Gabor Joseph Kish

Being Hungarian-born I started my studies in Classical Archaeology and Art History at the University of Budapest, continued in Salzburg, then in Munich to graduate there with a Dr. phil. ‘cum laude’ focusing on architectural history. Having moved to California a year after my graduation I soon became interested in the starting microcomputer revolution and went back to college to get a B.Sc. in Computer Science. I spent the next 35 years in programming and microcomputer design. It was fun, a great challenge and great training in accuracy, precision work and critical thinking. It eventually allowed me to take an early retirement and to start travelling extensively.

On a trip to Cusco, Peru in 2010 a walk through the Saqsaywaman Archaeological Park rekindled my old passion for archaeology. I learned Spanish, began serious reading and research about Inca architecture.

I came across a book by A. Hyatt and Ruth Verrill that quoted the testimony of an old Inca prince given to the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo in the year 1572 stating that “the Cyclopean walls had ‘always’ been there; that his people did not even have a tradition as to who built them…” Wanting to find the original source of this quote I traveled to a Salt Lake City archive to wade through Ruth Verrill’s manuscripts. From there, on to the archives of Madrid, Sevilla, Lima and Cusco. Though I have not yet found the original Spanish document that the secretary to the Viceroy Alvaro Ruiz Navamuel recorded and which may have gotten lost during the reorganization of the Spanish archives in the late fifties, I did find statements from early Spanish chroniclers and several other scholarly sources that similarly assigned the cyclopean walls to a much earlier “preinca” time.

A book by Clements R. Markham, a former president of the Royal Geographical Society and his manuscripts in the British Museum’s library further reconfirmed my scepticism about the generalized Inca attribution of the whole Saqsaywaman complex.

In between archival searches I visited the site in Cusco several times in the last 8 years, took hundreds of photos, talked to local scholars, archaeologists and guides. It became obvious that there is a small group of knowledgeable people even there, though not of Inca descent, who believe and are willing to say that contrary to the official academic opinion the cyclopean walls and the foundations of some of the famed structures go back much farther than the barely two centuries of Inca rule ending in 1532.

I have also found a thorough geophysical report by a group of Russian and Peruvian researchers that was commissioned by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura del Peru in 2012 and was also submitted to the Directorate of the Saqsaywaman Archaeological Park. This report and a follow-up analysis by another Ukrainian chemist unequivocally stated that based on their analysis the cyclopean walls are the product of a molding process, a technology that the Incas did not have.

That of course, totally contradicts the official academic opinion and the cherished beliefs of local Inca descendants. This new research has not been refuted but totally ignored as of this date.

I must admit I enjoy watching British whodunits and my favorite quote is from Inspector Morse, having collected all the damning evidence, telling an Oxford academic “you see it is all logic and the applications of logic.”

I would like to offer this essay concerning questions about the Inca attribution of all of Saqsaywaman as a kind of ‘reverse whodunit.’ Based on the presented photographic, archival, bibliographic and geochemical evidence, I am suggesting who could not have done it and encouraging the readers to make up their own minds on the merits of the case.