Machu Picchu and Gutenberg's press are the same age: around 1450 the Incas were building their mountain estate while Mainz printed its first books.
The events
- Building of Machu Picchuc. 1450 · Machu Picchu, Peru. High in the Andes an estate of precisely fitted stone was built for the Inca ruler Pachacuti. The Spanish never found it, and after Hiram Bingham publicised it in 1911 it became the symbol of Inca civilisation.
- Gutenberg's printing pressc. 1450 · Mainz. In Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg developed printing with movable metal type on a press. His Bible appeared around 1455; printing made books cheap and accelerated the spread of knowledge, the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.
More amazing facts
- 1411 · 1429 Rublev's Trinity (1411 or 1425–1427) and Joan of Arc's relief of Orléans (1429) belong to the same generation.
- 1450 · 1564 Ivan Fyodorov's Apostol (1564), the first precisely dated Russian printed book, came out more than a century after Gutenberg's press.
- 1450 · 1453 When Constantinople fell in 1453, Gutenberg was already printing in Mainz: the last Roman Empire vanished in the first years of the printed book.
- 1480 · 1492 The Horde's rule over Rus' ended with the Great Stand on the Ugra in 1480 — only 12 years before Columbus reached the Americas.
- 1480 · 1492 Rus threw off the Horde in 1480 and Spain completed the Reconquista in 1492: two centuries-long struggles ended almost together.
- 1485 · 1508 The Kremlin's present walls were built by Italian masters (1485–1495).