James' World 2

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Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru on a 2,430-meter (7,970 ft) mountain ridge. It is located in the Machupicchu District within Urubamba Province above the Sacred Valley, which is 80 kilometers (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco. The Urubamba River flows past it, cutting through the Cordillera and creating a canyon with a tropical mountain climate.

For most speakers of English or Spanish, the first ‘c’ in Picchu is silent. In English, the name is pronounced /ˌmɑːtʃuː ˈpiːtʃuː/ or /ˌmætʃuː ˈpiːktʃuː/, in Spanish as [ˈmatʃu ˈpitʃu] or [ˈmatʃu ˈpiktʃu], and in Quechua (Machu Pikchu) as [ˈmatʃʊ ˈpɪktʃʊ].

The Incas, in contrast with the Mayans, had no written language, and no European visited the site until the 19th century, so far as is known. There are, therefore, no written records of the site while it was in use. The names of the buildings, their supposed uses, and their inhabitants are all the product of modern archeologists, on the basis of physical evidence, including tombs at the site.

Most recent archaeologists (2021) believe that Machu Picchu was constructed as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the “Lost City of the Incas”, it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization. The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later, at the time of the Spanish conquest. According to the new AMS radiocarbon dating, it was occupied from c. 1420-1532.

Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give visitors a better idea of how they originally appeared. By 1976, 30% of Machu Picchu had been restored and restoration continues.

Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historic Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide internet poll. Wikipedia

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An image of Machu Picchu Peru

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Ontario is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. Located in Central Canada, it is Canada’s most populous province, with 38.3 percent of the country’s population, and is the second-largest province by total area (after Quebec). Ontario is Canada’s fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation’s capital city, Ottawa, and the nation’s most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario’s provincial capital.

Ontario is bordered by the province of Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay to the north, and Quebec to the east and northeast, and to the south by the U.S. states of (from west to east) Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Almost all of Ontario’s 2,700 km (1,678 mi) border with the United States follows inland waterways: from the westerly Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence River drainage system. These include Rainy River, Pigeon River, Lake Superior, St. Marys River, Lake Huron, St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, Detroit River, Lake Erie, Niagara River, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River from Kingston, to the Quebec boundary just east of Cornwall. There is only about 1 km (0.6 mi) of land border, made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border.

Ontario is sometimes divided into two geographic regions, Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario. The great majority of Ontario’s population and arable land is in the south. In contrast, the larger, northern part of Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and heavy forestation.

Ontario is a term thought to be derived from Indigenous origins, either Ontarí:io, a Huron (Wyandot) word meaning “great lake”, or possibly skanadario, which means “beautiful water” or “sparkling water” in the Iroquoian languages. Ontario has about 250,000 freshwater lakes. The first mention of the name Ontario was in 1641 when “Ontario” was used to describe the land on the north shore of the easternmost part of the Great Lakes. It was adopted as the official name of the new province at Confederation in 1867. Wikipedia

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An image from Ontario

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A dehesa is a multifunctional, agrosylvopastoral system (a type of agroforestry) and cultural landscape of southern and central Spain and southern Portugal; in Portugal, it is known as a montado. Its name comes from the Latin ‘defensa’ (fenced) referring to land that was fenced, and usually destined for pasture. Dehesas may be private or communal property (usually belonging to the municipality). Used primarily for grazing, they produce a variety of products, including non-timber forest products such as wild game, mushrooms, honey, cork, and firewood. They are also used to raise the Spanish fighting bull and the Iberian pig. The main tree component is oaks, usually holm (Quercus rotundifolia) and cork (Quercus suber). Other oaks, including melojo (Quercus pyrenaica) and quejigo (Quercus faginea), may be used to form dehesa, the species utilized depending on geographical location and elevation. Dehesa is an anthropogenic system that provides not only a variety of foods but also wildlife habitat for endangered species such as the Spanish imperial eagle.

By extension, the term can also be used for this style of rangeland management on estates.

The dehesa is derived from the Mediterranean forest ecosystem, consisting of grassland featuring herbaceous species, used for grazing cattle, goats, and sheep, and tree species belonging to the genus Quercus (oak), such as the holm oak (Quercus ilex sp. ballota), although other tree species such as beech and pine trees may also be present. Oaks are protected and pruned to produce acorns, which the famous black Iberian pigs feed on in the fall during the montanera. Ham produced from Iberian pigs fattened with acorns and air-dried at high elevations is known as Jamón ibérico (“presunto ibérico”, or “pata negra” in Portuguese), and sells for premium prices, especially if only acorns have been used for fattening.

In a typical dehesa, oaks are managed to persist for about 250 years. If cork oaks are present, the cork is harvested about every 9 to 12 years, depending on the productivity of the site. The understory is usually cleared every 7 to 10 years to prevent the takeover of the woodland by shrubs of the rock rose family (Cistaceae), often referred to as “jara“, or by oak seedlings. Oaks are spaced to maximize overall productivity by balancing light for the grasses in the understory, water use in the soils, and acorn production for pigs and game.

There is debate about the origins and maintenance of the dehesa, and whether or not the oaks can reproduce adequately under the grazing densities now prevailing. Wikipedia

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An image from Spain’s Dehesa System

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