EP9 Machu Picchu：A City in the Clouds

Machu Picchu：A City in the Clouds | 短故事＋5个词＋simple past -ed 动词发音规则＋小练习

Listening Text
P1：Machu Picchu is an ancient city hidden high in the mountains of South America. It is in Peru, northwest of the city of Cusco. Machu Picchu was built by the Inca people over five hundred years ago.

P2: Long ago, the Inca Empire was very powerful. At its largest, it stretched about two thousand five hundred miles along the Pacific coast of South America, from today’s Ecuador down to Chile. This distance is almost the same as the width of the United States. Machu Picchu once stood at the center of this empire. Today, it is one of Peru’s best-preserved archaeological sites. It is also an impressive example of Incan engineering. In Machu Picchu, the Inca built large palaces, open plazas, and stone temples. They did all of this without wheels or metal tools.

P3: One special thing about Machu Picchu is the way the Inca built the stone walls. They did not use any sticky material, like cement, to make the stones stay together. Instead, they cut the stones so carefully that they fit together very tightly. Machu Picchu is also located on two fault lines, so there are often earthquakes in this area. During an earthquake, the stones in the walls can move a little and then fall back into place again. This is one reason why the ruins are still standing and so well preserved today.

P4: Local people near the site always knew about Machu Picchu. But for hundreds of years, the outside world did not. Even the Spanish, who invaded the Inca lands in the fifteen hundreds, never found it. In nineteen eleven, a local farmer named Melchor Arteaga showed the ruins to a Yale University professor, Hiram Bingham. Bingham and other explorers later told the world about Machu Picchu, and many researchers began to study the site and learn more about the Inca Empire. In two thousand seven, Machu Picchu was voted one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. Today, visitors from many countries travel to Peru to see this city in the clouds and to walk in the footsteps of the Inca people.

Words
- ancient: very, very old.
- empire: a very large group of lands and people ruled by one leader or government.
- ruins: the broken parts of an old building or city that still remain.
- earthquake: when the ground shakes suddenly because of movement inside the earth.
- wonder: something very beautiful, amazing, or hard to believe; a special building or place.

Practice
Q1: Say the past form of work, live, visit, play.
Q2: Make one sentence about your own life using worked, lived, or visited, and feel the sound at the end of the verb.