Intihuatana is a

ritual A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment, regardless of conscious understanding, emotional context, or symbolic meaning. Traditionally ...

stone in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

associated with the astronomic clock or calendar of the

Inca The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts (, ), was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The History of the Incas, Inca ...

. Its name is derived from the local

Quechua language Quechua (, ), also called (, 'people's language') in Southern Quechua, is an Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from ...

. The most notable Intihuantana is an

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...

located at

Machu Picchu Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru on a mountain ridge at . Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is the most familiar icon of the Inca Empire. It is located in the ...

in the Sacred Valley near

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

. The name of the stone (coined perhaps by Hiram Bingham) is derived from Quechua: ''inti'' means "sun", and ''wata-'' is the verb root "to tie, hitch (up)" (''huata-'' is simply a Spanish spelling). The Quechua ''-na'' suffix derives nouns for tools or places. Hence ''inti watana'' is literally an instrument or place to "tie up the sun", often expressed in English as "The Hitching Post of the Sun".

References

{{Reflist Ancient astronomy Inca Empire

See also

References