Machu Picchu was built over major fault zones (2019)

Words don't quite do their stonework justice. Plenty of old-world architecture is made of whatever weirdly-shaped rocks they had lying around, but they use mortar to hold them together. The Incan mortar-less stone puzzle look is extremely cool: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mur_Inca_D%C3%A9cemb...

"Usually the walls of Incan buildings were slightly inclined inside and the corners were rounded. This, in combination with masonry thoroughness, led Incan buildings to have a peerless seismic resistance thanks to high static and dynamic steadiness, absence of resonant frequencies and stress concentration points. During an earthquake with a small or moderate magnitude, masonry was stable, and during a strong earthquake stone blocks were “ dancing ” near their normal positions and lay down exactly in right order after an earthquake."

Resonance would be a key factor as well, various sized rocks all at irregular angles would help greatly to prevent any overall resonance shaking and amplifying across the structure.

Now in contrast to standard sized bricks and regimental formations - like a row of pitchforks just awaiting the right note in many ways.

Then buildings of old had less engineering and material science to lean onto. That combined with a shift of building things to last forever towards a lifetime and even that lifetime gets shorter. We see things built with just enough materials to do the job and know more with a life of 100 years at best in so many cases (often half that with some housing).

Sadly it gets down to the numbers and odds as well - if there is say 1 in 100 years chance of a quake that would be over 6 on the scale and 1 in 500 of a 7 and the cost to build is 1m for upto level 5 survivability and 5 million for level 6 and 50m for level 7. You see how the insurance can push it towards going for the cheaper option on the bases that if you went for a level 5 - you could rebuild it 5 times in that 100 years. So money does play a huge part as always.

I do wonder, what would it cost today to build Machu Picchu as it is - a huge amount and can bet the modern approach would involve concrete and reinforced steel. Just can't beat natural stone still in many ways.

Are there any modern construction equivalents to such construction?

Or have we surpassed and come up with better models?

I think you're stealing credit as we've made deliberate decisions that were bad and not easy too. For example, we built New Orleans.

Mexico City built a hard way, searching for an eagle eating a snake on top of a rock. They found it on a lake bed. As a result, they built on some pretty soft sinking layers. Favorite city though, lived there last month and going to Machu Picchu again this weekend.

Probably in many places along the Alpine Himalayan mountain range, including Algerie, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, among others. These mountainous areas are usually heavily fractured by faults and the resulting rock blocks have been used for millennia to build walls. It's rather hard to say if rock availability is the only reason that drove people to build in a given place: usually major faults zones are eroded by rivers and form valleys. this places are preferable building sites because of water availability, easiness of transportation along the river, etc. (sorry for my English)

In case you missed it, the article says the below:

Further evidence that the site selection for Machu Picchu may not have been an accident: Similar analyses reveal other ancient Incan sites, including Ollantaytambo, Pisac, and Cusco were also built at the intersections of fault zones.

Titles have always been written for engagement, we've merely optimized it further over time.

No, because they don't get read, they don't reach the front page, they don't get the engagement boost from people complaining about it and you would never see it.

This title agrees with the content though.

Here I was reading this mercifully brief article, just glad it didn't start with "It was a stormy night in 2014 when I began researching..."

Totally agree, I hate reading these titles. To the credit of the writer though, we get the answer fairly soon and the article isn't 24 paragraphs deep.

I half expected it to be something about The Fifth Season.