CRI听力:Machu Picchu Put onto the Map by Google

In 1911, Yale University history professor Hiram Bingham III found the "Lost City of the Incas," in Machu Picchu, Peru.

Although locals had been aware of the site in the Andes, it was Bingham's discovery that made it known to the world.

Now Google Street View is set to bring every terrace and summit of Machu Pichhu to a screen near you.

Google's Daniel Filip, the Engineering Manager of Google Street View, announced the good news.

"Today we are here to capture for the first time to capture a street view imagery of Machu Picchu and publish it on Google maps for the whole world to appreciate and be inspired to come to Machu Picchu and visit."

Back at Google HQ in California, Deanna Yick, Street View Program Manager for Google Maps demonstrates the device.

"Everyone I think is familiar at this point with street view imagery and seeing this imagery of the cars from the road. But a lot of people would argue that the most interesting stuff is actually off the beaten path and once you get off the roads that is where the good stuff is. So that is what we are focused on bringing people to some of the most exciting, monumental, historic places around the world that they are interested to see and we want to be able to provide that seamless experience on Google Maps."

The Incas built Machu Picchu atop an Andean peak some 24-hundered meters high, with a breathtaking view across the inhospitable abysses that surround it.

Some experts believe it was a refuge for one or more Inca rulers, others say that it was a religious sanctuary.

In the 1980s, visitors shunned Peru because of a raging guerrilla conflict that ended in 1999.

Its popularity has grown since then and over a century later the site receives an average of 4-thousand visitors a day.

Susana Pabon, General Manager for Google in Colombia and Peru, says that to provide information of remote places has always been Google map's main desire.

"Google is constantly working in innovation to be able to go into the most remote and important areas in the world, to be able to create what we call the perfect map, and that is the objective, to be able to create that perfect map, that is why we are going to areas like Machu Picchu, so people can see just with one click any part of the world and have access to places like this from their own computers"

UNESCO inscribed the Inca stronghold on its World Heritage list in 1983, boosting the site's fame and making it eligible for international technical support.

The images released Thursday are the latest addition to the diverse collection of photos supplementing Google's widely used digital maps.