The ruins of Sacsahuaman represent not only an incredible amount of human labor, but also a very remarkable governmental organization.  That thousands of people could have been spared from agricultural pursuits for so long a time as was necessary to extract the blocks from the quarries, hew them to the required shapes, transport them several miles over rough country, and bond them together in such an intricate manner, means that the leaders had the brains and ability to organize and arrange the affairs of a very large population.  Such a folk could hardly have spent much time in drilling or preparing for warfare.  Their building operations required infinite pains, endless time, and devoted skill.  Such qualities could hardly have been called forth, even by powerful monarchs, had not the results been pleasing to the great majority of their people, people who were primarily agriculturists.  They had learned to avert hunger and famine by relying on carefully built, stone-faced terraces, which would prevent their fields being carried off and spread over the plains of the Amazon.  It seems to me possible that Sacsahuaman was built in accordance with their desires to please their gods.  Is it not reasonable to suppose that a people to whom stone-faced terraces meant so much in the way of life-giving food should have sometimes built massive terraces of Cyclopean character, like Sacsahuaman, as an offering to the deity who first taught them terrace construction?  This seems to me a more likely object for the gigantic labor involved in the construction of Sacsahuaman than its possible usefulness as a fortress.  Equally strong defenses against an enemy attempting to attack the hilltop back of Cuzco might have been constructed of smaller stones in an infinitely shorter time, with far less labor and pains.

Such a display of the power to control the labor of thousands of individuals and force them to superhuman efforts on an unproductive undertaking, which in its agricultural or strategic results was out of all proportion to the obvious cost, might have been caused by the supreme vanity of a great soldier.  On the other hand, the ancient Peruvians were religious rather than warlike, more inclined to worship the sun than to fight great battles.  Was Sacsahuaman due to the desire to please, at whatever cost, the god that fructified the crops which grew on terraces?  It is not surprising that the Spanish conquerors, warriors themselves and descendants of twenty generations of a fighting race, accustomed as they were to the salients of European fortresses, should have looked upon Sacsahuaman as a fortress.  To them the military use of its bastions was perfectly obvious.  The value of its salients and reentrant angles was not likely to be overlooked, for it had been only recently acquired by their crusading ancestors.  The height and strength of its powerful walls enabled it to be of the greatest service to the soldiers of that day.  They saw that it was virtually impregnable for any artillery with which they were familiar.  In fact, in the wars of the Incas and those which followed Pizarro’s entry into Cuzco, Sacsahuaman was repeatedly used as a fortress.