convince authorities to invest money to attract tourists to the region. Now that’s archaeology!

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